《Dungeon Prowler : One Man Army》


 Chapter 1: Enrollment day

    Chapter 1: Enrollment day


    "..... In Tartarus, you will find fame and riches, only if you live long enough, and that is why you are here today". The booming voice of old instructor Mark; a former adventurer, who is currently teaching a ssroom full of 10 year old kids about the dungeon named Tartarus, where all who seek adventure can find it and more, today is the enrollment day in the adventurer academy - subsidiary of the adventurer guild - in every city, in the continent of burkan.


    These aspiring youngsters will; in the next 5 years, be filtered and ssified ording to performance and be the next batch of adventurer to explore Tartarus and bring its riches to the surface world, as well as clean up the monsters that keep spawning inside it from bing too many, invading the surface world as a result.


    "When you first enter the dungeon, you will be granted the "mark of the adventurer" by the dungeon itself, this mark is named status by the first adventurer - Adun the Twilight star, it shows you your current attribute, skills and level, the status can be locked or shared depending on your will, but there is a drawback to the mark, once you are an adventurer you can only progress inside Tartarus."


    The kids were listening intently, after all, their lives depended on it, well all except one, Yunan, he looked very bored and yawned a few times while instructor Mark was giving his speech, he already read most of this information and was waiting for more interesting things that only adventurers knew, he was disappointed so far.


    Trying to ignore the bored kid, instructor Mark continued exining in a long-winded speech, that, those marked by the dungeon can no longer gain skills or strength outside the dungeon, any learning is almost futile and all training is fruitless, those adventurers must venture inside and face the dangers hidden in Tartarus to grow stronger.


    On the other hand, only inside the dungeon can one grow and learn faster than those outside by leaps and bounds, if one was lucky to get a book as a drop item they could immediately learn the skill or magic it contains, also magic can only be learned by the marked ones, and it can be used outside after being learned. Although skills can be passed on, magic, on the other hand, needs a book or a grimoire to learn.


    Adventurers and the guild have a mutual benefit rtionship, the adventurers bring drop items and monster''s cores back, the guild will buy it from them. The guild can also provide lodging and food, as well as training camps and team matching for a fee, those fees go to the running of the guild and its subsidiaries, to groom even more adventurers and gain more profit.


    And since instructor Mark was a mere guild employee he would not know the secrets of Tartarus that ordinary adventurers knew, a flower in a ss house basically, trained in a standardized way and barely any adventuring in the treacherous depths of Tartarus.


    Thus the bored Yunan kept yawning for the 4-hour long lecture instructor Mark gave, and when midday came it was time to decide the future of the kids, something instructor Mark looked forward to every year. He signalled towards the door and 5 other instructors came inside and with them, servants brought a crystal ball sitting on a half meter long pir.


    "These gentlemen are specialist instructors, once you touch the ball a screen will project your status, just like the mark of Tartarus, and ording to your dominant attributes your ss will be selected, now lineup so you can start your training". and so, the kids rushed to line up all discussing which ss they want to be in and how they will have a better status than the other kids.


    When the first kid touched the screen instructor Mark went on to exin "as you can see the screen shows your four attributes: Strength, Constitution, Dexterity and Wisdom, since you are only ten, your stats will be between 1 and 5, adults of 15 years old will have stats between 1 and 10. 10 is the maximum ordinary humans can achieve, while adventurers have unlimited potential". He then looked at the kid'' status.


    Instructor mark loudly read the status of the kid "strength 4, Constitution 4, Dexterity 2, Wisdom 1. Not bad kid, you can be a shieldsman or a supporter, go on to the instructor with the shield badge" he basically shooed the kid away and beckoned the next one in line "next" after a look at the attribute he said "swordsman" sent the kid away and continued the selection.


    ording to the guild manual, there are 5 categories to ssify attributes, those with higher constitution would tank, taking the damage for the party, those with higher dexterity, are damage dealers, either bowmen or swordsmen depending on the secondary attributes wisdom or strength respectively, those with higher wisdom can be mages, and those with raw strength will be either a supporter (strength and constitution) who carry the luggage or front line sweepers (strength and dexterity), finally specialist, those who have 3 high attributes and they can be leaders and tacticians added to a role, and then all-rounders with equal stats all over.


    Soon enough came the time to check young Yunan and the bored look on his face finally cleared, reced with a look of anticipation and expectations, his stats caught instructor Mark off guard, as he was nning on giving Yunan a bit of a hard time for not listening to his lecture, he stared at the screen for 10 long seconds then ushered Yunan speechlessly to thest instructor mumbling to himself the words "perfect all-rounder".


    What the screen showed was "Strength 5, Constitution 5, Dexterity 5, Wisdom 5". One can understand what instructor Mark went through if one knew that perfect all rounders were rare enough, they pop up once in a million or even rarer, those royalty and nobles can train their kids to be all-rounders, but, there will always be an attribute short thanks to their tendencies and natural endowment.


    Quite understandable really, since perfection is extremely rare in nature, one must lean towards something or the other, those with high strength are hot-headed and rarely have high wisdom, equally their muscles are stronger making them lose some flexibility. The smarter ones have higher wisdom but wouldck either strength or vitality, therefore, perfect all rounders do cause a bit of shock when they appear, they can be whatever they want, they can even do everything just as well as the other roles.


    Yunan made his way silently to the specialist instructor, he was the only specialist in his ss of 50 newly enrolled students, he stood behind his teacher wordlessly. After the ssification finished, each instructor took away his charges into either a field, a ss or a library, depending or their roles, while Yunan and his instructor stood there staring at each other.


    Finally, the instructor sighed and said: "what do you want to learn?". Yunan simply answered "everything". The instructor looked at him as if this kid was taking something precious from him, heaved another heavy sigh with a reluctant look on his face. "Fine, call me Bai. Each day you will have one ss in the morning and one in the afternoon, you can take each ss only once per week and you can choose what to do in your free time, choose your sses as you like. Come find me tomorrow at the teachers'' lounge" with that he left without waiting for Yunan to answer, he did not even ask for his name.


    ''I got thezy one, perfect!'' thought Yunan as he watched Bai leave, he started thinking about how he would arrange his sses for the week, after all, that would be his next 5 years worth of studies and he did not want it to be boring in any way.

 Chapter 2: Past of the heart

    Chapter 2: Past of the heart


    Yunan made his way to the dormitories and filled in the request for a room, he was lodged in with another. He then went to the administrative building and got some supplies, set up his bed and desk, then he made his to the only orphanage in the city.


    It may be Yunan''sst time in the ce he grew up in, with that thought in mind he spent the road reminiscing about his few years there, thought about how his life was both fortunate and unfortunate at the same time, it was like the realisation of the idiom ''blessing in disguise''.


    If we go back a few years. Yunan arrived at the orphanage at age 2 after his parents died in an ident, soon after he arrived almost all the kids were either adopted or moved to the church or other ces, and so, as one of a handful children in the orphanage, he got his fair share of love and attention from the sisters.


    Yunan does not remember a single hard day in his short life, no hunger, cold, or sickness, he was fortunate enough to be the charge of a well-educated sister that taught him how to read early, nursed his mental health as well as his physical health. Sister Theresa would take him to the church''s library to read and spend time almost every day, from the day he turned 4.


    During that time he had read all the fables about the heroes of the ages, he was so fascinated by their tales and lives that he made sister Theresa exin to him the stories, how could they do what no man could do, and her exnation was always the same ''Tartarus'' and that sparked his interest in the dungeon.


    After sharing his interest with sister Theresa; who was by now more of a mother to him than Yunan would admit, Theresa helped him collect all the books she could find about the dungeon Tartarus and the guild, as well as adventurers and other publicly avable resources. When Yunan reached age 7, sister Theresa took him to watch the knights of the church train, eventually, he was able to join them and train with them in his own capacity. Thanks to that he learned numerous basic skills and techniques, as well as body enhancing activities that helped him max out his stats and unlocked his dormant potential; the perfect all-rounder.


    Yunan found himself outside the orphanage, he took a moment to sort out his feelings and steel his heart. He had the feeling he will never see this ce again, even though he called it home, he could not shake the feeling that once he left it would not be his home anymore. Yunan knew he would miss this ce, miss the sisters most of all, after all, they were his family, even if it was a borrowed time, they did treat him warmly and took him in as one of them.


    Taking a deep breath, Yunan walked through the door and headed for the room where Sister Theresa usually spent her free time. He knocked on the door announcing himself and requested to see his caretaker. Theresa momentarily invited him in, once he walked in the room and closed the door, they stayed silent for a moment. Theresa was sitting on a recliner chair, she had her robes on but not her head veil, she was young, in herte thirties, hair still smooth and shining like obsidian, eyes deep and calm golden honeykes.


    Yunan was looking at her withplex emotions, she was his mother when she did not have her veil on, at least she acted that way, just like now, the way she looked at him was not very different from the looks he has seen parents give their children, she probably took him as a son the moment he was put under her charge all those years ago.


    Without breaking the silence Theresa beckoned Yunan, sat him on herp and hugged his head to her chest, she kissed his forehead and tousled his hair, words were not needed between a mother and her child, it took a few minutes for Yunans heart to calm down. He then stood up beside sister Theresa and bowed deeply to her.


    "It is time for you to spread your wings my child", said Theresa with a proud tone, she was truly proud of him. "You cane back home when you feel too full of the world outside, I will be here if you evere by again" she spoke while her eyes grew misty and she forced her tears back, Yunan could not help but let his tears flow and said with a cracking voice "I''ll be going away mother, pray for the day we meet again". He then took a step forward and hugged Theresa with all the force a 10-year-old child could muster.


    Although Yunan had tears streaming across his face and sobs were threatening to escape his lips, he had a happy grin on him, he was so happy Theresa did not reject him calling her mother, she was his family, it was the first time he said the word ''mother'' to her and he hoped it would not be thest. After a few heart-stirring moments Yunan took his leave with a promise that he will make her proud of him.


    Yunan left the room and made rounds around the orphanage, said his goodbyes to the other sisters and the kids left there, then went to his bunk bed and packed a small bag with some clothes, then hurriedly left the ce he once called home, trying not to look back lest he returns and forgets about the dreams that upied both his waking and sleep. As Yunan made his way to the adventurers'' academy grounds, he passed by familiar streets and familiar people, each with a memory that reminded him of his home.


    Once back in the dormitories Yunan took the whole afternoon to n out his week and study subjects, the schedule he came up with was as follows: knowledge and theorems on the mornings andbat-rted practice in the afternoon. Knowledge was separated as magic, chanting, nning, strategy and general studies. Magic ss was about the understanding and use of magic as well as visualisation of its constructs. Chanting was a ss about the magical chants and their types. nning is the ss that ensure survival by teaching the student how to take all possible oues into all ns. The strategy ss is about the deployment and distribution of troops and party members to gain the advantage in any situation, while general studies taught mathematics, engineering, physics and other fields that ordinary folk used in their daily lives.


    As for the afternoon sses Yunan chose unarmed or armedbat basic skills, basic footwork and reaction training. Just as it sounds basicbat only teaches the lowest level of offensive and defensive moves, footwork is for dodging and escaping, while reaction training is for increasing battle awareness in Yunan. In this way, Yunan would have a broader outlook on all the basics, and when it came to advanced and higher level skills, there will always be skill books and grimoires for sale in the guild.


    Once Yunan finished ning his school time he started thinking about how to spend his free time, he decided upon body enhancement between dawn and first ss, then readingplementary skills and techniques after second ss till dusk. He chose this so as to keep his body in optimum shape and also not lose any possible enlightenment that he might trigger during ss, as for after dinner he chose to meditate or simply sleep and rest his body.


    With all he needed to be done and over with, Yunan went to the logistics department of the academy to retrieve some training armour as well as fill in the request for permission to use the training field outside of the allotted time. After he was done, he went to the academy diner for dinner then went back to his room to rest for the long morning toe.


    You might ask how can a ten year old n this meticulously? Well, the answer is obvious really, he had a wonderful caretaker; who taught him and built him up to be better than most children his age, after all failing to n is nning for failure.

 Chapter 3: Roommate and dummies

    Chapter 3: Roommate and dummies


    Once Yunan entered his room, he found his roommate alreadyying on his bed, tucked under the nket and reading what seemed like a dictionary, a very thick and heavy book, he looked well mannered and had a certain calm and carefree temperament. He seemed the type that keeps quiet and to himself most of the time.


    As Yunan stepped into the room they exchanged looks and nodded at each other, whilst Yunan got busy cing his clothes in his own closet the other guy looked back to his book and said with a friendly tone " the name is Leol, I like reading and sleeping, I study mostly in the mornings, my assigned role is mage". After a moment he heard a reply " the name is Yunan, I like training and reading, I have sses most of the day, and will be gone from dawn till dusk most of the time". Yunan then busied himself with his items then went to sleep almost immediately after, while Leol stayed up reading under candlelightte in the night.


    What an odd exchange between two who will be roommates for 5 years, well the simpler their rtionship, the easier it will be for them to get alongter on. The simple folk have no need for fancy words to convey their thoughts. And so the first meeting went without a hitch. Well, they had enough time to get to know each other further down the line.


    When Yunan woke up, dawn hade chasing away the darkness and ushering in a new day. Yunan has gotten used to an early routine while training with the church knights and so he quietly put on his training leather armour and went to the field in the centre of the academy, and started his physical enhancement training routine: jogging at a brisk pace, inteced with sprints of 100 meters after every kilometre of brisk pace, then he performed some squats, sit ups and push ups, 30 in each set, once every 5 kilometres. Yunan would do this for four cycles and then heads to the baths to clean up, then head off to the diner for breakfast.


    In the diner, Leol found him and sat beside him. "Yunan my friend! you woke up early! I thought you were kidding when you said you would leave the room at dawn", he had an admiring look on as he munched on his breakfast, Yunan looked at him and said with a smile "I have so much to learn and work on, waking up early is the only way to stay fit" Yunan gave a chuckle and mumbled "I don''t feel like getting fat until I reach 50".


    Leolughed out loud at Yunan''s joke and almost choked on his food. there was a contrast between the two boys as they sat there chatting about this and that, on one hand, Leol, was the very model of an aristocrat, golden locks on his head, sky blue eyes, wheat coloured skin and a supple body that almost never saw hardship, on the other hand, Yunan, had coal ck hair and brown eyes, bronze skin, slightly tanned and a lean body, a proof that Yunan did not ck on his training. The contrast between the two seemed to enhance the friendly atmosphere between Yunan and Leol, as the two chatted about nothing in particr, just a casual conversation.


    After breakfast, they parted ways, while Leol went to his assigned ssroom Yunan went to the teachers'' lounge to find his instructor. Bai waszing about in a half sleep state, eyes half closed and unfocused, leaning back on his chair and sporting ck halos under his eyes. Yunan approached Bai, pped the schedule he came up with on the desk, a ''thud'' that startled the other instructors resounded in the room, before they started reprimanding Yunan, they saw Bai waking up from his dazed state so they held back, pity was the look they gave Yunan when they returned to their business. It was as if they were expressing condolences to Yunan for having such an instructor.


    Bai just ignored the atmosphere in the room and picked the schedule and glossed over it, put it down and nodded at nothing, then as if he just remembered Yunan was still there he said with a tired thick voice. "go to the library and read the book titled ''magic for dummies'' we can discuss what you learned during the afternoon", he then simply went back to his previous posture of idling about. Yunan turned back and walked to the library without so much as a word, he was upset about this absurd teacher of his, that barely cared about his progress. He decided to take matters into his own hands, he definitely would not need such a useless teacher, or so he thought.


    When Yunan made it to the library, he found a line of students waiting at the reception desk to borrow what books they needed. It took sometime before he got his turn and when he told the librarian he wished to borrow the book titled ''magic for dummies'' a wave ofughter spread throughout the library, even the librarian could not help but shake his head and smile, he simply asked: "Are you certain, son?" Yunan just nodded and said nothing, once the librarian brought the book out, Yunan walked to the back of the library, while those who did not see Yunans face extended their necks to take a better look, just to confirm there is someone reading the ''magic for dummies'', a book so low grade almost everyone had read it once, even the muscle brains.


    Yunan didn''t even nce at his audience, merely passed by as if he did not see them or hear their ruckus at all, he then suddenly stopped at a table were a guy tried his best to hide his face in his book, Yunan smiled and sat on that table not even bothering to ask for permission, and just pulled a chair and sat himself opposite the guy trying his best to hide.


    Leol was almost panicking, the amount of ridicule he would get; if he was known to be the friend of the guy that needed to study magic for dummies, when Yunan sat with him, he just gave up and smiled back at Yunan, trying to poke fun of him by saying "I did not know you were that dumb, that book should be a higher level than your ability toprehend", Yunan did not think before saying "myzy instructor choose the simplest book so he would not need to exin much at all, sigh, hey how is your instructor? if he is not bad switch with me!".


    both Loel and Yunanughed at thest quip and got scolded by the librarian for making noise, when themotion faded away and the other students focused on their own books, Leol and Yunan took turns peaking at what the other was reading, and soon an epiphany hit both boys and they started trading books from other students to confirm what they found.


    the duo took the pile of books, went to the back and started whispering at each other, Leol was first tomend instructor Bai "your instructor sure is on a whole other level, he is too far from my own instructor". Yunan could only scoff at his new friend, he still did not believe hiszy teacher had such a goal in mind. he replied "thatzy bum cannot be that good, it must be a coincidence we even found this, that guy should not be capable of nning this" it was fascinating to them that the lowest level book on magic had such a function, that it should be read alongside other magic books, its simplicity would mean it could help oneprehend higher level magic forme, based on the corresponding simplified magic forme that can be found in the magic for dummies.


    those who do not know the history of magic books would not know, the author of magic for dummies was once one of the highest level magicians, and it was his magnum opus from years of research and teaching magic throughout the years, and so it was a simplification of all magic forme that was recorded in the history of Tartarus.

 Chapter 4: Revenge of Bai

    Chapter 4: Revenge of Bai


    While the boys were busy taking advantage of their newfound cheat, instructor Bai dropped by their table and sat down while yawning, neither of the youngsters paid any attention to instructor Bai, nothing more than a look and a nod of acknowledgement. While they were discussing the finer details of a low-level magic form, Leol had a sh of brilliance and tugged at Yunan, then whispered to him " suppose your teacher can cast magic?" Yunan immediately caught on what his roommate wanted and looked at his inspector "probably?" answered Yunan. "He should be able to since he got a special ss, I didn''t think he will be useful, look at him still yawning when its almost midday" Yunan made sure Bai would hear thatst part, but truly those with thicker skins are harder to shame, as instructor Bai just yawned again at thement Yunan made.


    seeing instructor Bai response or to be urate, ack thereof, the boys exchanged a few nces, Yunan put a notebook in front of Bai and said: "cast this". Bai just nced at the form and shook his head, then pushed the notebook back to the boys without a word.


    "Okey, so far so good" Leol whispered to Yunan, then ced another magic forme in front of Bai "how about this?" The form was the most used spell in the dungeon, mage light, it was a very simple non-elemental spell that needed no grimoire to learn due to its simplicity, this time Bai cast the spell for just a moment. He slowed his mana, showed how it constructed the form into a magic circle that converted mana into the light.


    The boys looked at each other happily and began cing all kinds of forme in front of Bai so he would cast them. Seeing him reject casting the faulty ones and build the circle only for the working ones, it was a testament to his control over his mana, and vast practical experience in casting, this helped them repair the faulty ones they made, and get a better hang on how to trante a form into a magical construct, removing a lot of misunderstandings they had. All in all, making their progress much smoother when it came into constructing magical forme and recognizing the faulty ones.


    By the end of the morning period Bai was dozing off, and all the good points he earned with the boys were lost soon. Once the period was over Bai stood up and said to Yunan "for second period bring two daggers and meet me in training hall number 5" then he turned around and left the same way he came, sporting a yawn and tired look. Afterwards, the duo left the library and headed for the diner, on the way they discussed how to fully use thezy instructor, and squeeze every bit of usefulness out off of him. Come the afternoon, Leol went to the dorm while Yunan went to meet Bai.


    Instructor Bai still had the same bored expression as ever, once Yunan arrived Bai demonstrated three moves to Yunan, first a stab, then a sh andstly a cut. Bai did not demonstrate all the possible angles or dagger holds. He went for the straight forward sword like grip, and only showed the minimum movement necessary for each attack, then he said: " use the moves I showed you to attack me, I dodge and correct your stance. If you hit me you pass the dagger ss". And just like so, Yunan got his first beating in the academy, at the hand of his instructor, Bai did not use much strength and only hit Yunan to correct his stance or attack form. Bai did not even bother about the defensive moves with Yunan, especially since his form could barely meet the minimum of a beginner practitioner. The method of using pain and fear as stimuli worked more often than not, thus instructor Bai did not go further than causing mild difort without leaving marks.


    For Yunan, it was the worst kind of treatment, if you get injured in a war, you should have scars to brag about, this type of teaching was like taking someone to the war, having them torn apart, then take away all their scars when you heal them with magic. Other than that, the boy was very satisfied with the session. even though he trained with the Knights of the church, he was like a monkey imitating them, they would only correct him if they saw a major fault that could be detrimental to his training, otherwise, he was left to his own devices. but in this session, he learned the importance of a stance and form while using a weapon, and he was thankful for it.


    The next day, both Yunan and Leol went to the library earlier than most, to borrow the next embarrassing book Bai had tasked Yunan to study for the chanting lessons: "nursery rhymes for the tone deaf", this one was basically made to teach toddlers how to ''follow the beat'', it came with music scores and sheets detailing how to perfectly sing the most simplistic nursery rhymes. As they mentioned the book to the librarian heughed hard, heughed so hard he choked while dusting the tomes thaty untouched for years. the boys solemnly took the books offered by the librarian; who was still in a coughing fitced withughter here and there.


    Upon looking inside the book, they understood why instructor Bai chose it, but they still thought it was revenge for yesterday, as he could have mentioned any other chanting book and they would have almost the same content. the book was written in a way that would give anyone who read it, no matter how musically challenged they were, the ability to follow with a choir and blend in, quite the powerful book you might think, but what ruined it was that it was written with nursery rhymes, the simplest music type of all.


    When Bai arrived he looked even worse than yesterday, dishevelled hair, his dark halos almost covered half his face, his eyes were swollen and had a tint of red, whatever kept him upst night did a number on him.


    When Bai sat down, he told the two to sing each rhyme in the book starting from the first to thest, the rhymes were not hard to follow, and were even easy to synchronise between the two of them, it started well, until Bai started drumming on the table to a different song altogether, that disrupted them easily, once the harmonious duet started to crumble; thanks to Bai''s interference, all other students in the library came about to watch and snicker at the silliness of the scene, even the librarian was among them, shaking but unable tough out loud, for fear of disturbing the instructor who seemed to not even know how to tap in ordance with a nursery rhyme. if this group came around daily, it would be his new reason toe to work. this was the most fun the library had seen in the few years he had worked here.


    While Bai kept up his pointless tapping, Yunan and Leol had turned beet red from embarrassment and anger, which further disrupted their duet, on this day, they could not even finish the first rhyme, much less go through the book as instructed by Bai, meaning they would have to keep doing the same until they could finish the book, an impossible task for ten-year-olds who still have a long way before they mature.

 Chapter 5: Ghosts of laughter

    Chapter 5: Ghosts ofughter


    By the end of the morning period, the library was seething with chaoticughter, even the librarian wasughing and clenching his stomach, bending over with short breaths. The duet had turned into two childish voices, blurting out the lines of a nursery rhyme out of tune, with azy voice leading them in toneless singing, while his off-beat drumming went a step further, and turned from music to a hail storm with all his fingers tapping to a rhythm of their own.


    How did this messe to be? well, it''s a sad story, once Yunan and Leol got used to the out of time tapping, and finally got their act on the right track, instructor Bai added two fingers worth of rhythmic drumming. When they started getting used to that, things escted once more. Bai did not allow any time to stop singing, he ruined their rhythm by adding extra fingers to the drumming, or add his own voice, humming and whistling then finally singing loudly by the end of the four-hour lecture.


    At the end of the morning period, Bai pped to stop Yunan and Leol from singing any further, then he told Yunan to bring two swords ande to hall 5 like yesterday, and after he cleared his throat, he gingerly left the library with a small smile that was so smug, like a child who did a naughty thing and got away with it. The library started to clear out, and the two boys walked all the way to the cantina in a very solemn mood, they did not care to talk about what happened and choose to ignore the shameful lesson for the rest of their days. their voices were so hoarse they decided to forgo talking along the way and throughout lunch.


    After lunch, Leol went to hide in their room, while Yunan had his sword training to prepare for, he found strange rumours spreading around the academy, aboutughing ghosts in the library, ording to the rumour, the ghosts awakened when some unfortunate kids sang nursery rhymes badly, the poor kids had to keep the ghostsughing all morning to stay alive. Another rumour about a hrious band of three, rehearsing nursery rhymes in the library in the strangest of ways, ording to eyewitnesses the troop was trying to change the rhythm and beat of said rhymes, but failing toe up with anything but hrious tones. although no one pointed at him or said anything provoking, those who witnessed the morning lesson, unconsciously smiled at him when he passed by them.


    Lady luck has again looked out for Yunan, a new rule was introduced just this year to keep students from ridiculing each other, and prohibited person based rumours -rumours that mention a specific name or mark a person as the target. As well as bullying and other demeaning acts, that would affect the growth of adventurers.


    Just like yesterday, instructor Bai taught Yunan three sword moves, namely stab, hack and poke. Bai demonstrated the proper forms and stance for each, then proceeded to beat the living hell out of Yunan. Although Yunan made fewer and fewer mistakes, he could not remove them altogether in one afternoon, adding insult to injury, Bai did not even use a sword, he just used his fingers to parry away the iing swords as he poked at Yunan, to correct his movement, and each time he touched Yunan he would say: "dead". Although he never allowed Yunan to stop attacking even after dying. Bai only gave him rests when Yunan was unable to hold on.


    Just like yesterday Yunan went to his room and plunged headfirst into his bed after a bath, he even had the idea to forgo dinner from his soreness, but Leol still dragged him to the diner, simply because he did not want to be alone, while facing the ridicule of the students after what happened in the library, earlier this morning. Leol; who had a bit of his voice returned, wasining to Yunan about Bai and how they should get revenge for the farce he forced them to go through.


    Yunan just silently nodded at whatever Leol said, while eating his dinner, looking around at the smiling faces around him, Leol, on the other hand, was very heartened and moved, almost to tears, when no one rose to give them a hard time orugh at them, and soon he was trying to make sense of the rumours that emerged after their performance. Apparently, the whole school was fascinated by the rumours and only the few who were present could smugly say they know what happened, adding their own vour on it, and sharing it with others. By the time dinner was over, the general consensus was that 3 ghosts are doing some theatrics in the library, and if you are caught in their sight, you are forcedugh until midday to be released, although the act was funny enough, the inability to leave is the worst part, as there were some who had stomach aches fromughing for a full morning.


    While Leol was helping the sore Yunan back to the room, they were discussing what horror would descend upon them tomorrow, the now hatefulzy bum of an instructor just asked Yunan toe to the library and wait for him there, and since the boys had no idea what to expect from such a marvellously strange being, Leol decided to return to his own ssroom, the mundane has never felt so safe and nice to him before. When they made it to the room, Leol started his night reading session while Yunan rxed his body and sat in meditation trying to go through and digest his harvest from thest two beat downs by Bai, he visualised the moves Bai used andpared them to the awkward movements when he tried to apply them in practice.


    When he formted an idea of how to improve his actions, he looked at how Bai either dodged or parried his weapons but never blocked. From the fluid motions, Bai made it seemed as if he prefered the effortless way to deal with Yunan and his attacks, instead of wasting his energy with blocks. Still, in meditation, Yunan tried to memorise how Bai dodged and his timing, he finally came to the conclusion that Bai only reacted to his attacks after they were close enough to him, that gave Yunan an idea that might work in his dodging ss.


    Soon after consolidating what he gained, Yunan said his goodnights to Leol who merely grunted in response, both their throats were heavily damaged, and their hoarse voices were something scary to listen to in the night. That night both their dreams were about failing to sing a rhyme, while the endless crowdughed at them nonstop, in the dream they could not run away or hide, only stiffly shed tears as they sang their butchered rhymes in an endless loop. this trauma will not haunt the poor boys for very long though.


    On the fields outside the city, an extermination was ongoing, the monsters around the area are to be fully exterminated under orders of the guild, it seemed the guild was nning to kill and destroy all monsters, their nests and habitats, in an effort to monopolise the monster core trade as a dungeon product only, under the pretence of protecting the civilians from future harm. under the half moon in the sky, a youth in histe twenties was gritting his teeth and vowing to his squad mates to make life a living hell for the greedy kid, who took away his sleep time, because he wanted to learn everything, ''couldn''t Yunan just choose a specialty like all others, but no, he just had to take all my sleep time away, the greedy little bastard'' or so thought Bai to himself, the sounds ofughter from his squad pierced the night as it mingled with the roars of monsters and the sounds of battle in this nest invasion.

 Chapter 6: planning with dummies

    Chapter 6: nning with dummies


    Morning came and both Yunan and Leol woke up with the light of dawn well before sunrise, seeing the sweety foreheads on each other theyughed at each other for a good moment, they knew exactly what kinds of nightmares the other had and it was quite funny for them roommates to share both the room, the shame and the nightmares. The slowly growing friendship these kids are fostering is a good seedling if they could maintain it.


    Today Yunan did not go for the usual heavy exercises, but chose to run someps at a very leisurely pace, did some stretching routines and them meditated for sometime, after taking a quick bath, he headed to the cantina and had his breakfast with Leol, today''s topic of choice was the eminent nning ss and how could Bai possibly make another farce of something serious, it was Leol who started this train of thought.


    "What do you think Bai will do to you today?" Leol asked while munching on a bun. "You won''te with me?" Yunan frowned, he thought Leols words yesterday were just after effects of the singing. "no" Leol answered "i don''t n on joining more sses with you, chanting and forme are enough for me, besides if i do join you my teacher will be angry at me, he only allowed me those two days because he had too many kids to teach, besides some normality is a good counter bnce to your instructor" he looked at Yunan with pity, he knew his pain.


    "I guess changing teachers to thezy maniac is insanity in itself, well you go enjoy the boring sses, tell me about itter, i need another world view to keep me sane" the two shook hands in agreement and then parted ways after finishing breakfast and headed to their own destinations.


    When Yunan entered the library, he was greeted with a wide smile from the librarian, he was looking forward to the entertainment with childlike eyes full of expectations. Yunan just went to the back and sat in his usual table, hidden behind rows of book filled shelves. a few momentster, a loud yawn announced the arrival of instructor Bai, he looked at the librarian who instantly pointed to where Yunan was waiting and stealthily rose up to follow behind Bai and watch the spectacle.


    Bai had with him pencils and stack of notebooks that he threw on the table, he sat heavily on a chair next to Yunan and said " you have half an hour to write down all the steps you take to n out a camping trip with me outside the city walls, duration between a night and a week, i only provide you with safety, i care about my needs, you n the route and the location where we camp" then before Yunan could answer Bai crossed his arms on the table and used them as a pillow and went to sleep almost momentarily.


    While Yunan was thinking about drawing something on Bai''s face for sleeping on the job, the librarian and a few others who also came to watch behind him turned around with disappointed expressions, on the other hand Yunan began writing down his ns and what to do for the camping trip. Soon an hour has passed silently, the library now had many more students and the librarian was getting bored from watching the kids read quietly, when a shout came from the back "ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME? IT''S A CAMPING TRIP!" immediately after another shout retorted "SO WHAT? ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN AT ANYTIME, PLAN FOR IT".


    A few moments ago instructor Bai woke up as if by rm after the hour had passed, he nced at what Yunan wrote and then said with a grave tone "ning is the only ability that all sessful adventurer share, you have a good head for ning from what i read here, now let''s discuss your ns" with that he threw the notebook on the table and started with a simple question " do you have a travel bag ready for a moments notice?" Yunan simply answered "no, i don''t have that since we are not allowed to leave the city when enrolled in the academy" , and here the ss turns into a farce.


    B: "Wrong, always be ready to move at a moments notice, now that you need a bag, what will you put inside it?"


    Y: " I think a change of clothes, firestarter, a hunting knife, boots, rainproof cloak and maybe a nket and a bedroll"


    B: "Let''s put your bag to the test, we are going to camp"


    Y: " Okey, while picking up my bag, i will pick up a bow and some arrows, change my clothes to travel gear and buy dry rations while walking through the city, i meet you at the east city gate"


    B: "Why the east gate? any gate should do"


    Y: "The east gate is the closest to a safe hill with a clean stream running by its shoulder"


    B: "Good choice for the location, how about the route we take?"


    Y: "We take the road east towards the province capital, then veer of to the hill, it takes about an hour to reach the hill from the road, and about a morning to get there from here"


    B: " Any dangers on the way?"


    Y: "Any bandits you will deal with, even though this portion of the road is the safest from banditry, as for beasts, we can butcher for food while camping".


    B: "Alright, once we arrive at the junction leading to the hill, the weather changes abruptly and a downpour is inevitable, what would you do?"


    Y: "Put on my rainproof cloak, i make sure i put it while having the bag on my back, i should have gotten a water tight bag"


    B: "Good reaction but toote, the rain water is already soaking your items, thats why its called a downpour, it hits fast with enough water to drown you if you look up"


    Y: " Since the bag and i are soaked, i still use the cloak to shield as much rain as i can before heading to the cave were the streames from"


    B: "We make it to the cave and there are no beast there, what next?"


    Y: "i empty out my bag to let my things dry,after that i go out for some wood, since its all wet, i chose some closer trees to cut branches and bark from, the faster we start a fire, the better"


    B: "While you are trying to burn wood for fire i go out and bring back some mushrooms and berries from the surroundings"


    Y: "Did you check if they are poisonous?"


    B: "Why would i? it''s just berries and mushrooms? the dry rations are soaked and not edible any longer, we need to eat something"


    Y: "Maybe you don''t need to check but i do, i am not an adventurer nor do i have any antidotes, i can''t eat those!"


    B: "Don''t be a twat and eat them, i have to keep you alive somehow"


    Y: "ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME? IT''S A CAMPING TRIP!"


    B: "SO WHAT? ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN AT ANYTIME, PLAN FOR IT".


    Y: " I am 10, you cannot expect me to live off poisonous berries, go kill a beast, an edible one that i can eat"


    B: " I have to wait until the rain is over, it will wash off any traces left by prey, for now boil the those ruined dried rations, the soup should keep us alive for two or three days"


    Y: "I did not bring a pot"


    B: "Thats it, pack up, we return to the city now, otherwise you will die on me, try better next time"


    And that is how the quiet library had a disturbance, Yunan spends half an hour trying to prepare for the imaginary camping, while bai sleeps, then when Yunan is ready, instructor Baies up with feasible ways to ruin the trip, the best Yunan could get was a three day camping without a hitch, before Bai started to use some silly and unreasonable reasons to fail Yunans n, their bickering about an imaginary camping trip, was a delightful breath of fresh air to the bored librarian.

 Chapter 7: another perspective

    Chapter 7: another perspective


    During lunch time Yunan met Leol and whined about how instructor Bai was sabotaging his ns just because he felt like it, on the other hand Leol bragged about how mundane was his magic application ss, and how the teacher let them y around with ideas of how to use magic in everyday life to promote the livelihood ofmoners, the two shared their meal in high spirits, although it seemed that both were just talking nonsense to others, Yunan was teaching what he learned about nning to Leol, while Leol was telling Yunan how to evaluate what is worth creating magical items for and what themoners science could cover for.


    After the meal, Leol went back to the room with the notebooks Yunan had filled with ns and instructor Bai torn appart. he thought reading them would help with whatever instructor Bai would throw at themter on. as for Yunan he went to the archery field, where he found instructor Bai already napping under the shade of the giant parasol, where students stand and shoot at the far away targets. once he arrived he poked bai awake and asked "how are we going to do this?" instructor Bai red at him and opened the basket beside his recliner chair and took out the training bow, a pair of leather gloves, two arm braces that covered from wrist to elbow and passed them to Yunan.


    Instructor Bai then showed him the way to hold the bow, nock, draw and loose the arrow, Bai also corrected Yunans stance and when all was said and done he told Yunan to shoot at the targets, 100 arrows, then switch hands and keep shooting, then take a rest after the shooting 200 arrows to avoid injury and to not wake him up unless he hits the target 20 times, he was also expected to shoot between 300 and 400 arrows before the ss is over with minimal aiming time. by the time yunan shot the 5th arrow, snores drifted over from Bai.


    When the bell rang announcing the end of the afternoon ss, Yunan had just finished his 300th arrow, there were about 10 arrows on the target in different locations and a forest of arrows clustered all around it. it must be mentioned the target was the first one at 100 meters away the average length a training arrow could shoot urately. bai gave a nod and took his leave after patting Yunan on the head. Yunan then returned to the room, and took a nap before heading to the diner for dinner, it seemed the evening training he nned was bing unnecessary, since Bai is keeping him well worked out and tired, thus he will stick to resting and reading until he had enough physical ability to train after the sses are over, for now, the morning jog and stretches will be enough to allow his body to grow stronger. after dinner the boys had a small chat before tucking in for the night.


    that night was well lit night, the hunting troop was reduced to pairs for scouting around the cleaned up area to prevent more monsters from upying the newly emptiednd, while some were to locate the nests in the surrounding area and mark them for clean up. one of those pairs were sitting around a fire roasting a half limbed skinned boar, the pair, a man and a woman were discussing with low voices while slicing of meat from the roast now and then, the woman was older, she looked gentle and fair, she was wearing magician robes and had a crossbow by her side, the man had bow on his back and a sword nted beside him, he wore warrior leathers, there was a quiver standing behind him.


    The man seemed to beining to the woman while she just smiled at him. "  i am at wits end Leader, although the boy is good and have a good head on his shoulder, he knows almost nothing, he does not respect me and calls me azy bum orzy maniac, he brings his friend over to pester me, and it only had been three days since we started working together, and worst of all he does not let me sleep" his words trailed off as he saw the chucklingdy he called Leader, he could not keep it up and just lowered his head and stared at his feet. Leader''s answer was a bit out of his expectations, she said with an experienced air to her words "Bai my dear, how do you expect a backwater city runt to be of any use, the fact that he could keep up as long as he does means he did have enough training to back up his will to learn all, do you think he can match those from the capital and heirs to great families and rich merchants? At best he was ying around the church yard while the knights were training there, as for the respect thing, well have you ever seen a ten year old who would respect anyone?" Bai had a bitter look on his face as he chewed on a strip of roast.


    "it''s not that i had any high expectations, Leader" answered Bai "it''s just that i never thought i would be assigned someone who wanted to learn it all, i know that i am a jack of all trades, but he wants to be a master of all trades. At least that is the vibe i get from him, he just keep doing whatever i tell him to, no matter how silly it is. Today we bickered about how prepared he could be for a camping trip, not argued, but bickered, he kept correcting n after n until i could only use risks that not even god can predict. i am his teacher, i am not supposed to lose to him, but the runt never gives up". Leader just smiled at him and said with a yful tone "why not give him to me when this clean up quest is over, i bet it would be so much fun than ying around with you" Bai almost choked on his meat. "No way, leader, i won''t give you my first student, if i give him up i fail and i have to teach in another academy and start all over, i might even be in charge for more than one runt. I will never promote in the guild if i don''t finish this, and just one student is enough for my first time." after a moment of silence he got an idea " hey why note by when this quest is over and help me teach the kid? i bet we could get him up to standard two years earlier, that way you can keep him to y with till he is 15 and can get inside the dungeon"


    Leader seemed to be considering something then said with her yful tone " two years in the Academy, one year of traveling around, no matter when he graduates i keep him until he enters the dungeon, deal?" as Bai was about to answer, a howl spread through the night, it sent the whole area into silence, even insects quieted down. Bai and Leader stood up leisurely, took their weapons and snuffed the fire and vanished into the dark, only one word was left hanging "deal"

 Chapter 8: dancing

    Chapter 8: dancing


    Last night was very eventful for Bai, since monsters were moving in to fill the newly emptiednd, although he got some shut eye in the small hours of the morning until sunrise. He was somewhat rested yet he still yawned now and them on his way to meet his charge. ording to the schedule prepared by Yunan today was strategy and footwork. Yesterday he had a headache from all the ideas Leader stuffed in his brain on how to handle these two sses, one was basically chess, and the other was glorified dancing.


    When Bai reached the library and found Yunan he said with a yawn " follow" and motioned with his hand to make Yunan hurry and follow. Outside the library, Bai led the way to the entertainment hall, a big hall around 400 square meters filled with tables of all variety, tables for 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 people, it also sported some games for the students to pass time, there were cards games, board games, dice games as well as puzzles and mazes. Bai chose a table for two and ordered a chess game and a scoring sheet.


    "Do you know how to y chess?" instructor Bai asked as he set up the white pieces on the board, Yunan also picked up the ck pieces and began setting them up. "Yes, i learned it when i was 7" said Yunan still not understanding the point. "That makes things easier, then, we y an ordinary chess games but with a promotion system. In the first game, all pieces are level 1, once you win a game all your pieces be level 2, if you lose a game all piece restart to level 1. Next, level 1 units take only one hit to be removed from y, level 2 units require 2 hits by level 1 units to be removed from y, and 1 hit from equal or higher level units". He nced at yunan and questioned " understand so far?" Yunan thought for a moment before answering "higher level units need only one attack to remove lower or equal leveled units from y" Bai nodded and continued the exnation "however, a level 1 unit needs 2 attacks to remove a level 2 unit, a level 2 units needs 2 attacks to remove a level 3 from y, while a level 1 unit needs 4 attacks to remove a level 3 units from y and so on. The yer who reaches 3 levels higher than the other wins the set, and the levels are reset to level 1 for both yers, in case of a draw both yers keep their current level, also, a tie with a higher level opponent does not grant promotion, and a draw with a lower level opponent does not demote the yer, also no matter how high leveled is your opponent you only get one promotion per win. got it ?".


    Yunan nodded in affirmation and took a coin to flip for first move "call it" he told Bai as he flipped the coin "heads" Bai said and caught the coin, revealing tails, the board was changed and Yunan had the white pieces and the first move. They yed game after game and set after set, and yunan lost all of them, Bai was being a bit too cruel ying seriously, with a 10 year old who barely can formte a strategy, and by the time the bell rang indicating the end of the morning ss Yunan had a very ugly expression, today he learned the true meaning of being toyed with in both literal and metaphorical senses.


    Once the ss ended instructor Bai left Yunan with a few words to think about " strategy is about nning both your moves and your opponents moves. Think about how to conduct your turn and force me to y the moves that best serve your n, a good strategist can make you dance in the palm of his hand, so think about both your turn and mine" with that Bai left the entertainment hall and before he was too far he shouted at Yunan "don''t bring armor to hall 5".


    Yunan just walked to the cantina like a zombie and met Leol on the way, once he shared the crushing defeats Bai dealt him, Leol patted Yunan on the back and said with cheerless tone "well at least there is no danger from the afternoon ss, since he said not to bring armor with you, hopefully it won''t be too embarrassing, either". hearing that Yunan felt even more indignation. The two found an avable spot and sat to eat their lunch, while Leol shared his extremity mundane and borderline boring time, the teacher barely said a thing and most of his ssmates just chanted in pairs and threes and were blissfully ignorant that Leol was about to start tapping a strange beat to mess up their chanting.


    Once the afternoon ss started Bai came into the training hall with an older woman beside him, as they drew close to yunan, Bai made introductions for them he gestured at yunan " Yunan the runt" then gestured at the olderdy "Leader, she will be your partner today". They exchanged a "nice to meet you" and a "looking forward to working with you" while Yunan kept ring at his instructor Bai as if daring him to say runt one more time.


    Once the res calmed down a bit, Bai asked Yunan if he knew how to dance, Yunan shyly shook his head, then Bai started ss with a p " Now both of you stand near each other, leave a space of a meter between you two" As they got into position Bai continued the instructions " Yunan you must focus on Leader only and mirror her moves, Leader follow my words, i will give a direction and you will take a step in that direction, again, Yunan mirror her moves, do not follow my words"


    As the partners nodded Bai started with his instruction " right.left.up.left..down...right." asionally a p would resonate in the hall followed by a giggle whenever Yunan made the mistake of following the instruction of Bai instead of mirroring leader. Bai would p the back of his head every time he made a mistake, or executed the move toote, soon the ps changed into thuds as Bai would trip Yunan asionally after he stopped making too many mistakes.


    All throughout the afternoon the sound of thuds followed by giggles every now and then wasing out of hall number 5, and every now and then the childish voice of a childining about somezy evil maniac and bickering with a grown man who kept pointing out "life is not fair" all to the delightedughter of a female who seemed to enjoy a very entertaining performance.


    After ss thedy said her goodbyes and see-youters and went away with instructor Bai, while Yunan went to his room toin about the hellish dancing lesson he got and how he was humiliated over and over, this time Leol voluntarily asked to join the dancing ss even if it meant infinite ps and thuds were awaiting him in the future, his own words were "no matter what it is always worth it to learn how to dance".


    While they were discussing what could be taught in the general knowledge lesson, they avoided talking about the true torture of the final week day, dodge and reaction ss, maybe they were stepping around the subject since both of them knew very well how Bai would retaliate against Yunan in that ss. Since Leol had decided to never attend a physical ss after the chanting ss, just imagining the amount of bruising they needed to nurse during the weekend made them reluctant to even think about it let alone bring it up and talk about it up.

 Chapter 9: dodgeball?

    Chapter 9: dodgeball?


    On the morning of the fifth day Yunan and Bai met in the library again. it seems for some reason, instructor Bai did not have his own ss, with him using the library most of the time, but that does not hold true, he was just toozy to hold a whole ssroom for just one or two students, and he thought the library would be more suitable since it''s easier to reach materials there.


    When both yunan and Bai made it to the library, Yunan noticed that Bai was well rested for a change, and he was a bit more energetic than usual, so his thoughts ran wild in fear of what Bai might task him to learn if he needed such mental acuity. But his fears were unfounded as the ss was divided into two parts, simple arithmetics where Yunan started to practice the 4 basic operations.


    Although addition and subtraction are easier to practice mentally, he learned multiplication and division and some rted tricks. on the second part was basic geometry, as in calcting the surface and circumference of the most popr shapes. This was the first actual "ss" in its ssical meaning both Yunan and Bai had since they started in this academy, 5 dayste but betterte than never.


    The first homework Yunan got was to memorise the multiplication table up to 10 and perform calctions faster on his mind, as for geometry he was to memorise the forme for the basic shapes. After going through the content of the lesson onest time, Bai told him that from next week they would be integrating multiple sses at once, and there would be no telling how he might include other sses into the scheduled ones. Yunan could foresee the type of mess he was going to step into, also he understood the underlying intention Bai had, to learn more and faster with better efficiency than the other kids.


    When Yunan and Leol met for lunch at the diner, and discussed the changes Bai was about to introduce into the routine, Leol started to find himself between two choices, first stoping to Bai''s lessons orpletely change sses and join Yunan under the tutge of Bai. Although bai did not mind having more studentse to his sses, he would mind theming into only some of his lessons and not all of them, thus Yunan and Leol decided to first talk to Leol''s teacher and take his opinions into consideration beforemitting to either choice.


    "so, how are you feeling about this afternoon?" Leol was the first to dive into the thorny subject. "honestly, i am terrified, i already want to skip the lesson, he was so ordinary this morning, i mean he was well rested and looked presentable, i was too stressed when i saw him" Yunan replied in self deprecation " why note with me? you have nothing to do and you will have to take fighting lessons sooner orter, how about it?" Yunan tried to get his friend toe by so they might share the torment and support each other, and after some persuasion Leol agreed toe with Yunan in the afternoon.


    when the duo came to hall number 5 they found Bai already inside standing next to a few baskets full of hand sized rubber balls, the kind kids y around with, the type that does not cause damage when hit but still hurts more than it had any right to.


    Bai motioned to the boys toe closer to him then asked them " do you know about dodgeball?" both kids shook their heads "then listen carefully to my exnation, it''s quite easy actually, there are two teams, namely me and both of you, each yer starts with 10 points. next, the teams throw balls at each other, meaning you throw balls at me and i throw balls at you, for each ball caught you gain a point, and for each ball that hits you, you lose a point, the team that reaches 0 points first loses."


    "Those who have 0 points will leave the field, if you catch a ball you can give that point to a teammate and bring him back inside the field. understand?" both boys nodded their heads and Leol could not help himself asking "where did this gamee from?"


    Bai answered him momentarily "It is very popr in the academies of the bigger cities, it started as a teaching method for soldiers, to help them stop flinching from potential pain, and help them gain awareness of their surroundings and pay attention to their teammates,ter on it was adopted as children''s game in the aristocraticmunity as means to brag about how good their children were" after a moment of silence Bai advised the two boys " i think you should focus on running away and not getting hit, catching the balls gets easier after that".


    Soon after, Yunan and Leol stood on one side of the court and Bai on the other. 2 baskets full of hand sized rubber balls stood on either end of the court, and soon the aggressive trading of balls started, Bai used just enough strength to keep the kids helpless but still have enough time to see the balling, giving them the illusion they could dodge it or catch it. soon both Yunan and Leol were out of y, Leol went out without catching a ball while Yunan caught two. Bai noticed that Leol had a worse physique than Yunan, since thettersted almost twice as long, and was not even as tired as the former.


    Bai also found that while Leol was just throwing away balls at him hoping one would hit, Yunan was more precise and his balls came closer to Bai than Leol, the difference was very obvious, so for the second round he told them to just dodge and the difference became even more notable than before, Leol needed body enhancement urgently otherwise he wouldg too far behind Yunan and maybe stagnate and stunt his growth because of it. on another point, Yunan who would start to notice the gap, might even try to lower his performance to let Leol catch up and cover for him, or worse starting to ck off because such a huge gap is hard to fill, thus thinking Leol would never catch up, Yunan might give up trying his best and do just a bit better than Leol and not grow to his full potential.


    Along the afternoon, Bai had changed forms of the game in order to gauge the strength and weakness of both Yunan and Leol, once he had an idea on that the two kids wereining about aches and pains all over their bodies, theyy there on the floor of hall number 5 jesting about andughing at how one was hit in the face and how the other hit himself, bai looked at them gently and pelted them a few more times iming "the bell has yet to ring, you can rest either after it rings or you die before it rings" the boys just rolled about on the floorughing at each others misery.

 Chapter 10: questers

    Chapter 10: questers


    The bell rang announcing the end of the afternoon period and the school week altogether, Bai had stopped shooting his two students, while Yunan and Leol were tasked with gathering the balls strewn all across hall number 5, that or they get pelted till the bell rang, although they were wobbling around on the verge of copse, there was no damage done to them, it''s just that rubber balls tend to cause more pain than bruising, all show and no substance. once Yunan and Leol finished their task they wobbled their way into the baths and got to soak in for a few hours.


    One of the mysteries of life is childhood, no matter how serious and adult like a 10 year old is, all you need to do is get them to y a game and they would return to being the silly creatures tasked with spreading joy in this earth, and they do have a peticrly infectious joy when they are happy, and today Bai had experienced that mystery first hand.


    Some might say thatughter is contagious on itself, yet it is more appropriate to say that the one who isughing is the one whom is contagious, it is their act that is infecting others. today Bai had a great time teaching, and had decided that as long as it works he will make games out of his lessons, that will stimte his student to be more active and might elerate his growth.


    While Yunan and Leol were enjoying dinner and chatting about what to do in their first weekend, Bai has made his way to a group of 5 men and women that sat around a fire discussing a n, this group was the party Bai had joined back in his adventuring days, the party was made of different races, the only humans were bai and leader.


    As bai got closer he heard snippets of their conversation, it seems Leader is recruiting them to help teach his own student, going all out all the time is both a good and a bad habit the Leader has. as soon as Bai said "hello" the ming began from the party members, howe he only asked Leader for help and left them out of it. in the middle of the cacophony of questions and shouts and curses came the yful tone of Leader "you seem to be in a good mood" although Bai might lie to anyone in the universe, gods and demons included, he never found it in him to lie to Leader." i had fun today" Bai''s answer brought silence to the party, ording to legend spread between the guild''s personal, teaching was more arduous than ying monsters.


    "Here is the n, there are 10 nests surrounding us and if we clean them up, there will be no more monster zones around this city, and we can all rx and be done with our teaching duty, so i sent application for the guild to let the whole party co-teach a student, since the boy is a perfect all rounder, the guild would surely ept, and we can start by monday, therefore this quest of monster cleaning must be finished by monday morning, we do it in one go, rest while going from nest to nest, let the clean up duty to the other groups, we rest one hour after each nest, and there is a bonus if we finish it before sunset on sunday, got it?"


    Although no one t out rejected they stillined each in their own capacity, the elfdy eximed her skin would suffer if she worked that hard, the orc berserker wasining about not having enough time to hone his axes, the dwarf was apologising to his beard for all the dirt and blood that will stain it, and will stay there for two full days, and the lykan said something about not being able to prepare for the full moon feast, while Bai wasmenting his sleeping time.


    The party was made of two women and four men, both females were magicians, one was Leader who was an all rounder, she was originally trained as a priestess and a healer, but after entering the dungeon of tartarus she became a supporting mage giving buffs and shooting the asional damaging spell when she had extra mana to spare between healing and buffing, or shooting her crossbow when she is feeling adventurous. her name is mary, she prefers to be called Leader though. the other female is a beautiful battle mage elf, rightly named Fae, her magic is a most destructive area damage, she can cause a rain of hellfire or ice spears, and cover a whole area under her wrath, her mood is rted to how her skin looks, one blemish and her destruction reach a whole new level.


    As for the other men we know the human Bai, he basically runs around doing what needs to be done, healing smaller wounds, casting buffs, dispatching a monster that slipped the front line, rain in arrows or nking the enemy. the dwarf is named Balin, he was a shield bearer, blocks the iing enemies and pushes them away from his friends, his hammer acts as a very effective deterrent to those monsters aiming to kill his teammates, he doubles as a cksmith and enchanter, keeping the gear of the party in a good shape.


    The orcish berserker is named Dustan, he cares only about his double edged axes and chopping monsters with them, although he likes to run into the heart of a monster group and chop to his heart''s content, the dwarf Balin his partner keeps him in check by threatening not to repair the axes, Dustan has a monstrous recovery, and works at his best when protecting someone.


    Last but not least is the lykan or werewolf, a half-beast race, his name is Lucian, a ranger, in charge of archery and scouting, he takes care of the rear and is a master of both bows and daggers, his job mostly falls on finding the way and keep the rear safe during a battle, his sniping shots are most weed in any party.


    Since no one had any objection Leader released a green re into the sky, it was meant for the supporting troops, it meant that a party is starting a cleansing and sweepers are needed to take care of the stragglers and escaping monsters, with that the group stood up and lucian took the lead towards the nearest nest, leaving behind leads for the supporting troops on the way.


    Soon the night grew alive and noisy. from the city one could see a spot in the jungle brightened by magical fire while the howling of beast drifted through the usually silent night painting a cruel and magnificent scene of bravery and suffering. when the earliest supporting troop made it to the first nest they found a snoring orc hugging his axes, a dwarf sleeping on his shield while holding two intimidating hammers, an elf humming a rxing tone, a priestess carving a beast, a lyckan watching far into the night sitting on high tree branch and a human male making tea.


    This party did not look like they just bulldozed a whole nest barely letting a single monster escape, the rxed atmosphere was more intense than your average camping session it was the calm before the storm. About an hour had passed when the supporters were done cleaning, the orc and dwarf woke up and were tearing into the beast prepared by the priestess, the lyckan had also descended from the tree and was eating elegantly, while the elf was wolfing the meat as if it would disappear the next moment.


    Then they all stood up at the same time, again the lykan took the lead and the others followed behind, when the supporters started following they heard the lykan shout at them " follow us after half an hour, rest and enjoy the leftover food and tea, you will need it" and with that the party went off into the night.

 Chapter 11: demons around a bonfire

    Chapter 11: demons around a bonfire


    Saturday evening, clear skies, twinkling stars, and a bright moon illuminating the edge of a forest. a group of six men and women sat on tree stumps surrounding a bonfire. hanging beside the bright me was a ckened pot filled with boiling soup with bits of wild vegetables, meat, bones, and strange leafs, floating in it


    On the other side of the me there was a kettle whistling from the water vapours leaving its nostrils, not one of the 6 sitting there seemed to care about that, the atmosphere was very irritable and it seemed like a sharp edge of a de is dancing between the six, any who witnessed the scene stayed far and waited for it to dissipate.


    "How about a night of rest? we finished 6 out of the 10 and we can ck off for a night, take a bath and sleep" Bai was the first to break the silence, as the self appointed resting and leisure minister, he had to petition for the well being of the whole party, there was a hostile growl from the audience, one which Bai did not dare to find who released it.


    "Lets be done with this once and for all, my poor beard will fall off if i clean it just to be stained again" replyed master dwarf Balin with dead eyes full of grief and indignancy. that drew a nod from the very irritated elf Fae "yes i don''t want to spoil my skin care just for a night, do you know what that will do to my skin? it will be ruined i tell you, ruined!" the irritated elf had a look full of disgust, self disgust that is, even if they wipe away the aftermath of the battle once done, Fae never felt right unless she had a proper bath and could actually care for her skin.


    "If i sleep i won''t wake up until midday, that will cause us to lose the bonus, i need the money to reforge my axes, look how blunted they are, i agree with finishing this at once" Dustan patted his axes with pity as if they were sick or maimed children, a look of hatred and a thirst for revenge was radiating from him, and so all looked at the Leader.


    Leader was poking the fire without the usual smile on her face, she looked at the ones sitting beside her then cast a nce at the one who said nothing as he seemed to be in a trance. "Lucian, what do you think?", Lucian now had a taint of silver in his eye, he said with deeper voice than usual "rest untill midnight, then clear two nests at the same time, then rest until sunrise, then clear out thest two, and be done by the afternoon, if all goes well".


    The full moon was both a blessing and a curse on the lykan race, it increases their power, but turn them animalistic by the time its full, it is a gradual increment that start the third day before the full moon and fully lost by the end of third day after the full moon, during the full moon, their instincts take over, they don''t lose their sanity and reason, so they won''t attack indiscriminately, but their lust for blood and the hunt drives them almost mad, thus they prepare what is called a feast of the moon, they usually stock out on fresh bloody meet and some living beasts to hunt and feed on, thissts for a full week every month.


    Leader did trust Lucians judgement, as the scout he needs to determine if his teammates can reliably take a fight or how to better preserve their strength or restore it just enough for the nned fight, not all scouts can do that, most are just like carrier pigeons, they only ry, the information about the enemy and let themander deal with the rest.


    Thus after thinking for a moment, she understood that the next few nests are weaker than thest six and can be fought with external help without disrupting their teamwork, or caring much about the casualties, Lucian was indeed a top notch scout if he could take into consideration so many factors, so she gestured at the trees behind her to approach, soon afterwards a leader from the supporters came out of the forest and approached vey vigntly, feeling that sharp edged atmosphere caressing his neck.


    He would rather be with his men hiding in the forest until this group of devils left on their next hunt. after a moment he stood behind Leader not daring to approach further, this seemed to draw the disdain of the orc and the dwarf, while indifference wasing from the rest.


    "We''ll sleep until midnight, tell your men not to approach any closer than 10 meters unless they want to die, after midnight prepare 50 archers to follow us, we need ones with good aim and better stamina, we n to take on two nests in three hours, if you have some reliable swordsmen and shield bearers, send three swords and two shields in every group of ten archers, let them take on the outside perimeter and only archers can follow us deeper, while the swords and shield must protect the archers once we hit the heart of the nest, tell them to conserve strength and not try to help us or save us no matter how bad it looks, also see if you can make the same arrangement for the morning as well" with that she motioned at the man to leave, and started serving the soup in cups for the party, Bai took care of the tea kettle while Lucian set up a crude tent, arge canvas supported by two poles and two bedrolls as furnishings.


    Once the food was eaten and the tea drunk, Leader and Fae got inside the tent, while Bai and Lucian used the tree stumps as pillows, each had a bedroll beneath him, the orc Dustan justy on the grass hugging his axes while master dwarf Balin put his shield on his back, gripped his hammers and fell to sleep, literally, he fell back like a log and soon his snores mixed with Dustan''s own and made strange symphony.


    Soon the 75 chosen -or cursed by their thinking- supporters made their way to the field and set up their sleeping rolls, they barely had four hours to rest before midnight, and the dreaded hunt, although their job was only to support from the back and stay alive and in good shape, still they saw how the demons fought and for the first time felt pity for the monsters. when midnight came, the party of six stood up at once, and silently cleaned up, the tent, bed rolls, pot and kettle dispeard, and the fire extinguished, the sleeping supporters barely felt anything and continued their sleep, well until the party started leaving under Lucians lead, and Lucian let out a howl to the moon.


    It was not his intention to wake the sleeping ones, just instinct, the departing wolf always called to the moon. the howl jolted the supporters awake and soon the followed the party leaving a nice distance between them and the walking demons in front of them, the silence was deafening, and none dared to break it first.

 Chapter 12: action

    Chapter 12: action


    Once the party of six made it to the outer periphery of the nest "n?" asked the leading lykan "hasty annihtion" answered Leader, thus Lucian took out his daggers and shed into the back, Bai took out his swords and stood beside Dustan and Balin while Fae fiddled with the gem on her staff, and Leader took out her crossbow. Dustan and Balin looked at each other, nodded, then looked at Leader for the starting signal, she nodded at them. two looked towards the heart of the nest and simultaneously issued an earth shaking roar, both roars seemed as if strengthening each other, it is a dungeon exclusive pair skill "greater taunt" it would cause every enemy selected by both users to target either of them, (for example all monsters in the nearest nest) all enemies within one kilometer are affected and all enemies with in three klometers woulde closer to around 1 kilometer away but not attack until provoked.


    Dustan with his blunted axes and Balin with a shield on his back and two hammers in hand -he basically just kept the same posture he slept with, they walked further in, Bai was beside them looking around and the rest of the party followed soon a horde came barreling on them, with Dustan and Balin as the targets the party only needed to be careful for some variants that were unaffected by the taunt or other enemies.


    The trio in the front carved a bloody path into the horde while chatting "hey Balin, i still have priority for the repairs right?" Dustan asked, the sound his blunt axes made while brutally splitting anything that came in reach made his heart ache, " I want to make my babies broader at the edges, they are blunting too fast recently".


    "Bah" retorted Balin while crushing a head and caving in a torso, "my hammers first you brutish nipoop, how many times do i need to bash your head in to get you to remember that?" those hammers were made especially to cause havoc when they connect, not every monster hit by the hammers dies immediately, mosty there with broken spines or destroyed inner organs, immobile and dying sooner thanter.


    "Think about his poor brain master Balin, all the bashing surely caused some damage" Bai jabbed at the two while shing a monster into bits, the ocasional bolt and fireball would fly here and there, from behind the trio, Leader was sending bolt after bolt at the iing enemies while Fae was lobbing fireballs at the back of the monster horde, Lucian on the other hand would just dispatch the ocasional monsters that came by trying to surround the group. soon a volley of arrows fell around Bai, Balin and Dustan, the three dodged seamlessly as if the arrows were avoiding them, all the while talking and joking at each other, Fae, Leader and Lucian mostly stayed out of the conversation, no one would like to be the butt of the jokes these three had in their sleeves.


    "Faess" called Balin " my shield is itching, how about a few popsicles for me?" although Fae was clever enough not to join the joking spree she was too irritated to just let it slide, so she sted the area around them with a storm of ice spears then sent thest one between the legs of the dwarf "call them popsicles again and i''ll get rid of yours" this prompted a roarousughter from the dwarf "thanksss but i have to decline, i only have the one, passed through generation, and forged in the hottest ovens, i can not let you throw away such treasure" heughed andughed while his hammers kept bashing and breaking whatever came into contact with them.


    Leader started to cast her heals, and scolded Dustan saying "oy, bloody orc, when are you nning to dodge? i have limited mana and i don''t n on wasting it healing scratches" the orc felt wronged and pointed at a w made gash that went from his elbow to hand along his arm "are these still counted as scratches? if so i might as well get master Balin to change my skin into steel or something".


    Leader just red at him and said " if i say it''s a bloody scratch, then its a bloody scratch, dodge more or put on armor, you buffoon" with that she let a bolt whizz past his ear into the eye of a monster lunging at Dustan. Balin got a bit closer to Dustan and thoroughly checked his body as if appraising an ore "useless fellow, your body needs more than iron for skin, i assume i need to add in new bones and refit your rusted joints, too much of a hassle if you ask me" he then backed away as an axe shed by his nose. Bai on the other hand was raiding a rather tall monster and guiding it to stomp on its fellows, "i doubt you can refit any of him master Balin" said Bai while the monster was trying to toss him off its back "but i think the odds are worse that there is an armor that can actually stay on his skin, an if there is it just pointless work to repair them" another axe shed by, and the poor beast Bai was raiding was split in half.


    As the the party dodged the iing friendly fire while hacking, shing and bashing their way to the heart of the nest, soon the horde sumbed to the brutal onught brought in by magic and sword and arrow, and the few stragglers left either ran away ory injured beyond help on the ground. half an hour had passed, so the party went further into the nest and the cycle started again, the taunt, the jokes and the scolding, until they reach the heart of the nest were the strongest monster would be. this nest was filled with quad-pedal monsters that resemble a blend of wolves, tigers and bears, all fangs and ws, and thick fur.


    the boss was a 5 meter long, 3 meter high chimera with ck fur, long fangs and long bear ws and stumpy tail, when it made its appearance the party changed their demeanor, Bai retreated behind Balin who raised his shield and covered for the orc hacking at the remaining beasts like a madman, while Leader started casting her buffs and Fae was chanting stronger spells, meanwhile Lucian made his way behind the boss and started hacking at its posterior and hind legs.


    The usual n was for the dwarf to take the beatings, Bai to draw the aggro of the boss and hide behind Balin whenever the boss was striking, Fae would chant some type of continuous spell that keeps bombarding the boss till it fell, todays spell of choice was meteor shower: it brought ming stones from the sky hurtling towards the boss, Leader was to heal and buff, Dustan would keep the monsters away from the party while Lucian would deal the critical damage to lower the mobility and hinder the boss at all times, quite an effective and well rehearsed strategy, by the end of the hour the boss finally fell and the group started to make its way to the next nest. this was what might be called a reckless efficiency.

 Chapter 13: on opposite sides of a wall

    Chapter 13: on opposite sides of a wall


    As the night progressed so did Leader and her mates, since they were already buffed, the party proceeded to reach the periphery of the next nest, this time they held off on the taunting skill, and went ahead a bit deeper into the nest territory, once they could attract more monsters "greater taunt" was used, while leader and fae rebuffed Dustan and Balin, as for Bai he started distributing potions to supplement the troop, while Lucian reced him in the front, he looked like he was dancing around the monsters.


    The supporting troop was rather useful this time around, they started shooting the arrows at the further monsters while the protection detail went ahead and kept the monsters from circling around leader and the others, although the "greater taunt" drew the monsters towards Dustan and Balin, the sheer number they provoked this time was much more thanst time, and as such they could not kill all the monsters as soon as they came, unlike thest nest, where the number of monsters taunted could barely fully upy them.


    Thanks to the aid from the supporters the advance went smoother. the orc and the dwarf used the greater taunt again before reaching the heart of the nest, this was to lower the number of creatures around the boss and maybe the support troop can free up Dustan to wreck the boss.


    Although the hunt went smoothly, the party used quite a sum of potions to prepare for the boss, even though the monster corpses would pay more than ten times the investment, having to restock was a pain for the party, and that is why they tried their best to save up mana and dodge all injuries possible, this entric group of 6 was by no means weak or stingy, they just never liked the idea of forcing the hand of nature, no matter how convenient it is for example they would rest to recover instead of taking a potion, they would prolong hunts to be in top shape, and with abilities and experience like theirs, they were quite adept at proficient acts.


    When the boss showed itself, most of its minions were dead or dying which was even better than Leader predicted, thus the boss was dispatched faster with the help of the supporters. as soon as the boss was downed, there was fire going and a meat broth already cooking on it, a tent was set up, and arge basin full of hot water was ced in it. Leader and Fae went in to clean up first, although they might be in the back line, with how savage the front line was, there would be blood and viscera sshing in all direction, getting stained and dusty was inevitable.


    After thedies went in Bai and Lucian cleaned up then it was the turn of the dirtiest duo, by the time Dustan and Balin finished cleaning up, the broth was almost done, so the group sat around Leader and enjoyed a blessing from her, then they proceeded to eat and the sleep like they did earlier tonight, while the supporting troop kept their distance and waited for the cleaning group to show up and take care of this ce, they were wondering how the group they followed could actually sleep in a ce full of death and the stink of blood and flesh.


    Back in the academy, leol was cursing at Yunan for waking him up and dragging him to the training field. "listen here, you fiend, i know i agreed to starting doing morning exercises with you, but there is 4 hours left till sunrise, that is 4 whole hours before the agreed upon time" said Leol while doing his best to nag Yunan out of this early morning workout, hopeful against all odds, but the answer Yunan gave would take away all hope. " only during weekends, during weekdays we only wake up one hour before sunrise, now start moving your feet, you have to earn your breakfast today" that made Leol stand still in fright.


    "Are you trying to kill me? there is no way i canst till breakfast", " well this is nothing, just jogging and stretching, there is the sword training from breakfast to lunch and then you can rest in the afternoon" Yunan just went behind Leol and started pushing him forward.


    a mournful "nooo!" full of grief almost woke up half the academy, if the dorms were any closer to the training field someone would think a tragedy had happened. although Yunan had gone easy on Leol, and let him rest often, by the time breakfast was being served, Leol was already out of energy. "ording to my teacher, us meeting instructor Bai is either a blessing and we turn into powerful adventurers or we get used up too fast and never be great in this life" said Leol while they were eating breakfast "what do you think?" he asked Yunan.


    "I really don''t care" answers Yunan "whatever happens, i n to learn all i can from him, as for getting strong or not, i will leave that till i get inside Tartarus, until then, i just gather as much knowledge a i can and get as prepared as possible" although Yunan was thinking about how Bai might affect him, he still chose to work hard and let the future solve its own problems. "What about you then?, did you decide to change sses?" Leol still had not told him about the result of his discussion with his teacher, so he wanted to know. "teacher said i have to ask instructor Bai first, if he is not willing to take me in, there will be some issues if i change on my own ord, so i will ask first, although i still hope he refuses, but if he agrees i will join you in damnation ss" theyughed at the joke and continued chatting for a while.


    On the other side of the city wall, Leader and friends were indulging themselves in the much deserved breakfast, although they eat, every time they rest, the amount of energy they use is tremendous, thus they eat at every asion unless when they need to move quickly or are well rested and well fed. they decided to dy the next phase of the hunt and waited for the cleaning crew to be finished before starting again, that also allowed the tag along supporters to sleep a bit more and rest a bit longer.


    Once the cleaning crew was finished a leader came with a ledger in hand and started talking figures with the group. " your share until this moment has been calcted, ording to the guild rules, you have obtained 8 monster cores of the leader variety, all level 5, around 1000 monster cores of level 2, 600 of level 3 and 42 of level 4. next is the monster carcasses, a total of 2200 bodies have been delivered to the guild and you will receive mary remuneration ording to the state of the body and what can be used from it, we estimated a total of 5000 golden dragons, these figures are what is left after cutting taxes the support fee, and cleaning fee, the reward from cleaning the nests have yet to be added to the current bnce as we recieved news you will attempt to clear out two more nests.stly i would like to know if you want the monster cores or any specific parts of the body, so we do not include them in the trade, and if you are willing to sell the monster cores to the guild, we would buy at 10% higher rate as gratitude for the fast clearing of the quest you were issued" Leader just nodded and said " sell it all, and deposit the money in my ount at the guild, same for the next two nests, no need to bother us over it again". with that the party stood up and Lucian took the lead towards the next hunt.


    -------Naming Quest------


    For all those who enjoy the novel i decided to creat a system of quests to reward you my dear readers with extra chapters, the first quest i will issue is simple, find out where i got the name from, every origin correctly guessed will result in an extra chapter published, all names used in the novel are fair game.


    enjoy the novel

 Chapter 14: how to leave a legend behind

    Chapter 14: how to leave a legend behind


    After having a good rest, Leader and her men were full of energy and high in spirit, adding the fact that most monsters were awake and active in daylight, leader decided to just push straight to the heart of the next tost nest, there was no need for greater taunt till then, most monsters will be drawn by the sounds of battle and smell of blood left behind by the hunters intruding on their nest.


    Since the party choose the riskier way, Dustan had to put on his armor, it was a piece of magnificent orcish smithing, thick and ugly, just like its wearer. Dustan looked like he was a hulking giant before when he waded into monsters bare chested but now he looked more like a hulking metal demon that was plowing through monsters, while Balin had an put on another magnificent piece of dwarven armor, it looked silver and holy, a contrast to the one Dustan had on him, Balin switched the hammers for short heavy axes, that were glowing with the same silver light as the armor, most likely a set piece. Bai on the other hand wore a matching set with Lucian, dark, weightless and elegant.


    Meanwhile Leader had a pure white silk priestess robe that somehow seemed more protective than the armor dustan had on, once she had the hood on her head and the holy light around her, she looked like an angel of mercy, while Fae had on her a green dress that gave the feeling she was wearing tree leaves, fragile yet full of life and energy, the green glow marked her for an elf of the forest, those who are beloved by nature.


    As for weaponry, other than Dustan who kept his blunt axes, and Balin with his short heavy axes, Bai and Lucian each changed to a pair of daggers that looked sharp enough to tear apart space itself, Fae took out a staff that was crowned by a fist sized emerald, while Leader took a staff decorated by gold and crowned by big ruby encased in a crystal and iid in a silver cross, it looked like something that a pontiff would use as a walking stick or hold in ceremonies.


    While marching through the nest and its monsters, once in a while you could hear conversations in the midst of battle, although the party was taking this seriously, it did not seem to keep them focused on the monsters long enough to forget horsing around like idiots, such conversations would make those who listen to them seriously doubt the mental health of the group.


    "Leader my love, it hurts my heart not to hear the excited squeals of little girls wearing matching skirts, can you help me with that? the youngsters never listen to me" this prompted a snicker all around the battlefield, even a few chuckles and augh somewhere. before Leader could answer the silent Lucian from the back answered almost immediately "i don''t squeal for such small things master Balin, but, i will squeal if you start getting lovey-dovey with your beloved husband, you two look like you are going on a date with all the contrast and dashing armors you have on" that drew moreughter, even a smile from Fae who was so irritable at the moment. "okey stop it you two, fights between couples are prohibited, that said, i do like the idea of little girls squealing at a lovey-dovey couple, thus you may proceed and entertain your queen" answered Leader.


    it is understandable if the group was just trading jokes and insults, but actually putting the battle aside to act out a love scene with squealing at the back ground was out of the question, those who thought that did not know how bored the demonic party of 6 were, as elites who prowled the 20th floor in the dungeon, level 5 monsters were naught but a mere annoyance, they could survive even when tired, starved, sleepy and out of mana, as for putting on better armor and using better weapon? all for the sake of efficiency, their riskier act was only in the point of view of the supporters who were only trained up to the 6th or the 7th level before being dispatched as guards and soldiers.


    Thus the stun on those faces could be imagined when a hulking metal demon put his axes aside and picked up the magnificently holy dwarf, sent it up in the sky in a disy of armored upsy-daisy, then smooched the helmet of the helpless dwarf, this scene was as promised apanied by two armor matching high pitched squealing little girls with their hands on their cheeks and a "kyaaaaa!" resounding way further than it should. Leader was holding her tummy and vibrating from holding backughter, while Fae t out did a spit take andughed mid chant.


    In the near future, a legend will spread in the barracks of backwater cities, it speaks about a demonic party that had squealing girls who like to wear matching armor and a dwarf who could y upsy-daisy with a fully armored orc, they had a magician that couldugh mid chant and not break it and a priest that could chant silently by holding his tummy and shivering, well those who witnessed the scene were either so shocked they believed that the squealers were actual girls and the lovey-dovey ones were an actual couple, ording to them, those guys were demons in disguise, otherwise how could they clean up 8 nests in less than 36 hours while having enough rest and sleep to go about horsing around in the middle of battle.


    In the academy Yunan took Leol back to the dorm room to rest, they had dyed the training to the afternoon instead, just as the two were about to open their books to read and study a bit, a knock came to the door, Yunan went to open it. it was a missive from the guild about a change in his studies, the messenger took his leave right after delivering the letter.


    Yunan opened the letter and sat on his bed to read it, it gave him a frown. "what is it?" asked Leol as he snatched the letter " i got new teachers" responded Yunan, still frowning, while Leol read the letter out loud. " Mr Yunan please be advised about a change in your instructing team, starting from monday, the current party that instructor Bai is part of will be co-instructors, and will share the responsibility of being your instructors as part of the teaching adventurer program."


    "This is a special case that we deem as a necessary step in the evolution the program towards better nurturing of future talents. As part of the special case, you will be allowed to leave the academy and the city, for practical experience, as well as on field observation and any other reasons deemed as necessary by your teachers. We hope you would enjoy and grow into an elite adventurer in the nearest future" Leol stopped reading and heavily sighed.


    "So we can''t be ssmates huh" Leol was sad about this point, he now realised he missed his chance to be part of something that would be written in history. "seems like we were a bitte, well it does not matter much, if we keep working out and studying together, you can still learn a bit more" Yunan tried to encourage his friend.


    The letter has just given them a glimpse of what adventurers could enjoy if they be strong enough, special cases were probably thepromise the guild makes to amodate the elites that single handedly bring more riches and solve more quests than armies of ordinarie adventurers who be content with staying alive and safe in the upper levels of tartarus.

 Chapter 15: a day off

    Chapter 15: a day off


    Along the way, the merry band of demons showed both their prowess and utterck of vignce against the monsters they were facing, since they were more focused on making their queen -Leader-ugh out loud, all manner of silly acts were going on, even when the boss battle began.


    For example while the boss was trying its best to move master dwarf Balin while locking horns with him, literally, Balin was using his axes to lock down in ce the horned bull-like creature, Fae was sitting on the orcs shoulders and they were doing a sort of synchronised dance, she was imitating his movements with her hands and her feet where swaying like a child sitting on their parents shoulders, Bai was riding the bull pretending to be in a rodeo and stabbing it to make it jump, Lucian was also sitting on the back of the boss gnawing at the tale he just cut off,ining that it tasted more cat than bull, while shing its posterior for tasting like the wrong species.


    Meanwhile Leader was on her knees propping herself with a hand and beating at the ground with other all the whileughing in a way that is not befit of the holy angel she looked like. let''s put a few measurements on the scene to get a perspective of how ridiculus it is, the bull like creature was about 5 meters high and around 8 meter long and 2 meters wide at the belly, pretty impressive, on the other hand, Bai and Lucian on the back both were about 1.85 meters while Balin was 1.2 meter long and Dustan around 2.3 meters while Fae and Leader were around 1.6 meters, now, let us again look back at the scene, a 5 meter high bull held by the horns in ce by a 1.2 meter long dwarf, unable to move its front legs, its only way to shake away Bai who was facing the front and Lucian who was facing the back, is by jumping with its hind legs, one was eating its tail and stabbing it for tasting of the wrong species while the other was stabbing it because it was not jumping wildly enough, if that was not enough, there was a giant orc carrying a delicate elf that was dancing on his shoulder while the orc was carving steaks using blunt axes. poor boss just had to fall in the hands of the demons is what the supporters were thinking at the side.


    The fun ended when master Balin wanted his turn to sit on Dustans shoulder like Fae, and carve out his own steaks, so he mistakenly twisted his axes while looking over and trying to get someone to rece him at the horns, the twist broke the bosses neck and it fell with a thud, the dwarf looked down dejected while the four who were enjoying themselves came over and each punched the top of his helmet, for ruining the fun too early, only Leader went there andforted him by promising him he can sit on Dustan the next time they find a bull like creature, that drew a smile to his face and so they started on their way to the next nest. unfortunately they arrivedte as another party seemed to have taken it down just moments earlier.


    ording to the supporting personnel, apetition to clear the most nestes started after news about Leader nning to clear the whole area for some reason, and that would have severely reduced the mary gains of every other party taking the quest, thus they hustled to clear out as many as they could, once the other parties heard about the exploits of Leader and her party, 9 nests in 40 hours, and still having time to sleep 4 to 5 hours between each of the nests, one of the faint hearted mages fainted while another was dazed for a good while.


    Since there was nothing left to do, the party went ahead and returned to the city, booked a whole inn with a hot spring in it and even paid for the relocation of other guests, they spent the afternoon soaking in and chatting about the fun they had while ying around this weekend, master dwarf Balin was floating on the water, looking like a mass of muscles sprawled about, he was pushed around from one to the other, Fae who was happy about her skin healing from the harsh weekend would pull the dwarf in circles by the beard, Dustan was snoring while Leader, bai and Lucian sat close together talking about how to deal with the moon feast tomorrow. the atmosphere was so rxed and happy you might think these people were not just dealing death left and right just a few hours ago.


    When Dustan woke up, the sun was setting and a red hue painted the western sky, he looked up to see Fae and Balin giggling to each other while Fae braided the majestic beard into something far from the dignity of dwarves, Leader was getting massaged by Bai while she brushed Lucians tail who seemed to enjoy it a great deal.


    Soon after, everybody got out and went to have dinner, they splurged on all manners of dishes and drinks, eating nothing but broth and roast for a week did marvels to their appetites, after a good and fun evening they went to bed and really rested for the first time in this week.


    Earlier in the academy, since Leol was a bit down, Yunan decided to forgo training and went to the entertainment center, and yed around with the games there, some they yed alone and some joined others who were willing, all in all they had fun before turning in for dinner then sleeping early to wee the new week with new hopes and vigor.

 Chapter 16: meeting the demons (1)

    Chapter 16: meeting the demons (1)


    On monday morning Yunan dragged his roommate Leol for jogging and stretches and some basic body enhancing exercises, it may not affect the level theirbat prowess much, but it would certainly help keep them healthier as well as build a good foundation for them to grow their stats much easier in the future, although they started prettyte, about an hour before sunrise due to Leol, they still got some good workout before breakfast. again thanks to Leol they had a veryte breakfast and had to rush to their sses afterwords.


    In the inn; leader, Bai and the others held a morning meeting as per habit, to decide on what to do today, the meeting ended pretty quickly since no urgent matters were at hand. on one hand, Bai, leader and Fae would go to teach Yunan this morning, while Dustan and Lucian would go shopping and prepare for the moon feast, while Balin would go to the guild and sort out the quest and rted things, then he would need to start working on repairing the damaged items the party has used on the quest, although they had better items in storage, it was always good to keep low leveled items for the asional travel to keep away from trouble, as for the good items, they are either left for the dungeon or when some official business is at hand.


    When Yunan made his way to the library as per usual he found Bai and Leader and an elf waiting for him, must be a member he thought, once he was beside them he said his greetings respectfully and looked at Bai for introduction, but it was Leader who spoke "Yunan, this beside me is Fae, she is the only other girl in our party. as we three are the best magic users in the party, we will be teaching you about magic" the she motioned everyone to follow her into the library, where they once again went into the back and once again started by borrowing the book "magic for dummies".


    When they were all sitting around the table Fae started talking " Bai told us you learned how to trante magical forme into magical constructs as well as basic geometry, i would like you to start the exercises by telling us which geometrical shapes can be found in a form and how many of them there are, then you can start drawing the construct based on the form, only if you are correct" Yunan nodded his head and was about to start working on the first form written in the book when he asked Leader " did all of you learn this in the academy? my friend''s teacher does not teach them like this".


    "I think only royalty with special teachers learn about these things so early" answered Leader " the rest of us usually learn this inside the dungeon by ourselves, the guild only promises to teach the bear necessities, not much else, so consider yourself lucky", then Yunan put his head back into his work, every time he made a mistake one of the three corrects him, Bai was in charge of geometry and Fae for the magical construct, while Leader would choose which forme he had to work on from all over the library.


    Some of whiche from some tomes old enough to be considered obsolete or faulty theoremes. leader went to exin her thought process "The trantion from form to construct was based on a book dropped by the dungeon and so no matter how old the tome is, all forme can be tranted into constructs even if the resulting spell is faulty or unstable, or in some cases a trap that kills the caster, since forme must be mathematically correct, otherwise the book would never be publish by the guild, and there are no other books that have not been approved by the guild in this library".


    Yunan almost had an epiphany, something like using a subject to learn and practice another was quite a strange thought, even though Bai told him the would be integrating multiple subjects into one period, he thought he had to learn two subjects simultaneously, but he liked this style much better, he could advance two subjects at the same time. Then his mind wandered into a different direction "does the dungeon drop trap magic books or faulty skills?" Yunan asked.


    To that Fae chuckles and answers "that is not possible, the dungeon, does not drop bad books, even self destruction magic and skills are exined when you pick up the book, if that was the case then there is a very high risk in learning any skill book from the dungeon even if one could identify traps, it would be toote to know after you learn it, even if you did not execute said faulty skill or spell, the danger is already inside of your mind and can be triggered at any point, since there are spells and skills that can be cast through a trigger instead of a chant, something like, if you meet a goblin it will cast a charm spell that will stop them from attacking, however they will retaliate if you attack."


    "The dungeon is honest and fair, every skill and spell has a cost, a w and maybe even a drawback depending on its strength, there is no such a thing as an unstoppable, or undefeatable, there is only a perfect set of skills, thatplement and enhance each other, but never a single overpowered skill or spell with no fault or draw back" Leader exined how the dungeon system works when bncing the powers it grants to explorers.


    "On the other hand if you want your skills and spells to be perfect and unstoppable you have to do two things, first fully understand what you have, second fully know how to utilise it, for example the magelight spell, if used correctly can be an extremely useful spell, let''s say you are in the woods at night, and use the magelight, you can see very well and scare away monsters, but also be seen from very far away, thus if you fear ambush, send half of the party ahead with magelight to draw in the attention while you sneak behind them to protect from ambushes, also it can work as a distraction, if you throw the spell at some guards or in their range if sight, they will investigate or sound the rm, either making it easier for you to sneak around them by leaving their posts, or create enough mayhem for you to slip in unnoticed, there are many examples like this, there is no such thing as a single use spell or skill, it must have other uses, you just have not found them yet" Bai added his own insight into the discussion.


    And so continued the morning lesson, by the end of it Yunan had a greater understanding of both magic and geometry and how they link to each other, while the afternoon promised more excitement since all the party members will show up. after they left the library Yunan had a strange thought ''howe Bai never yawned today?!'' he then shook his head and went to the cantina to meet his roommate for lunch.

 Chapter 17: meeting the demons (2)

    Chapter 17: meeting the demons (2)


    Excitement was overflowing from Yunan as he was heading to the training hall number 5, once he arrived he was bedazzled by the sight of a dwarf scolding an orc three time his size "listen here you little brute" said the dwarf while pointing his finger at the nose of the squating orc "never touch my hammer again, otherwise i will wring your ears off and feed them to you" then the dwarf turned around leaving behind a grinning orc who looked like he has just got away with something naughty "Titan''s beard, why do i tolerate you so much?!. might as well shave my beard next time" while Yunan was watching the scene he heard a sniff behind him and turned to find a half beast sniffing at him, he did not even know when the guy came next to him much less when he started sniffing.


    "Bai, is this the guy? smells nice can i have a bite?" the silvery hue in the half beast eyes was almost hypnotic, Yunan was barely able to react before he saw the elf Fae, fly over grab the half beast by ear and drag him to squat beside the orc "no snacks outside of meal time, you will get fat again" she then proceeded to flick his forehead, now there were two guys squatting and grinning like fools.


    Soon the dwarf came over with Leader and Bai, the dwarf directly bumped a fist on Yunans chest "the name is Balin, master dwarf of the iron beards, i y the father figure for these bunch of misfits, if someone bullies you tell me" Yunan did not even wait and just pointed at leader and said "she messed up on purpose when we trainingst time" then he pointed at Bai "he made me and my friend aughing stock in the academy"


    The dwarf looked at Leader and Bai then the three burst out intoughter " i did not think you would sell them out so fast, you need mum trainingd" theughter of the dwarf drew in the others and they surrounded Yunan, and started makingments on him. "he feels much more polite than Bai said"," i find it easier to halv my expectations when ites to sleeping and Bai","wise words, although he does look weak and famished we need to feed him more","this one is mine, go get your own obedient Little boys" thest remark was made by Leader followed by an order, "ss today is swordsmanship, with chanting and arithmetics" she hugged Yunan to her side and walked him to center of the hall, then exined how the lesson will go.


    "It should be easy, you basically chant an addition of two numbers in a singing voice, as long as you are training, today we do a simple series, you start by 1 and go up by one each addition, for example 1+2=3, 3+3=6, 6+4=10 and so on, basically the first number is the rest of thest addition while the second number is the next number while counting upwards, easy, oh, those idiots over there wille to correct your stance and will be making noise just by being here, so there will be distraction, i don''t want you to stop singing or swinging until i say so, understand" Yunan nodded and asked "what is your name? you have not introduce all members yet and never told me the name of the party?" , "are you interested?". Yunan nodded and eximed in his head, ''i need to know who i will beining against if you go beyond teaching me'' .


    Leader called in the bunch that have been betting on how many sword moves he can make before he drops. Bai was snickering at them, he knew Yunan was much more than he looked like, once they surrounded Yunan started introducing them once again. "my name is Mary, you can call me Leader, this here is Fae, check her skin for her mood, she is fluffy most of the time, next is sly sleepy Bai, schemer andzy, next is fuzzy Lucian he is the nicest one, the sneakiest too, next is master dwarf Balin, master of forge andbat, he is the most vulgar yet the cutest one, and this green lump of muscle is Dustan, big brute with simple demands in life, good axes and unlimited monsters" then she paused for a moment and looked towards Bai "what is the name of our party?" Bai looked at the others confused, "we have one?" that was an inquiry made by Dustan.


    Bai just shrugged and said "i don''t know, you guys never mentioned it before me and i came inst", the lot looked at master Balin "how do you deal with the official business?" Balin just showed his palms in a shrug "i never used a party name, since we are the only party from the 20th floor that ever leaves Tartarus city, i only introduce myself as a crew member of leader Mary''s party and they recognize me immediately, was i supposed to use a party name?"


    "Guess we don''t need one anymore, i think we are now officially known as ''leader Mary''s party'' if i know guild personnel" interjected Lucian, it seems the party forgot they needed to train Yunan so he just moved away and started swinging from top to lower right or lower left alternating between the shes and started singing and calcting.


    While the party was debating, sometimes they would make an order at him " feet shoulder wide and one step forward, don''t stand so stiffly" then something like "36+9 is 45 not 44 start over" mean while a discussion in this vein could be heard " i think we need a better party name, leader''s fuzzy freaks sounds like a circus name", "well we are a walking circus","even so, no beard will be in a circus named party or a circus for that matterss"," i heard others call us some good names after each quest","really good names?","not the most imaginative but . don''t keep your elbows bent after you start a swing, unfold them before your sword is level with your head. yeah things like demons, devilish bunch, evil queen''s entourage, walking insanity, most of them are like this", "barely anything fancy", "no imagination at all. its 78, start over", " why do they calls that any idea?", "provably because of the things we pull while fighting, especially when we get bored", "imiss the 20th floor, so much fun", "there, there, littless, you can just wait three more years, how about having my baby while waiting?", "i don''t want my baby born with a beard","you can shave him, beards only count after adulthood", "feels wrong to imagine a dwarf beardless", "here is a good name, beardless dwarf, we can shave balin while we are at it", "stupid orc, all dwarf kin will hunt us down for the name, and keep away from the beard, i still need to practice braiding", "how about braided beard?", "why do we need a beard in the party name? you are the only one with it","i concur, we need something we all have".


    Yunan who just sat down from exhaustion, said whispering to himself "how about the brainless jesters? lookes fitting to me" he almost choked on his own saliva when he heard Dustan''s reply "Bai has a bit of brain, so that is a no go" then discussion started again " i do like the jesters part, even though its not dignified, i counted 212"," thed did 214 swings, Balin wins"," thank god, i would have died if any hair was snuffed out of my precious beard".


    leader pped her hands "15 minutes rest, beardy go get your rewards, Bai find a name for us, it must be dignified and represents us, although i don''t feel like dignified suits us."

 Chapter 18: debauchery party

    Chapter 18: debauchery party


    While Yunan was resting he looked at the silly bunch with fascination, he just failed to envision how can adults be so childish and silly, and still be reliable enough to reach the 20th floor in the dungeon, a known roadblock to all adventurers who were subpar in the slightest. those who could reach the 20th floor and beyond were all excellent at a minimum of three roles, as in they had enough stats in three attributes and were able to maximise that advantage. that was what made the difference between elites and regr adventurers.


    ording to the conversation Yunan heard, Balin had won a bet between the party members on how many sword swings Yunan could make before stopping, and from what Balin did next, Yunan mostly figured out the odd stakes of the bet, a full power flick to the forehead of the orc sending him flying half way across the hall, fondling the fluffy ears of the half-beast who seemed to feel very ufortable and about to tear up and finally left a bite mark on the elf''s shoulder. why would anyone make such stakes for a silly bet. a line Yunan read long ago surfaced in yunan''s mind and he mumbled "a Debauchery party" and the hall turned deadly silent.


    The first toment was master dwarf Balin "you got a good naming sensed, i like it", next was a nod from Lucian "very suitable indeed", "what''s a debauchery?" is what was asked by Dustan the orc, "it has a nice ring to it" said Fae while applying a balm on the teeth marks she just got. Bai said "it does suits us, right lLeader?", Leader just nodded in contemtion, on the other hand the orc was now pestering the dwarf for an exnation, while poking him now and then to get his attention, seeing the dwarf stay silent he moved to the next target on the bullying list Fae, who answered him immediately once he asked "it means excessive indulgence, it means we just do everything without moderation, now stay away from my skin, you brute!" she had tears in her eyes by the end of it, dustan was merely holding her arm in two thick finger ready to pinch.


    "Alright Debauchery party it is, resting time is up, Dustan get your axes ready, Yunan, you attack him and try to get past his block, don''t forget the singing, up you go, start moving, Dustan you count with him too, if anyone makes a mistake both of you start over". Although Dustan did take out his still blunt axes, he stillined "why me, Lucian and Bai are better at it, i did nothing wrong to get punished" that earned him a kick from Balin and snarky remark "shut up you mindless brute, you just finished bullying the cutestss ever, repent fot your sins like a man".


    That started a whole new conversation about how bullying is a sign of affection for orcs, or how dwarves "can never understand the intimacy of bullying, or any other intimacy at all, the hammer swinging fanatics" ording to Fae the one who almost cried a moment ago from bullying, while Yunan was attacking with all his might trying to get through the blocks of the orc, after merely 50 hits he stopped in his tracks and dropped both swords. his hands felt numb and heavy like an army of ants was crawling under his skin.


    "Why do i feel like i am the one being hit instead of hitting him? everytime we connected it felt like i was the one blocking not him, howe?" the question was directed at Bai, while Leader came closer and started massaging Yunan''s arms. "that would be because you are inferior to him in terms of both strength and constitution, to ovee that you need technique and experience, this was a test to see how is your constitution, and how well you know your body, good thing you stopped attacking, before getting injured" as Yunan was feeling relief in his arms then the disappointment soon followed as he heard the next piece of dialogue "who won?" asked Leader while still massaging yunan''s arms, "no one" answered Bai "we all bet on him stopping after getting injured one way or another".


    "What were the stakes?" leader asked " ap pillow by Fae, a foot massage by master Balin, a ruffeling of the tail by Lucian, and a shoulder massage by me" answered Bai again, concisely. Leader looked at Yunan and said "you won the bet, once ss is almost over you can enjoy the benefits" after that she handed him his swords back and told Dustand to parry and dodge only. "this time when you attack try moving your feet like the dance routine we didst time, move sideways and step forward and back" this advice opened a few more paths to attack from which was an improvement from his still stance attacks, and thus provide room for wider variety of attacks, now instead of just shing up and down, he now could stab, sh from other directions while moving.


    The boutsted for 15 minutes, Yunan failed to make Dustan block him, as was expected, next it was Dustan who approached, Yunan was told to try to dodge and block if he could, Yunan ended up with a few hits on his body, he thanked the heavens for Dustan using only his hands as axes, and not using any strength at all. from what Yunan heard the party mention, he knew that Dustan and Balin could not control their strengths and have been known to cause idents such as bending spoon during a meal, breaking a door handle while trying to get in, thest one was more like an orc trait than an ident, thought Yunan.


    After doing a recap of all the training they did in onest a spar, where yunan could this time take more than 80 hits while Dustan was blocking, using a lot of dancing as a base to lower the impact of the weapons, that was quite the happy aplishment for Yunan as he showed obvious improvement during the same session of practice. when it was about half an hour left, Dustan and Yunan stopped their spar, and Yunan got the spoils he won from a bet he was not part of, the reward has changed a bit since the next few bets were about getting rid of the stakes lost in the bet Yunan won, it ended up as ap pillow by Leadr, a foot massage by Fae, and a shoulder massage by Bai andstly beard braiding by Balin, which yunan declined as it was not interesting, or possible to braid anything while having a pillow and a shoulder massage at the same time. yunan was woken up by the sudden sound of the afternoon bell ending thest ss of the day, yunan didn''t even know how and when he slept, Leader advised him to skip the baths and take a nap first before cleaning up after dinner.

 Chapter 19: we choose life

    Chapter 19: we choose life


    Although Yunan was still groggy, he still made his way home and fell to sleep almost immediately, he only woke upter when Leol shook him awake for dinner time. On the way there they discussed the Debauchery party, and how the training went in the afternoon, Leol was visibly shook as he had his world views crumble, he would have never thought there was people that can actually fit the word Debauchery and still be sessful.


    As they ate dinner Leol shared started talking about some new friends he made in the entertainment center this afternoon they were interested in the chess rules bai had taught Yunan, and thus the group yed with Leol almost to dinner time, and when they were chatting about how Leol and Yunan worked out in the morning every day they expressed their willingness to join the duo.


    They were all from different sses and all with high wisdom, they had at least high stats in 2 other stats and there was even an all rounder, they wanted to meet Yunan to ask about the types of unorthodox training and teaching methods, that he was in contact with, of course no one would believe that working on geometry and magic constructs can help develop both skills, and also help the student grow both in mentality and his stats, Yunan wondered how would they feel about singing arithmetics while fighting an orc who barely can control his strength.


    Meanwhile, the Debauchery party went out of the city for the moon feast, while master dwarf Balin had to go register the name of their party in the guild and got a very good headache as he found enough provisional names for the party to name half the toons in an army, removing those names from the records and making sure it is the right members in the party put him in a very bad mood, the only good point was that the name was well received by the guild and although the paperwork took some time, there will be no more mistakes.


    In the ins outside the city, Lucian and some other lykans around the area were making a giant pyre and there was enough meat to feed a few dozen people, bai was in charge of barbeque while Lucian let his animal side take over and howled and yed around with the other lykans, meanwhile master Balin was arm wrestling with Dustan while the twodies gossiped about god knows what.


    The feaststed until dawn, by the time the Debauchery party made their way to the academy they saw Yunan and Leol jogging around the central field, although Leol wasining he still kept pace with Yunan, thus the party decided to stay and watch. After a fewps Yunan and Leol stopped jogging and took a moment to rest before doing the basic exercises, push ups, squats and sit ups, then they sat facing each other while reciting the addition sequence they told Yunan to do in the afternoon lesson.


    Leader was very impressed. This little guy had the foresight to recognize that even resting can be used to train in another aspect. While alternating the sequence, they would mess up and instead of starting over, one would correct the other as they kept going to higher and higher numbers once they reach 50 they started again, for a total of three times, then they stood up and did the one step dance leader practiced with Yunan, they did three sets, first was opposite, second was mirror, third was counter.


    Once they finished their training the boys headed for the baths while the party headed for the instructors dorms to clean up and get ready for the morning lessons while deciding if they would send someone each morning to guide the youngsters in their efforts.


    The tuesday ss was held in the training hall instead of the library to make use of the sound istion, Yunan was confused at first but when he heard leaders exnation he felt more at ease. Leader had her arm on Yunans shoulder as she took him to the center of the hall were all the Debauchery party was armed with metal poles, " since you chose this lesson to be about chanting, we are not going to fight or the like, these are for recing the drum beats, here is how it will work. We will all sing a song, and you will use the rods in your hand to create a beat that matches the song, however you must knock your rods against ours in time with the drums, you fail and we start over, if you finish a song without any mistakes, we can do something else for the rest of the morning"


    While Leader was exining Balin poked Dustan as he snickered "knocking rods, heh heh heh, the pure Leader if finally getting as vulgar as the rest of us" that earned him a rod to the head by Fae, but before he thought he got away with it Leader threw a metal bucket at Balin saying " no rods for you, use your head to repent".


    As to be expected, with a metal head dwarf in the group, every now and then a rod would descend on his head out of beat and before his turn came, ruining the drum beat Yunan was working so hard to achieve, which prompted him to go for the arms or legs of those who ruined the beat while they were trying to sneak a hit on master Balin, by the end of the ss Balin was sitting on Dustan''s shoulders drumming on his own head to pirate chanty while the others were singing along.


    Yunan was sitting beside Leader looking at these guys who imed to be elites of the dungeon act without restraint, something troubled him more than anything else now, he feared he would catch whatever they had. He looked at Leader beside him who had a mother''s gaze on her when looking at the happy bunch. "Howe they can be so unscrupulous, i have never seen any adventurers who are like them, it feels like they are more like the orphans in the orphanage than elites"


    Leader looked at Yunan with a smile. " it''s death, it has this wonderful effect on human, the majority turn so serious and focused they lose sight of everything else while others would embrace everything and lose what they focused on before, that is us the minority who choose to live when we face death, we have seen each other both at our best and at our worst, we licked each others wounds and propped each other up, during more than 5 years of death and struggle, and that just made us closer, family is not the term i would use but it is the closest thing to it, all of us in the Debauchery party just seek warmth and life, the rest is just to keep up appearances."

 Chapter 20: intrigue

    Chapter 20: intrigue


    During lunch Yunan met with the prospective training mates, as expected they asked too many questions about how Debauchery taught Yunan, a bit too much, which resulted in Yunan having a bad feeling and down ying the intensity and ingenuity of the training, this did not escape Leol who got upset about Yunan not beingpletely truthful with his friends, up to the time of the morning exercises which he timed at little before sunrise.


    Once Leol and Yunan made it back to their room after lunch, Leol was frowning enough to m his eyebrows together "calm down Leol, i never lied to them, it felt weird how they went for specific questions about the Debauchery party, it made me suspicious" he quieted down for a moment before seriously looking at Leol " try not divulge much about what we are talking about, even if they mean no harm now, think how many problems will happen if they try the methods of the Debauchery and end up injured or worse, even though it is safe for me because there are 6 elites making sure nothing happens to me, others may not be so careful, there is a reason why 10 year olds only practice with wooden weapons, not even blunt real weapons, if anything happens, you will take the hit for spreading misinformation with intent to cause harm"


    Yunan took a look at the calmer Leol, he would not like for his friend to be betrayed or be in an awkward position, therefore he must share his wisdom gained in the orphanage by the trial and error of countless orphans. "I might have not been so suspicious if they only came for the stories and the fun, they skipped that and went straight to the training, which they could just as easy ask their teachers about, yet they came to us because they think we know something others don''t, i mean the effect of level up chess is enough to convince anyone with a brain of its worth, now think if there was equally effective methods of training that will yield better results, then add in a noble in a power struggle and you get a scheme to steal our secrets and then spread them as if they created them. do you see my point?"


    Leol who was from aristocratic descent knew too well how young can the nobles start scheming, although Leol''s family was stable and had very little power struggle, he could see it in other families, as for how Yunan knew about this, being raised in an orphanage you start to scheme before you learn how to walk, such is the cruelty of life.


    Thus Yunan went to his dagger training, today he had to battle both Bai and Lucian, this lesson had two parts to it, first was dancing; Leader and Fae taught Yunan the ball dance moves, and he had to dance all the time during the sparring session, second dagger y, Yunan has to touch the daggersing at him from both bai and lucian with his own, he was not allowed to dodge, every dagger he fails to connect with would trante to one minute less rest, if the total count surpasses ten minutes, the next hits would be added to the next session, although both men were told to go easy on him he still missed more than enough daggers in the first session to keep him from resting the whole afternoon.


    Fae won that bet by the way, she gets to ride Balin on the back the entire afternoon and call him bearded donkey. that sight alone, not adding the neighs Balin made, cost Yunan his resting for the whole day tomorrow. by the end of the training Yunan had a better understanding of the speed a dagger needed, it was not a sword which required power, a dagger was at its deadliest when it was most agile.


    Leol could not stay in the room and decided to go to the entertainment center to confirm his doubts, at least that way, even if Yunan was wrong he would just make him apologize and not need to have doubts that might affect his rtionship with Yunan for something that can be solved easily. When he met his new friends there was another aristocrat with them, Leol could smell his own kind out of a crowd no matter how they hid, as soon as the level up chess tournament started he was asked questions when in the midst of focusing on the game and would be vulnerable to questioning.


    Thankfully, his training with Bai had paid off and Leol could process external stimuli even when deep in focus, and the questions were exactly what Yunan refused to answer before, so he made up the answer that he only knew general information and the silly stories about the Debauchery party, by the end of the tournament he understood he was directly targeted by this noble and his henchmen, for being close to Yunan and therefore in the know about how the elites work.


    Leol waited for Yunan anxiously, in their room, once Yunan arrived Leol made him sit down with the words " i have really bad news", those words sobered up Yunan, ever since he met Leol he never used the word bad to describe a situation or news, even when they turned superstars thanks to singing with Bai. "what is it?" Yunan was tired and fighting sleep but still sat straight and braced himself for a disaster. "Those guys were sent to us to get closer and fish for information, they want to know how effective is the training more than how it is done, and the kind of guy who sent them is bad news, i met him and he is likely trying to inform on us for some benefit or another, it seems that a whole elite party teaching the same student news is spreading and there are some who want to take advantage of it, tell your teachers about this, even if they are not in trouble they could at least prepare".


    Although Yunan might have learned how people act, Leol learned why they act. thanks to his upbringing in a stable family, Leol had a spectator''s view of the aristocraticmunity, and could see how it shifted based on small changes, and why those who vied for power acted instead of how, thus he gradually learned how to guess the reason behind any noble acting for benefits, provided he knew what they did, he never thought he would be caught in a power scheme in the most unlikely of ces.

 Chapter 21: plans

    Chapter 21: ns


    Dawn of wednesday morning, as usual Leol was still grumbling while Yunan pulled him along into the training field, they did the usual work out: some fastps with at higher intensity than simple jogging, followed by the basic routine, sit ups, squats, and pushups, today they pushed themselves a bit beyond the point of exhaustion, then they sat and sang the divergent series up to the number 50, three times while alternating singing the equation, unlike yesterday they alternated for a total for four times than they synchronized their singing in thest try.


    Yunan and Leol noticed very low number of mistakes during thest chant, well they are still ten and their minds are still flexible and adaptable, thus obvious advancement would be more apparent than those much younger or older than 10, so they were pleased with themselves.


    As the sun started to rise the previous groupee to the field and saw Yunan and Leol were sitting there talking, when Leol noticed the grouping, he pretended to show Yunan how to y paper rock scissors, Yunan figured something was awry and started randomly do the signs while Leol was correcting him," no, you don''t wait to see what i chose, we both make a choice at the same time, don''t go before me, its useless if i know your hand, dude you can y level up chess and can not evenprehend this simple game" Yunan pretend to lower his head in shame while Leol face palmed.


    Once the group of five arrived close enough Yunan looked up and greeted the new arrivals," we were just about to start running, do you think you can join us?" Yunan and Leol stood up waiting for the answer from the group. "Well we actually came here to meet with the teachers, pity they are not here, they refused to talk to us during ss time and we thought maybe we can meet them, since they disappear after ss" the shadiest guy in the group talked, Yunan could immediately tell he was talking on behalf of another.


    Yunan just shrugged and said "well this thing is something only me and Leol do to get into better shape, my teachers never give me anything to do after ss, not even homework, so we will be starting, join us if you want, as for meeting my teachers we always meet by the library before ss, i never know what they n for the next for it, so " his voice trailed off as he and Leol started jogging moderately for 3ps before heading off to the baths, the group only followed behind them but kept their distance.


    After breakfast Yunan and Leol went together to the library, they found Bai alone waiting for them, as soon as the shady group came close to talk to Bai he sent them off by saying "not in ss time, if you need me,eback after ss" he then brought both Yunan and Leol to hall number 5. Since the halls were restricted to the teacher who booked them, even if the group tried to barge in or listen in on the lecture, the would gain nothing and just stand there like idiots.


    In hall 5 Yunan exined what Leol told him yesterday and soon after Bai took Leol into a corner and started working on some scheme, that Yunan wanted nothing to do with. As for the lesson today, nning, leader had a kind of strange lesson. "Today we do something different, you will n a sortie with only Balin and Lucian and Fae, the goal is to conquer a level 5 nest, i would like you to make a n for them to follow and sessfully conquer the nest, i will not give you any information other than this, the road is a mountain pass, the nest has a cave for an entrance, while the heart of the nest is in the hintends of the mountain".


    And thus Yunan started discussing with the debauchery party his n, "well if it is a mountain pass, we need Lucian leading with Fae after him and Balin in the tail-" Leader interrupted him mid sentence " failed", that reminded Yunan about his argument with Bai during thest nning ss.


    "Okey, how about we get Lucian and Balin to go shop for food, ropes, and climbing gear, while Fae, buys some potions to heal and restore mana-" , "failed", and that started a new chain of failed tries to n before ven the party made it out of the city, when the ss was almost over, Yunan actually made it beyond the city walls.


    The n was simple to execute but veryplicated toe up with. First never split up when someone is missing from the party, if only three of them were together then stay together at all times, the amount of dangers multite when they split up the small group, then before even thinking about anything, go to the guild branch and get the full information about the quest, it takes more information to sweep a nest clean more than a map and a level, so you need to know the scale of the map and how long it takes to travel there, how many monsters are estimated to be inside the nest, then the type of the monsters, what kind of things to watch out for.


    Thenes the time for arranging the travel, they could not walk everywhere unless it was less than half a days walk, otherwise rent a carriage or mounts, flying mounts if the ordinary mounts can not reach close enough to the monster nest, then how much items to take, always take items a level or two higher than the estimated level of the monsters, always have extra mounts, for possible things that maybe brought back, take enough rations for twice as long as the estimated time needed to clear the nest.


    Keeping the groupe rested and with enough stamina, traveling fast enough, scouting and gathering information from the locals, hunting when possible to save on the rations, have all kinds of potions from low level ones to high leveled ones, having enough recements for the damaged equipment. And many other things, like traveling with caution, moving only on safe and scouted routes, dodging bandit groups, and that is before even you arrive at the location of the nest.


    Meanwhile Bai and Leol hade up with a n to just push away any unwanted attention, the n was basically showing off how battered Yunan looks like after every lesson, and making it looked he even needs a friend to take him back after a session of torture instead of a normal ss.

 Chapter 22: desires

    Chapter 22: desires


    Luckily for Yunan and Leol they were not bothered by the group of investigators, they had a rtively quiet lunch where they discussed about the n Baie up. "So you have toe over and carry me from the hall, after every ss? That is a bit of a chore", " i hope it is worth it, bai said i would get a few benefits if i perform well". "You know Bai does not care about whatever scheme is at hand and only using you to give me harsher training, even the morning sses who were all theoretical, will now be physical, thanks to whatever bastard is making useless ns that won''t even work" Yunan mumbled a few more swear words.


    "I know, he told me very honestly, he said that with our morning workout you can handle it sooner orter, and i get some pointers on weekends, i get to choose what they teach me" Leol was kind of proud that he got something for nothing, well his friend will get hurt by this but who cares, it is just making Yunan stronger in the long term, so win-win


    "So you sold me for pointers eh, you should have negotiated the ability to join sses with me, that way you get better revenue for your meagre sacrifice"," and suffer with you? Heh very funny, i would prefer to get pointers than full blown lessons, i don''t think i can take it".


    The lunch time flew by as the boys joked and jested with each other before separating for the afternoon, in hall 5 the lesson this afternoon was dodging and dancing, under the orders of Leader, Bai and Lucian would poke at Yunan with their fingers and Yunan had to keep up with conversation while dodging as best he can, after that there was an actual dancing lesson, Yunan had to dance with Leader and keep up with her.


    Uring the dancing part of the ss, Yunan got time to ask the question he wanted to ask since this morning. "Leader, what do you think all this investigation and shady intrigue is about?". "Its not veryplicated, it''s kind of normal for us to have people ask around us or trying to talk us without going through the proper channels", " what is it like usually?" Yunan felt like he should know something like this for future reference.


    "Usually they try to recruit us to take them down the dungeon, there is the odd one who actually has a quest to clean up, and just don''t want the guild all over the nest they found and would rather keep the profits, there are others who would like to own us, those ones never learn, no matter how many men they send, no one returns, they think there is enough money for us to put on a leash, or maybe threats, bans and whatever they can think of to pressure us, entice us or even charm us. They just never think that we genuinely do not care about them nor what they have to offer."


    "They sure are very insistent if they tried so hard, if they even tried to put you under threat they must be desperate" Yunan said " that was already too far no matter how you think about it, you six can literally burn down kingdoms, but there was someone dumb enough to send men after you!"


    Leader in front of him had a bitter smile on her face "there is always worse, there was once a king who offered us half the treasury to kill all those who tried to take his throne, there was another who promised half the profits of his merchant empire to take him and his new concubine into a dungeon honeymoon. It is not like there was no precedent but all those who entered regretted it, since they could not get batter at anything after entering the dungeon, even simple handicraft was impossible to learn, can you imagine having to enter the dungeon to learn anything no matter how easy it is? It is not worth it for those who do not want to live their lives centered around the dungeon".


    "What else, what kind of crazy requests did you get?" Leaderughed in her alluring way, bemused by the curious little kid after a moment of thought the others started chiming in on the conversation in a cacophony ofughter and ridicule, somethings were very ridiculous. " there was the guy who wanted his baby born in the twentieth floor", "remember the guy who wanted us to kill him and frame his own son","there was the guy who wanted monster milk for his newborn","oh i never forget the guy who wanted us to catch humanoid monsters for him toy with"," don''t forget about the one who wanted to live inside the 20th floor, he had builders and workers ready and all"


    All kinds of stupid, careless, even horribly terrifying proposals made Yunan think rich men are crazy, or maybe money has a thing to do with making men act silly and stupid, but once he thought it through, he understood that power, fame, greed and ambition are the true culprits, money only is an enabler for the desires of men.


    After the noise died down a bit and the debauchery were discussing more of the adult themed proposals and which ones they should have epted, Yunan finally got a window to keep asking Leader more about the situation, "Leader what do you think it will be this time?" Yunan knew not to ask about what if he was kidnapped for pressure, because he knew very well that Debauchery would leave the matter into the guild''s hands which spells his doom.


    " I think it has something to do with you, maybe about us taking the teaching job, that is the best case scenario" leader kissed Yunan on the forehead as if an early apology, she stopped the dance and told Yunan to rest, she then assembled the party "so, what do we do?" she asked. Balin was first to answer, " protect, if they go too far, i think it is time to step on some heads and sow terror to those who keep underestimating us".


    Fae chimed in " we have stayed polite and quiet for long enough, the world of nobles need to be reminded what it is like to go against the elites of the dungeon, although we only can go for the 20th floor, they seemed to forget thest time the guild could not keep the adventurers under control", Lucian was a bit more harsh " I like the boy and i like the fun we are having in this long vacation, if anyone tries anything, i don''t mind wiping out a few families even if i have to live the rest of my life in the dungeon, i don''t want my vacation spoiled, like every single one we had so far."


    Dustan was more at ease " my axes are ready for whatever you need them for" while Bai stayed silent for a few moments until all the party was looking at him " i think we can put on a show without getting out of line with the guild" the smile bai had on made Yunan shiver, whatever was in that brain of his, Yunan did not want to know.

 Chapter 23: rules of conduct

    Chapter 23: rules of conduct


    Yunan was feeling very happy on his way back to his room with Leol shouldering him, the words Balin and Lucian said were obviously in his favour, although Bai and Fae did not mention him, they did not refute the other two which brought a smile to his face. now that the Debauchery party sided with him, no matter who targeted him, if he lost a single hair, the culprit would suffer.


    along the way, Yunan and Leol grumble loudly about how cruel Debauchery was to a ten year old, although Yunan could barely contain his happy mood he still, tried to look grumpy and hurt. still there were more kids who stopped them to ask what happened, and as per agreement we Bai, Yunan described how he was pushed beyond his limit during practice and being denied rest.


    Yunan and Leol could not even start talking in their own room before they were interrupted by continuous knocks, mere moments after each other, as if waiting for the story to change, after the twelfth student even an employee came by, thus the duo decided to put a ''do not disturb'' paper on the door, exining that a resident has been drained of energy during training and needed rest immediately, yet still there were security officers and other employees knocking on the door to see the root of thismotion in the dorms, when Leol opened the door for them Yunan yed possum andid face down, and body sprawled all over the bed, that worked until dinner time where another group gathered around their door to see if Yunan woulde out, but only Leol left and came back with some food in his hands, indicating his roommate to be still out ofmission.


    Mean while Yunan told Leol about all the silly requests he heard about from Debauchery and got him to almost throw up his dinner from hardughter, once the mood calmed down, Yunan also told him what Leader said and about thest discussion before end of ss, which brought a smile to Leol. " i don''t think this time is like the other times" Leol started "if i am thinking through this correctly, someone wants their own child to be trained under Debauchery, especially since they all decided to teach together, instead of only one member at the time, lucky for you, you ended up the as their student. i think when the news spread about the guild giving Debauchery the right to teach the same student, after a well done quest, and marking the official fulfillment of the rule that all adventurers under the guild must teach, having all of Debauchery teach the same ss even if it was a single kid, it reduces the possible dangers the student could face in a backwater city like ours from all those powerful nobles who are worth more to the guild, and not even killing half the student in here would make the guild reprimand them in any way".


    "so, as you can see, a certain extremely powerful noble, most likely a royalty close to the guild contacted the local nobles for information about how Debauchery teaches you, and the result is that every student rted in any way to a noble has been ordered to gather information for a price or a reward, i think my family never sent anything because they thought it would useless with the amount of effort, at least grandpa would think it is a hassle and would rather not be included unless personally contacted, by the looks of it, it was just someone asking for news on behalf of said powerful noble, and grandpa is not the guy to join a stampede."


    Yunan had a sh of inspiration "why not contact your family then? if there''s a reward we can split it, between your family and my orphanage, your grandpa sounds trustworthy so lets get him to do it", "are you nning to sell information about the training? that is low brother, very low" Leol missed what Yunan was talking about and assumed the worst.


    "who said anything about selling information about training, think carefully, what is the best information anyone can supply to the big noble? giving that they want their child to train under Debauchery, there are two answers: first is how to approach Debauchery in a way that can guarantee a reply, which is already far more than many nobles before him got. Second is whether the training they designed is effective or not. These two points are the core what the big noble needs right? any other information is practically useless, because even if the method is leaked, only debauchery can perform the training without a hitch, thus knowing about it is useless. got my point?" Leol thought for moment before his eyes brightened " i see, we tell them things that has nothing to with Debauchery, and still help the big noble get what he wants, and we get paid for it, damn you got smarter just by being in contact with those guys, i wanna join in on the fun, even if it is hell now it will be worth it.", "we can bring it up with Leader once the big noble makes his move, that way it would sound like they choose you, when there was an opening to recruit more students because they are familiar with you, no matter if the big noble gets rejected or not, no one would make any trouble for us or Debauchery for choosing someone they know when they had a chance at recruiting"


    "Well let''s leave that forter, what should we write in the letter mister ''better at thinking''?". "easy, tell your grandpa that you are my roommate and how we want the reward split first, then tell him that the only way to receive a reply and maybe gain a meeting with Debauchery is to send a messenger through the guild, to inform them about whatever the big noble is wishing to talk about, it would be more effective if it was the big noble himself who issued the invitation to talk, also who ever came to make the contact must treat all members equally, and not ask to meet the leader, otherwise it''s futile effort. next is when they meet the party expect to be offended at all times, because they simply do not care about anything unrted to them. gain their respect by being honest and straightforward, do not humour them and do not patronise them, that is worse than being arrogant in front of them, expect failure as much as you expect sess, and make sure the subject of the meeting is present, if they like them, you can forgo all the previous rules and acts as you will. Finally, tell them that as someone who is in direct contact with the training that it is effective and innovative. also stress the rules again at the end of the letter, if they don''t like being bound by those rules, just forget about it"


    Leol hastily noted down the points Yunan mentioned and sealed it in an envelope to be sent tomorrow, he did not need to write more than that since his grandpa would know what to send to the big noble better than him, he just provided the most basic points. "for a group of excentrics like them, it is fairly easy to get to them, i wonder howe no one thought of that". "that i know" yunan answered "because this method makes those elites in the dungeon look down on you and maybe reject you just for not licking their boots, but Debauchery does not live for the dungeon, they roam the world and when they are bored, they return to Tartarus, to them proper behaviour is worth more than whatever others think is a shorter way towards sess, now go to sleep, we have workout to do early".

 Chapter 24: class B risk

    Chapter 24: ss B risk


    Once thursday dawned on the academy, Yunan and Leol left their room and headed for the administrative building to send the letter to Leol''s grand father, then they turned to the field for their daily workout, today unlike the before, Leol put on some effort in keeping up with Yunan, thus the training was a bit more intensive than usual, although they retained the same routine they added a fullp around the field making the total 5, and 40 sets instead of 30 for the basics, and they sang the divergent series up to 60, with more sess and less mistakes. after they cleaned up, they went for breakfast and then separated for their sses.


    Today in strategy, the game was still level up chess but it was in the format of king of the hill, although Yunan lost countless times he learned a lot about how politics worked, it is worth mention that the tournament worked in a very odd manner, for example Dustan won his battles with Fae by bribing her with upsy-daisy and some other promises, Balin bought a few wins from Lucian by forging promises, lLeader just ordered who ever was her opponent to lose when she did not feel like ying, Bai would scheme to sow discord between the yers, Fae mainly enjoyed being showered by gifts and promises, although she would tantly reject Leader and y with her now and then, there were bets, prizes, punishments for defeat, it was more like a real game of thrones, heck there was even marriages and alliances where for example balin and Dustan both go against Bai only to lose miserably. how alliances worked was against a leveled up yer, two armies can be joined against a level 2 as in 32 vs 16 Pieces, up to four armies against a level 3, as for a level 4 they would just forfeit to restart the battle.


    There were backstabs, betrayals, assassinations, adultery, ckmail, whatever power y you can think of was employed, everything was allowed, there were few rules, unless you were part of a game, you can not use the information traded in the game against those who yed it, unless they told you themselves or you had a spy inside their army, information sharing can only be done during a game, for example when Dustan and Balin made an alliance against Bai they were ying against each other.


    Although the game sounds odd, with how entric Debauchery is you can expect some hrity to ensue, and Yunan soon knew how to secure a win, put a spy within the armies of Fae and Bai, why you ask? because Bai had spies on all the yers, and Fae was a reliable source for ckmail information, she married Leader, and engaged in adultery with all she deemed a threat to her, thus making them share some vital information, the other n he came up with is to be neutral, and wait for the others to just self destruct, by sharing all kinds of information he got through spies, and in the end that actually happened when he decided to tell Leader who was level 3 about the betrayals of Fae, and then dropping the game, next turn Leader issued a full scale war on everyone but Yunan, thus it ended with mutual destruction and Yunan won by default as he was the only one with an army, still intact.


    The lesson was both about politics and nning as well as strategy, all in all teaching Yunan to think outside of the norme, thus secure a win in the only way he could, by not doing anything.


    In the afternoon, Leol had received an answer from his grandfather that he would send the information directly to the big noble, and that he shouldy low and keep this information to himself. one could say Leol is very simr to his grandpa in their views on how to face politics.


    The afternoon ss was archery but instead of aiming at the targets Yunan had to aim at disks thrown between bai and lucian, since neither Balin nor Dustan could control their strength perfectly. Bai and Lucian had to control the speed ording to the requirements of Leader, the lesson started by throwing balls at the disks, when Yunan got better at aiming he started using the bow, although he missed every shot he made, Yunan was shooting arrows closer and closer to the disks.


    After two hours of shooting, Yunan was told to shoot at the targets in the archery field, and soon the betting began, about stakes only god knows how Debauchery cared about such stakes, Yunan won a few such bets when he hit when everyone bet on a miss or missed when everyone bet on a hit, he soon started thinking about manipting his shot to win a bit more but as soon as he thought about it he got smacked on the back of the head by Leader "don''t even think about it, betting is about being fair in Debauchery, if you cheat, you will take on all the losses from the start of the betting session" that hit Yunan too hard, how could he possibly forge equipement while givingp dances and braiding beards, after all the Debauchery policy is to ount for all bets before the end of the day.


    After ss yunan and Leol went back to the room together, feeling grateful that not as many students came after them today, and only a handful came to knock on their door, even dinner went very uneventful, so the too passed their time peacefully in their room reading.


    Bai separated from Debauchery party and headed to the guild and made an official announcement, since the party is doing a mission by the guild, they will not tolerate any interruption to the mission and any who will try anything to disrupt their current mission of teaching, including harming their student, Debauchery party is ready to remind the whole world what it means to be an elite adventurer.


    This announcement got the guild into a flurry, they had been keeping adventurers under strict control to stop them from wiping out whole kingdoms because some smug king thought he actually had power. Although all outside contact with adventurers is usually goes through the guild, even those in the underground world who could secure contact with adventurers were from the guild, thus the guild could still keep small incidents under control, but the case of Debauchery party had haunted them for a time.


    Ever since the party fully formed in thest 5 years they had been venturing outside now and then to have fun, and although there was too much attention paid to them, the guild officials were relieved by how nonchnt Debauchery acted towards even the most unscrupulous of noble no matter how they offended them, but now things have changed, they are going to retaliate, and the announcement is their way of telling the guild to either control the nobles or let them suffer, neither options were eptable for the guild, so the guild just notified those who have offended Debauchery before and disseminated the news that Debauchery is changing their modus operandi, and will be a ss B risk, in case there were some who thought about doing anything. ording to the guild ssification B is a disaster capable of destroying multiple kingdoms.

 Chapter 25: visitor

    Chapter 25: visitor


    All the unrest that was brewing in the guild and in the middle of the aristocratic society had basically no effect on the academy, maybe except, quelling the ongoing investigation around Debauchery, as any who had a rtionship with a noble were directly warned not to step in the sight of Debauchery, their deration was a tant disregard for the guild, and was a warning to all, leave us alone or die, thus anyone in their right mind would rather stay away from a ho''s nest.


    One thing that stood out most about the deration was not the B ss disaster potential, but the clever wording of the announcement, they used the guild to justify their behaviour, putting to use the fact that they are now considered on an ongoing mission, a worthless one that all the adventurers take, but an official mission nheless, and their use of it to threaten those who had ideas about them, or their student, shows that in the past, Debauchery being passive and inactive in response to all that provocation was merely them not caring enough to act, but now, they are either fed up or started to care, and neither is good news for all those who offended them in the past.


    On the morning of friday, Yunan was learning the concept of force and the fact that one can predict something based on a fixedw, they started with archery so as to teach Yunan the effects of changing variables in any situation, such as aiming higher than the target to hit it because of gravity, or how to lower the draw of the bowstring and raise the shooting angle to achieve the same result, factor in the concepts of momentum and friction, and you get a basicprehensive lecture in physics that can be easily understood and performed. Yunan was ecstatic about the new knowledge, having more knowledge meant more options for him to act and more options meant better strategies and also better result from training.


    One can say that the brain can be trained to calcte the result of actions without prior knowledge in physics, yet it was found out that once those parameters that affect actions are known, the brain can be more efficient through basic understanding and starts to perform better and apply adjustments faster and create solutions to problems that were once unsolvable.


    All in all, with his new understanding of force and momentum, Yunan did a test run of the battle techniques he learned so far, he became better at blocking and dodging thanks to understanding momentum, block or dodge where the strike will hit, not where it is, he could also hit a flying disk when throwing a ball at it, although he missed around 8 in 10 shots, it was a big improvement from missing all ten shots, also his aim at still targets became better and gave more steady results in archery, this progress made Yunan very happy.


    Once Yunan started discussing his lesson with Leol during lunch time, he barely stopped talking, although Leol was not very influenced or deeply enlightened, he thought he would not need this knowledge, he was training to be a magician and had no need for it, since he would have party members who will protect him at all times. on the other hand Yunan thought that one needed to be able to handle all kinds of situation to be safe in the dungeon. the boys had a disturbance free lunch, a thing that they missed recently.


    In the afternoon ss Yunan got himself beaten to a pulp in the unarmedbat lesson, basically he would spend around ten minutes sparring with one of his teachers then rest for five, fighting against different styles ofbat. Bai fought fast and dirty, he hit pain pressure points making it hard for Yunan to fight back, or even stand straight, Dustan had a meaty fist that hit harder than a hammer, although he was slower than Bai, it took one hit from Dustan to send Yunan flying like a kite. Lucian weant for blind spots and fake outs, he would create more than enough blind spots by diversion. Balin was a grappler, and an expert in choke holds and joint locks, taking advantage of his size to squeeze where others could not and just disable his target, literally. Fae was more gentle, she only went for instant knockout hits, on punch and it''s lights out, no pain and no suffering, except for the splitting headache after waking up. Leader was a mixed of all of them.


    The training was going perfectly fine, until a messenger came to deliver a letter of invitation. the messenger almost ran away after delivering the letter, he probably lost a roll of dice to deliver it. after the messenger left, Leader read the letter out loud "due to a missive from headquarters, i, the director of the academy issue a formal invite to a spokesperson from the Debauchery party to join myself and the holy emperor of the eastern sun inds in a meeting to discuss a quest his highness would like to issue your esteemed party. The quest his highness is offering does not in anyway sh or hinder your current mission, please be advised that the meeting is scheduled tomorrow saturday afternoon, please inform us in case of a rejection or time issues before the meeting. sincerely, director of Mar sara academy, Joey Ray"


    As soon as Leader finished reading the letter, Yunan made a fist pump screaming "it worked" while being in a joint lock by Balin, the unexpected shout caught Balin by surprise and he tried to back away, positioning his nose in the path of the ascending fist and was hit hard enough he staggered back a few steps. the first to arrive by his side was Bai, gripping Yunan by the neck and lifting him up "what worked?", while Yunan was struggling to get out of the grip, he was surrounded by Debauchery, some had inquisitive looks others had a ruthless icy look to them. Leader touched Bai on the shoulder prompting him to put Yunan down, she then leaned forward, came face to face with the boy and asked with a warmer tone than Bai "what worked?". Yunan just red at Bai "we made them ask nicely, our n worked". "we?" asked Balin. "oh, i forgot to tell you guys" responded Yunan enthusiastically, "me and Leol, we sent a letter to whoever was asking around about you guys, we told them that there was no way to get your attention with such tactics, and they needed toe properly and show respect, we also told them not to get offended by the way you guys behave, and also made sure to tell them they will be ignored if they try bribes and threats and so on" he looked around at the unbelieving faces surrounding him and chirped with a happy voice "it worked, my n actually worked, see Bai, i do have good ns too"


    Soon the silence turned into roarousughter, as the party rolled all over the floorughing in the most vulgar of ways, that scene was etched in Yunan''s mind as a ''never act like this no matter how funny it is'', it took a while for Debauchery to calm down, they wiped away the tears, saliva and snot, that leaked out in theughter fit, some had hups while others could barely hold back from smiling, afraid to start another fit, if theyughed again. all this while Yunan looked very upset, he knew he was the butt of a joke he did not even notice, and that was very annoying to him.


    Leader took pity on him and decided to tell him what happened so she started by asking "when did you send your letter?", although upset and frowning Yunan answered "yesterday morning around dawn, why do you ask?". "well you see, yesterday afternoon we also sent a letter, more like an announcement, we told everyone that we do not want to be disturbed, if any one dares they die, i guess your letter and ours reached the guy who was asking around at the same time, so they followed your rules and asked nicely, i guess it is fate that you became our student, things like that cannot be nned even by god, but here it is". Fae walked closer to Yunan and kissed him on the cheek "thank you for thinking about us, just don''t forget our share of the reward okey?" Yunan told her that the reward was already split, and there is no returning it, and got pinched by Fae, struck in the back of the head by Bai and souplexed by Balin.

 Chapter 26: fae invasion

    Chapter 26: fae invasion


    After the end of ss bell rang, Leol walked into hall number 5 to help Yunan stand on his feet, he was surprised to get a hug from Leader and small pat on the back, he blushed furiously, fidgeted with his fingers not knowing where to put them, while keeping his eyes on the floor, he forgot about Yunan and just enjoyed the hug. "thanks for your hard work" said Leader when she let go of him, he got a nod from everyone else, when he finally remembered to pick up Yunan and leave he heard Dustan shout at him "get him to rest, well, no morning training tomorrow, you guys have a very big day so get as much rest as you can".


    Although Yunan had told Leol how Debauchery worked, their seamless teamwork would give others the elusion there was no leader, or maybe that anyone can take the lead at anytime, they were surprisingly organized. Leol thought that their system is a bit chaotic, but it was not so, as each had a certain area they excel at, where if they choose not to make a move, the second best in line has that right, at this moment, the ones who would be kindest, Fae and Balin, were angry at yunan for dealing with the reward without including them, Leader had just hugged Leol so she passed turn and Dustan became the one in charge or kindness.plicated? not really, they know each other enough to know who would be next in the ranking in any given situation, for example Lucian was second inmand, if Leader passed her turn by staying quiet, Lucian gets to order everyone around, thenes Bai, Fae, Balin then Dustan, the reason for Balin ranking so low, is that he wanted it so, he dislikes giving orders, but not as much as dustan hates taking the lead.


    Bai is first in schemes and strategy, Balin is first in service, Dustan is first in protection and games, but Leader still reserves the right to the final word, up that point, anyone can argue anything, and till they are satisfied, curiously, Leader never used her final word card. most of her decisions go unchallenged, mainly because she takes the opinions of the most suited ones at all times, even allowing others to lead, while she stays in the background.


    Yunan never thought he could stand up tomorrow on his own much less workout in the morning, thus both want to the bath and soaked in until their bones felt soft. "it worked you know" Yunan said in a rxed voice, "really? how did you know", "a messenger came during afternoon ss, with an invitation by academy director, there was a meeting with some holy ind emperor or something like that, they are meeting tomorrow afternoon.", "never heard of a holy ind emperor", "not sure really, i was under joint lock and did not get to focus much on the content of the letter, what kind of emperor has holy in the the name anyway?", "usually any holy ones belong to some church or the other, there is only one holy emperor i know of, it surely can''t be the holy emperor of sun ind right!?", " i think that was the title, sound more majestic the way you said it", " that is not even a possibility, sun emperors never leave sun ind, ever, that is aw of the universe, like how all things fall down, you must have been under a weird move to hear that", "possibly, i was beaten enough to hallucinate a few times", " so what else happened, no matter who read our letter they would not follow it after a mere day, no one is that desperate". "well, Debauchery made an announcement the same day we sent our letter,it basically said that anyone who intervenes in their current mission can go die, it''s the short version, even the messenger that brought the letter ran away without waiting for a reply"."that would have scared anyone in their right mind, especially if what you said about them not acting at all before is true, there will be many who are hiding under their beds right now", "they scare me too, even though they are super nice to me, i still feel like nothing but a twig in their hands", "good, i would think you were either stupid or insane if you are not scared by the strong".


    After bathing, the boys went to the diner before dinner time and took some food with them to their room, ate and slept early, if a giant orc told you to rest well, you do it, especially if it was one that can haunt you if you do not listen.


    Morning came, both boys stayed in bed arguing about the need to learn meleebat and unarmedbat, Leol said he had no ns to be an elite and only wanted to get rich and support the family from behind, while Yunan was trying to convince him, that there was always a good reason to learn any kind of non magicalbat, they were interrupted by a knock on the door, once Leol opened he found Fae and Lucian, Fae barged in as soon as the door was open and went straight to the wardrobes and rummaged through them mumbling. Lucian said "good morning" as if hispanion did not just barge in like she lived here. once she went through everything she turned to the boys. "get ready we need to go shopping, you two can not see the sun emperor in clothes like those" she did not even wait for them to respond and started pulling away the nkets and throwing clothes at the boys "quickly now, get ready, we only have two hours to get you ready for imperial presence".


    before the boys knew what happened they were dressed and walking between Lucian and Fae on their way out of the academy, Leol was the first regain his thinking faculties, after all not every morning you get an elf beauty to dress you up and take you out for something. he looked towards Yunan and said "did she just use, sun emperor, us and imperial presence in the same sentence?", " i think so, why?", "i think we just told the most upright person ever how to act properly", "yeah, that is not what i am worried about though, i don''t know any courtly manners" said Yunan in a sad voice "why would you need courtly manners?... oh god, i never paid attention when grandpa taught me, i am doomed grandpa is going to kill me for messing this up" while Leol was having his breakdown Lucian and Fae were giggling to each other like a couple of mischevious kids, Yunan already forgot about how sore he was mere minutes ago and wasforting his friend in his darkest moment, "at least you know some, i will stick out like a sore thumb, no one will notice you with me making a monkey out of myself", "you can be excused as an ignorantmoner, i will be yed for being a useless aristocrat" the kidsforted each other in their own way, promptingughs out of the giggling duo.

 Chapter 27: in the presence of imperials

    Chapter 27: in the presence of imperials


    It was not aplete disaster for Yunan and Leol ording to Lucian "since the meeting was happening outside the sun pce, there is no need for too much formality, ording to thews of sun ind, the imperial family is only imperial in the sun pce, otherwise, they are to be treated as you would any othermoner, treating them as royalty or nobles is a sphemy against them, and a disrespect towards them, thus, just dress well and be as well mannered as you usually are, and that is enough, besides it would only be us and maybe 4 more, so, just be yourselves", that brought second wind and a breath of relief to the boys, they never thought treating an emperor ordingly is both sphemy and disrespect, thus they rxed and let Fae dress them up like dolls, once she was satisfied Lucian paid for the clothes she chose and the four went on their way, the four were dressed royally, which drew enough ogling eyes, thieves and cut purses.


    The group met up with the rest of Debauchery at the administrative building, everyone was impably dressed and one could tell they were going to meet someone of great importance.


    Soon came a secretary and led Debauchery to the director''s office, the party looked like they are in a pic while Yunan and Leol were extremely out of sort, as if fish onnd, they were nervous and rightfully so, what child can have the mental fortitude to face an emperor, soon they arrived at an office that took up almost the entire third floor, with only space left for the secretary desk, a couch and a few chair for waiting, the secretary knocked on the door announcing the arrival of Debauchery party, although she thought about why were there 2 kids with them she did not dare question a walking level B disaster. thereafter came an old voice "enter" it said, and Leader went in first followed by Bai, Fae, Leol, Yunan, Balin, Dustan, then Lucian.


    Leader did not wait for the invitation to sit, and before anyone could say anything, Leader sat on a three person sofa, opposite the their perspective contractor, a middle aged man in his early forties, well dressed in a red robes, decorated with with me patterns, on his knees rested a fluffy fox tail, the man had orange eyes and golden hair, with ears fluffier than Lucian''s. beside him sat a ten year old girl who looked just like him but instead of the golden hair, hers was fiery red, she had too tails on her knees and she was d in a golden long dress, that looked as fluffy as her ears, behind them stood one old wizened man as a protector, his leisure look indicated he did not expect danger at this moment, this helped the man and girl sitting in front of him rx a bit. behind a desk to the side of the two sofas sat an older man one can immediately tell he was the director of the academy, in mar sara city.


    After leader sat down Fae led the boys to sit by the side of Leader, one on each side, then she sat on the arm rest of the sofa. behind leader stood Dustan nked by bai and Lucian while Balin stood besides Fae his eyes on the little girl. Leader took the lead again " hello your highness, these are my teammates, Fae, Balin, Lucian, Dustan and Bai, this here is Yunan our student and his friend Leol, the ones who told you how to behave, what is it that you want from us, please be straightforward so we can be done with official business first". by now Balin was poking Fae and trying to sign something but she kept shaking her head, the three men behind them were standing like statues, while the boys were already sweating profusely.


    The emperor took a look at the strange party and did not read much into their actions, he looked towards his daughter then at the director who gave him a nod, he then said "i am here to ask you to teach my daughter, i know you are not the usual kind of teachers but i was hoping that you can share some of your expertise with her, she has been chosen to be this generation dungeon explorer and i believe you can be the best choice for her". Leader did not answer immediately but looked at Yunan then said "he will exin our methods, if you think it is unsatisfactory, then please withdraw your request, we do not like to work on something without future, so unless you are 100% sure that your daughter can keep up for the next three years, please don''t bother us". then she nudged Yunan, to urge him to start talking. Balin and Fae are now whispering about something with a glint of greed in their eyes.


    "well it is not easy" Yunan did not know what to say " in fact it is hard, i usually need my roommate to help me back after physical sses, during intellectual sses, there is a possibility of doing things that one may consider undignifying, for example,in a chanting lesson, i had to sing nursery rhymes loudly, while a teacher was drumming totally out of tune with the rhyme i was singing. physical sses get very abusive, there will be pain and possible injuries. the lessons contain almost every useful subject in the dungeon for a normal adventurer, from nning, strategy and general scientific knowledge, to unarmedbat, melee weapons, ranged weapons, throwing skills, dodging skills and a few more. i would say it is effective and worth it, but only if you n to stick to it, otherwise don''t bother starting" Yunan ended his sentence while looking at the girl beside her father, his speech was directed at her. "we ept", said the girl with a lovely voice and her father nodded.


    Leader pped her hands and said with a crisp voice, "then we hereby ept your mission, you can negotiate the finer points with Balin here, and with this the official business is over" she then let herself go on the sofa leaning back and sighing heavily as if sitting straight for the few past minutes was so tiring to her, the same happened to the three behind her, the two young men slumped their shoulders and leaned on the sofa in front of them, while Dustan strode right to the little girl, picked her up and moved toward Fae and Balin who were already moving their hands in a groping motion, neither the stunned girl nor her father or the guardian behind them could react till the three started pawing the little girl and enjoying the fluffy tails and cute ears and flowing hair.

 Chapter 28: no free lunch

    Chapter 28: no free lunch


    Both the emperor and the guardian felt useless, looking at their little girl being molested in front of their eyes and them not even reacting till it was tote, it took them by surprise since they did not feeling any harmful intent from the giant or nor from his aplices, they knew there would be no harm to the girl but still could not keep themselves from wanting to to something, although they were nervous and scared by Debauchery they did look at Leader as if asking for permission to beat up the offenders.


    Leader in herid back did not even try to help out and just put her arms around Yunan and Leol''s shoulders and said "why are you looking at me? official business is over, i can not control their free time, i am not a dictator". an excuse when Yunan heard he thought it was a perfect excuse to shirk off responsibility, while Leol only now realised why Balin and Fae were whispering and also why leader started by mentioning official business time, these guys have been working on this the moment the walked in., this kind of frightening nning andmunication was done between the time they entered the door and the time thest one of them took his ce, simply monstrous.


    Under the eyes of everyone in the room, the little girl was on the verge of tears while the trio of Dustan, Fae and Balin were singing something that had no origin " soft ears, silky hair, fluffy velvet tails. fiery girl, happy girl, let''s y all day". behind his desk the director coughed a few times to draw attention, he asked in a surprised voice "is that it, it''s over, that was all it takes?", Bai answered him from his position "do you have any other official business? if not then yes, it is over, that is it". the director had no words to reply, this is a ss B threat? what is the all the fuss about? there is nothing dangerous about them except their unpredictability.


    "Can you please stop molesting my girl" the emperor finally had enough and decided to act if they did not stop, Fae threw a hateful nce at him " who said we are molesting the little angel, choose your words carefully you old pervert, we are merely grooming her to make sure her hair and fur is in order, there are no molesters in Debauchery" said Fae, Balin confirmed " how can we dare to molest such an angel, humph humph, show me someone who dares and i''ll break their knees, humph", while Dustan looked at Lucian, who was now giving leader a shoulder massage, with a bit of pity "sorry mate, no more grooming for you, we got a softer doll now" the three of them did not stop what their hands were doing, with a greedy and righteous expression melding as one on their faces. a snigger from Bai followed by a giggle from Leader, and then the rest of Debauchery wasughing at their shameless friends, even Yunan and Leol joined in.


    Lucian must have been hurt by Dustan''sment, although heughed he still did something that no other sane person would dare to do, he snatched the girl from the offending paws and sat her in Leader''sp, and stated "here you go, soft and fluffy with the a shoulder massage, just the way you like them" then he returned to his post massaging Leader. although the trio with now empty hands did not try to touch the girl while in the protection of Leader, they went about poking and kicking Lucian who just ignored them, if he messes up the massage, then Leader''s wrath will consume him too. on the other side, the emperor and his guardian felt like ignored little kids, they looked at the director for help but he shrugged since he had no way to stop whatever they were doing, since there was no harm done. thus the emperor turned his sight towards the dwarf munching at the tail of a lykan in frustration, and he was at a loss for words again, lykans were known for killing those who mistreated their tails, some even killed for an idental touch, but this lykan infront of him seemed like he had a higher priority than his tail being bitten at the moment. so he cleared his throat "mister Balin, how about we negotiate the mission and thepensation?" Balin turned to the man and looked at him like an idiot. "listen here mate" said Balin while spitting out some fur strands from his mouth " if you want to give us money, just send a box of jewels or something, no need to waste your time and ours" Balin returned to pulling on the tail he was biting.


    The guardian''s face turned ugly and barked at Balin "how can you call negotiating a mission a waste of time? are you even epting our mission", that got the man a very deadly look from Balin who walked to the guardian and started poking him in the stomach " well we did not ept your mission, we epted your princess. as for the mission whyplicate things, transfer her to this academy, pay for changing her teacher and sign her under us, doesn''t this make negotiating a waste of our bloody time?"stly he stepped on the foot of the guardian and made his way to the director and pped his palms on the desk "where is lunch?, the orc is getting hungry, don''t tell me that you invited us here without taking lunch into consideration!", "well of course we prepared lunch, we just thought it would take longer than 10 minutes to talk things through" answered the director, how dare this dwarf be so audacious to expect anything from him, even the lunch wasplimentary, for the emperor not for them. he was about to say more when he heard the orc talk " no food, how stingy, old emperor let''s go outside and find a good restaurant, i am starving" by the time he finished his words, hispanions were standing up and already heading for the door leaving Leol and Yunan behind, Leader hoisted the little fox on the shoulders of Dustan and lead the way out.


    "They hateplicated things, so just do the transfer using the guild, if you still want to reward them, gift them whatever you feel like, like we mentioned in the letter, if they like your subject, you win." it was Leol who talked first, he stood up and bowed to the director and left the office following Debauchery. Yunan followed behind Leol and stopped at the door "e on ser emperor, Debauchery is feasting, i don''t think you should miss it, i have never seen them do it before, but something sure is that it will be fun, hurry or you will miss it" with that Yunan left and closed the door behind him and ran down stairs to catch up with Debauchery.

 Chapter 29: a lunch with the imperials

    Chapter 29: a lunch with the imperials


    As soon as Yunan caught up to Debauchery, he was surprised to find the emperor and his guardian were at his heels, he thought they would take a few minutes going on formalities with director Joey, but it seemed they had different priority at the moment, they were anxious and visibly disturbed, pendeling between action and inaction, once again when they decided on action, their fire was doused by a stupid statement from Debauchery.


    "thisss is so shy, she can not even say her own name, so cute, so fluffy, i want to die" master Balin was poking at Dustan to put the little girl down and into arms reach. "it''s because she is afraid of your overfamiliarity, you uncivilized molesters" Bai retorted from behind Dustan giving his bum a kick. Fae noticed the arrival of Yunan, Leol and the emperor, and stopped trying to reach her hands and touch the little fluffy tail "hey emperor, what did you name this princess, if it is not cute enough be prepared to change it" she shook her fist at the stunned emperor, the guardian still had enough mental power to answer Fae "Reina, her name is Reina","not cute enough old fox" Balin stepped in with his own contribution, which prompted Bai to step in once again " what do you know about cute names? you are a dwarf, your settings does not include cuteness by default, so don''t talk about cuteness when elves are a round". "hold it right there human rat, how dare you say i know nothing of cuteness? have you ever heard a dwarf name as cute as balin? they are all brutish, mine is an exception, besides what is so cute about elvish names, they all mean fairy or green or flower, it is not cute if all the races naming sense is the same".


    the dwarf did have a point thought the guardian and the emperor, but before the confrontation between Bai and Balin could keep going, the voice of Leader, who was holding hands with Lucian in an obvious attempt at constion, sounded from the front of the group, "no fighting we are about to eat, Bai if you have a problem with them being over familiare and help lucian grief, Balin, if you think the name is not cute enough call her tails, you seems to like them so that is that, and Fae, don''t even think about about punching the emperor, he can name his daughter whatever he liked, if you feel like punching, Dustan needs a good slogging for hogging tails to himself". although Leader never looked back she knew herpatriots well enough, emperor and guardian did not even notice Faeing closer with clenched fist since their attention on the farce between Balin and Bai. the target of physical abuse changed to Dustan once it was pointed out he was taking his sweet time. Yunan felt obliged to exin something to emperor who now had a vacant look in his eyes, probably he never seen such obscene party before, so he said "they are always like this, they just have fun and that is all they do, i have only seen them serious once and that was when they were talking business with you, so just give it up and enjoy the show, it is fun if you don''t think too much", "but my daughter" before he could continue Leol chimed in " she is the safest one in this group, so rx, besides she is a child, soon she will startughing at them, same as we did, i can see it, she is holding herself back, because the idea of fun is not well taught in royal families, and she must behave decently, if you rx and have fun she will too". emperor looked at his guardian who nodded at him and went ahead to walk beside Leader, who was trying to choose a good restaurant based on which smelled best to Lucian''s nose.


    soon they found a suitable old restaurant, that smelled just right for both beast-men, and the party practically invaded the small restaurant and started moving tables to amodate all 11 of them in the same big table that took over half the space in the dining hall of the restaurant, and Leader went ahead and ordered 5 of everything they had on the menu, which put a smile on the owners face, soon the kitchen started pumping out dishes and the unholy sight of Debauchery eating was shown to the world. pick whatever you feel like from any dish on the table, feed half of what you bitten to the one you think will enjoy it, pile the good food before Leader, pass Dustan all the food you don''t like, thest piece of something good is fought over by rock-paper-scissors, pass the soup bowl by throwing it at whoever wants it, drink from the closest ss, does not matter who drank from it, feed the little princess, keep the emperor from stealing her away and letting her eat by herself. all in all a debauchery of a lunchtime.


    Yunan and Leol were ignored during most of the lunch, so they conversed with the emperor who seemed to loosen up a bit, Reina wasughing at whatever antique Dustan and Balin were talking about, and the guardian was matching Bai a drink for a drink, a fool if you ask Yunan who never even seen Debauchery drink before, but hey, he was having fun and it was rude to tell him about how it was a bad idea to engage in any activity with any member of Debauchery. Yunan found out that emperor was named Hoshi and guardian was named Hatsu. ording to the emperor, every generation, they use divination to decide who is sent to the dungeon, Hatsu was the previous generation, as per the rules once a new chosen enters the dungeon the current one inside has to leave to be a guardian of the imperial family, sometimes the divination chooses more than one from the family, sometimes even a whole party of 10 at once, this year Reina was the only chosen. and in 5 years she would enter the dungeon while the current explorer leaves. the guardians are allowed 3 months per year in the dungeon, so as to never stagnate, as well as guide the current explorer to advance faster.


    there was not a dull moment in the lunch time that spanned almost 4 hours, the party kept ordering food and drinks and sweets, all the time. once emperor finally epted that Debauchery will never act as within expectations he asked Yunan and Leol who were sitting beside him "are they like this all the time?", "yes" answered Yunan "they are like this all the time i am with them, just having fun no matter what they are doing, they choose to live, that is what Leader told me, when death is at hand at all times you either live without regrets or die inside while waiting for your demise", Leol also added his own insight "it is more understable from the viewpoint of us children, if we do not have fun and y, we get cranky and mischievous and dull, so we prefer to y around, that simple". although emperor Hoshi was notpletely sold on Debauchery, seeing his daughterugh so much did put a smile on his face. by the end of the feast, Dustan had guardian Hatsu in his arms while Balin was carrying Reina on his shoulders, they were fighting away the molesting hands of Fae. Lucian and Bai were singing a drunken chanty, Leader locked arms with emperor Hoshi, and were leading the party back to the dorms in the academy.

 Chapter 30: new roommate

    Chapter 30: new roommate


    once Yunan and Leol were about to separate from the party, leader gave the two of them a hug each and whispered to Leol "wee to the party" after that she made Balin bring Reina and reluctantly put her down, leader told Yunan, "she will live with you two from now on, take good care of her" and with that debauchery withdrew to the teachers dorm with the reluctant looks of a father and two molesters, sending the kids away to their own room. the feast was tiring for Reina so she jumped into the Yunan''s bed and curled into a ball, snoozing away her tiresome day, while Yunan and Leol went to the dorm manager to get another bed, a wardrobe, and a separating board to change behind, once all was taken care of, they returned to the room and started ying chess, so as not to wake the sleeping princess.


    by dinner time Reina woke up to find the boys had brought dinner for her from the cantina, and were ying chess, her father also had sent over her luggage, which were ced neatly near a bed that was not there, when she went to sleep. it took her a moment to fully wake up, she stood up from the bed and asked shyly in a mosquito like voice "bathroom?", she found it a bit hard to ask, since she was used to having her a fully equipped bathroom in her own room. Leol answered her "the girls toilet is at the end of the corridor on the right, the bathhouse is a separate building we will take you to tomorrow morning" then he focused back on the chess board.


    the little girl scurried away to her destination, in a hurry, once alone Yunan asked " now that you are included in the lessons, are you nning to walk the path of an all rounder?", "i am not sure" answered Leol " i will just do the training, and see what happens, if i be an all rounder while at it, then that is that, otherwise, after graduation i will focus on my own role, that should be enough" the two of them turned quiet for a moment then a look of worry started to show on their faces "do you think they will go easy on her and increase our workload?", "probably, those guys love to y around, and having her is going to give them some new things to bet on", "so in others words we are going to get tortured?", "that was a given, now it depends on how much fun they will be having seeing us struggle". the two boys sighed at each other.


    soon Reina returned to the room, with her tummy making angry noises and demanding to be fed, Yunan just pointed at the food on the table, after Reina finished eating Leol instructed her "you should set you things in the wardrobe, don''t take items out of the room, the bath house has everything you need, so if you take something with you be sure to bring it back, and also be prepared to wake up around dawn every day from now on, it helps with surviving debauchery". the boys were back at their game when they noticed Reina standing before her luggage, confused, Yunan asked if she needed help, to which she nodded her head with a ting of embarrassment on her cheeks, thus both Leol and Yunan, stood up and Yunan started to arrange her clothes and exin how it was done "make sure to separate clothes by type, like jackets and coats on the far end, in the middle put shirts and dresses, after that trousers and skirts, undergarments will go in one drawr, while socks go on the other, shoes beside the door, fold everything that can be folded and hang only those that can not". Yunan was raised in an orphanage and had new sisters periodically, he would help them out, and teach them the ropes, if the older ones were not around and the other girls were busy. Leol on the other hand was rummaging through the second chest, he took out a clock, a stuffed doll, and two groomingbs with different thickness. and put them by the small stand beside the bed. "i don''t think you need anything else from this chest, it is basically decorations and will just fill up the room for nothing, you should mail it back", Leol exined his point of view. "is there a mirror in that one?" asked Yunan, to which Leol nodded, "take it out then, girls need mirrors", "what for?", "don''t ask what you do not want to know, just take it as universalw, girls need mirrors,bs and music boxes, if that chest has any take them out" hearing the unquestionable tone from Yunan, Leol dove back into the chest and brought out two mirrors and a music box and said "anything else?", "find the toiletries box" Yunan said promptly, "it should have nail clippers and a file, a tooth brush and some string, there should also be a sewing kit" he then looked at the red faced girl struggling to fold a shirt "you should look after we are done, and see if we missed anything".


    Yunan and Leol taught the girl how to fold and arrange her stuff, since both of them had many sister around them they did not feel ufortable helping Reina sort out her stuff, on the other hand, Reina was on the verge of tears, at the sight of her most delicate garments being handled by two male strangers, back in her home, even her servants were all females and took care of everything she needed, so it was imaginable how ufortable it felt for her.


    Soon everything was in order, thanks to the help of the boys. Reina took a look through the chests to see if she needed anything else, soon after, the chests were sealed and ready to be mailed back. Yunan noticed that Reina did not bring any training outfit with her, so he brought out a spare leather armor he had kept for the inevitable day when his current one was too damaged, "put this on tomorrow, and then go shopping with fae, buy some training outfits and some light armor, you will need it for training, we will show you how to put it on in the morning, now then, we all should sleep, we have to wake up at dawn, to start our day", following that Leol turned themp off and the room turned quiet.

 Chapter 31: overestimated

    Chapter 31: overestimated


    Monday morning at dawn, Yunan and Leol woke up as usual, out on their training outfits and proceeded to wake up Reina who was adamant on sleeping a bit more, the dragged her to the wash basin the room, they use for washing their faces and helped wash her face and sober up, then they helped her put on the spare leather armor Yunan provided yesterday. " first put on some thin linen shirt and shorts, then put your head through the hole in the big bby piece and let the front side be on your chest, then buckle the straps on the sides tightly, not too tight you can not breath nor too loose it moves around when you move, then put the pants like any other pants, i put a hole for the tails but it might feel ufortable so please bear with it until you buy something fitting with faeter".


    A few question, detailed answerster, Yunan had to dress Reina himself, like she was a 5 year old, apparently she always needed help to dress herself, they needed to teach her to be independent before long, or she will never be dungeon material, finally about half an hourter, they left the dorm to the field, they started jogging slowly, Reina was in a worse shape than they thought, she could not even finish the firstp, and had to sit and regain her breath, what was worse she could only do squats and could not do more than 3 pushups and 5 sit ups, one word popped into the minds of Yuna and Leol, "pampered".


    They asked her about the training she did and she told them it was all about magic theories and chanting, nothing else, she exined to them that her own race, the eastern fox kitsune, has outstanding magical abilities and that was what they focused on, they would only start physical training a year before they enter the dungeon of tartarus, merely to be able to keep up with the travel needed for going up and down the floors.


    No wonder she was this out of shape, thought the boys, even ordinary ten year olds would have been ahead of her in that regard, and so she was told to try and push her limits every morning, because otherwise she would probably pass out before the first hour was over, and so instead of chanting, they had to make a n for Reina to grow stronger, very fast, otherwise leader would punish them for not taking care of her, and based on the training regime Yunan had, punishment was something to avoid harder than death.


    After sunrise, the boys showed Reina the bath house and told her to clean up fast and not linger there or she would miss breakfast and with her physic, she would need any energy she could muster for ss. Even after the warning Reina was stillte for breakfast and Yunan had to take out some food for her, apparently she was waiting for someone to wash her, and since it was morning no one came and she had to get out before time for ss. That earned her some weird looks, and inpromise, Leol and Yunan flipped a coin on who would show her how to clean up herself, they would never let fae or leader take care of that as they would just take advantage of the situation and pet her till they were content, maybe they would even request to bathe her every time she needed to, which defeats the purpose.


    Reina ate in hurry on her way to hall 5 following the boys, when they arrived they were met by Balin who pounced at Reina and took her in his arms, cuddling her, it took both Yunan and Leol cursing at him and pulling Reina from his arms telling him he can have her after ss, and threatening him to tell the other he took advantage of the defenseless girl, it finally worked when Yunan brought leader in their threats and Balin had to relinquish the girl to her roommates.


    Once they went into the hall, Yunan exined to leader the situation Reina was in and she had to run a fewps around the hall, and she fell exhausted in less than 3 minutes, the betting round was lost, they all overestimated her, way too much, they thought even if she was not on Yunan''s level, she was at least around where Leol was, but they were severely shocked by her incapability.


    After deliberation, debauchery came to a conclusion, physical training was a priority for Rina while Yunan and Leol had to continue the old regime. And so it was decided that Reina had to run ap around the hall once every ten minutes, then she can join the boys in magical constructs, she was much better at that, but not as good as they expected from an imperial descendant, Reina was good at theory, but drawing the magical constructs was challenging for her, add in the fact she was getting tired from the constant exercise, and her thinking speed deteriorated fast, by the end of the first hour she was so tired she was dozing off.


    As expected, debauchery could not help themselves and let reina take a nap until thest hour of the morning lesson, she restarted the same routine of ap every ten minutes but with the added chanting of the divergent series, during the drawing of magical constructs, she made enough mistakes that Yunan and Leol who could reliably calcte until the 60s could not count past the 10s before restarting thanks to Reina.


    After the morning ss was over Yunan told Fae to help them buy more training outfits for all three and she agreed readily, and the trio was escorted by Lucian and Fae for shopping and lunch outside the academy, thanks to lucian pushing for speedy shopping fae did not linger much in the various clothes and went straight toward the shops specialised in armor and hunting gear, they even had enough time for hearty lunch, while Balin was being whipped for daring to take the lead in cuddling Reina earlier in the morning, he was lifted by dustan high up while Bai and leader whipped him using the ts of Bai''s swords.

 Chapter 32: lecture

    Chapter 32: lecture


    As the afternoon arrived, Yunan, Leol and Reina returned wearing new training outfits and carried some more in their hands courtesy of Fae who was unting her wealth to buy some cuddly time with Reina. Lucian, who took the position of a wall between Fae and Reina was well bruised after a quick shopping trip, thanks to the unrelenting strikes Fae had delivered mainly as protest, probably also wanting to knock Lucian out and molest the little fox to her heart''s content.


    Once the shoppers arrived at hall 5 they found Balin hurling insults at Dustan while holding his posterior, it seems Bai and Leader took extra care while punishing him. After the whole party was present it was decided that while Reina ran around the hall and did some basic arithmetics, Yunan and Leol had to attack Dustan and try to break his defence. Leol was given a bastard sword, about a meter long, while Yunan was dual wielding two one handed swords. Before the training started Leader started with a lecture.


    "The ss system is wrong" Leader started "All humans and half beasts are born well rounded, there are some innate advantages that ys a role in the development of stats, but that is all, therefore there is absolutely no rhyme or reason for the ss system except for division ofbour, making it easier to ssify and divide adventurers. In the ancient times when the first explorers entered tartarus there was no concepts of party or ss; most of the early explorers were lone wolfs who managed to make legends and reach far deeper in the dungeon than the strongest current party at the moment, and the only reason was their ability to ount for almost all shorings" leader paused for a moment to let the idea sink in.


    "All those innate advantages only help you develop a stat faster than the others, for example Reina, as a kitsune she has the innate ability to learn magic faster than almost all creatures, as the kitsune has a high affinity for magic, they can advance their wisdom faster, they are good at all magic yet are more attuned towards illusion and shapeshifting magic" leader pointed at fae who stepped forward. "Elves are also magical, thus they can train in magic as fast as the kitsune, but they are attuned more towards nature, they make wonderful healers and elemental magicians." she then pointed at Balin who stepped forward while fae returned back to her spot. "Dwarves are smart and also lean towards wisdom, yet they do not cast macic but be smiths and engineers, they are very straightforward and also strong because of the requirements of smithing, thus they make good protectors, and those dwarves who chose to study magic make the best enchanters".


    "It is the same for all of the sentient races, they all can advance faster in one stat then the others. humans on the other hand are different, they suffer from focus, they can train a certain stat and keep getting faster at training in it as long as they do not stop they can reach the peak of said stat, but if they shift focus to another stat they advance slower than thest time and take longer to reach the same point, and can suffer from regression in the first stat. thus most humans focus on one stat or two simultaneously, even if trained they naturally lean towards one or two, and that leaning means they will advance faster in their favourite stat, and so the idea to master one stat faster than take a long time advancing in a well rounded manner spread, and from that idea the ss system was born"


    "The idea that the jack of all trades are worthless, came from the fact that many abandon the road before it bears its fruits, but the truth is different, if one sticks to training all paths, one would steadily advance faster in all stats, it will just take about twice to thrice as long to reach the power level of a master that focused on only on stat, yet many forget that a jack of all trades on the same level as a master is far more potent as a party member than the master. For example, let''s take Yunan and little tails for example, they are both level one in wisdom, but yunan is also level one in dexterity, strength, and constitution, meaning he has 4 chances to survive an attack while little tails has only one, Yunan can run faster, hit stronger, take more punishment and still think as fast as little tails. While little tails can only use her brains and make a strategy using her party members if she wishes to survive, Yunan can just ditch the heavy load of useless teammates and survive, if he can not save any of the with him, on the other hand little tails survival depends on the same heavy baggage, that Yunan can just ditch"


    "Ever since Bai told me his student wanted to learn everything, i had the idea to train him into a master of all trades, and this is the point of the training we are putting you through, every day, you use your brains, strength, constitution and speed to solve all kinds of problems that seem a bit insignificant, but there is visible progress in the way Yunan grew, albeit slower than most, Yunan can destroy anyone who has put in the same time into only one stat, so i hope you can understand if we are harsh or sometimes unreasonable as you start to grow faster, and stronger and beyond those on your level. One more point, the path of an all rounder is long and hard, luckily you guys started before you went into the dungeon when it will be toote"


    "If you start training your other stats only just before adulthood or after it, you will find it harder than it is now that you are still children, so forget all about what the rest of the academy is being taught, we are preparing you kids to be explorers and not some soldiers who can not even advance while in the dungeon and have to depend on the guild for their livelihood. We may seem easy going and entric, maybe even a proper party if you see us fight, but never forget, before we joined hands in debauchery, each of us had to survive for years in tartarus, alone for some of them, and even if you see us take the "proper sses" all of us can easily be as effective as a party in the same level. That is the rule of tartarus, those who are adaptable survive while the other be feed for the monsters"


    On that note ended the lecture and the training started, from one look you can tell the kids have been given a clear path to tread and the motivation they needed to walk it.

 Chapter 33: lucky star

    Chapter 33: lucky star


    The afternoon lesson ended with a satisfied debauchery, well, certain indignant voices were heard when Yunan, Leol and Reina left hall number 5 towards the baths, the voices grumbled on and on about needing to assign escort duty to protect little tails in case of danger, the voices had a tinge of tears and hurt when Lucian was ordered to be the permanent hidden escort for the three. Yunan went ahead and booked a small bath for the trio to enter, just in case someone decided to join them in the bath house. As previously discussed Leol taught Reina the general way of how to clean up, and the three of them soaked in the bath until sunset. Yunan lost the coin toss and carried the sleepy fox back into the room, while Leol went to the cantina and took out double portions for the three of them. After dinner the three went to bed to rest their weary bodies for the new day.


    Tuesday morning, the three youngsters left their room in silence, neither of them wanted to practice this morning, they did not even want to wake up this early, but they had to for the sake of their future selves, so they started by doing 2ps on the field, Reina did finish bothps out of sheer will, then they proceeded to do 10 sets of each of the three basics, then they sat down and started counting a divergent series, correcting each other. They chose to reduce the amount of physical workout for two reasons, first to keep Reina from feeling left behind, secondly in an attempt to lower the burden they ce on their bodies especially after the harsh training from yesterday. While the kids were singing the divergent series a piece of a red hot rock bounced of Yunan''s head, leaving behind a bald patch of burned hair the size of a fist, thennding in the middle of the sitting three.


    "Let me see"Reina offered to check the existence of a wound on Yunan who was clutching his head from the pain of the impact, while Leol was checking the oddly smooth stone cooling down in front of them. A crisp sweetugh sounded from Reina who tried to hide her mouth while giggling, it drew the attention of Leol who looked at Yunan and was in dire need tough himself, Yunan touched his head where the stone hit him, he did not feel anything was wrong until he touched the unburnt hair outside of that area, an ugly look appeared on his face, he had a fist sized bald patch on his head, visible to all who looked at it. "You canugh, but only this time, so get it out of your system" said Yunan with a sad voice and was about to throw away the stone that offended him, but then he felt the oddly smooth ssy feeling that is not part of how rocks usually feel, so he pocket it instead to keep it as a trinket.


    While Leol and Reina could barely stopughing before they start again after looking at Yunan abd and his bald patch, they walked to the room and yunan put on a hat to cover his head, he wanted to find a barber immediately and do something about his hair but there would not be anyone open at this hour, so he decided to go after the morning lesson, and steeled himself for the jeering he would get from debauchery.


    Yunanid back on his bed feeling something was off he asked his roommates. "Why are you so energetic, aren''t you supposed to be tired and have sore muscles from all the work yesterday? I am used to doing morning training, so it is understandable that my constitution is better than yours and can have energy, but howe you have energy when you have such bad constitution". "I don''t know, ever since i startedughing i felt better, all the soreness was fading away" chirped Reina. "Same here" shrugged Leol. "I don''t know what is going on but we should report it to debauchery, they may have an idea". The three agreed by nodding and then went for breakfast ate hastily, then ran to hall 5.


    As expected the wee party made of Fae and Balin was waiting at the door, when Yunan saw theming over he removed his hat and the sudden appearance of the bald patch took the two by surprise long enough for Leol to move Reina inside the hall, followed momentarily by the roaringughter of Balin and Fae. Yunan came inside the hall and got everyone but leader on their knees. After every one calmed down, Leader looked at Lucian for an exnation since he was in charge of their security, he simply answered "hit by a meteor", that earned him a round of congrattions, it takes a huge amount of luck to get hit by a meteor.


    The chances of being hit by a meteorite is a few million times less than the chance of being hit by lightning. The party carried a strange ritual of stealing some of his luck, Yunan was not sure if the ritual was a joke or not but he did not dare ask, the ritual was simple, caress the bald patch and kiss it, and make Yunan say "i bless you with half my luck for the rest of your life".


    Before leader got the chance to start the training, Yunan stopped her to inquire about the strange thing about this morning. "Leader, after the the meteorite hit me, our bodies started feeling better, i thought it was normal for me since i have good physic, but then i noticed Leol and Reina also getting more energized ever since they startedughing, when we came back to the room i asked them about it they said even the difort from yesterday was disappearing fast, any ideas why did that happen ?"


    Dustan answered him first "there a few things that can cause the same, the most likely is the ingredients for food, but that is not the only thing, a rejuvenation blessing, or maybe a break through in your constitution, so it is not very strange that tiredness can disappear suddenly". "We can rule those out" said Lucian " there was no magic cast on them while i was sitting there, and the food never had any effect before and there is no way the guild would use level 4 or higher ingredients on an academy when there are endless aristocrats who would pay endless money for it, as for constitution breakthrough, it is very unlikely to happen to children let alone in the same time, so that is ruled out too."


    As if hit by an epiphany, Balin grabbed onto Yunan excitedly "the meteorite, where is it? Did you keep it? Answer me baldy, quickly" while Yunan was about to answer, Bai intervened and pulled Balin away saying "he can not be that lucky, don''t get the boy excited for nothing", "he was lucky to bit hit by a meteorite so what are the odds?" asked Fae. "About a few million times lower, i also think we should not get our hopes high" Leader got in the cryptic conversation.


    Yunan took out the meteorite, and throw it to Balin while asking "what are you guys talking about? It is just a ssy smooth rock, what could it do?" debauchery looked at the stone in the hands of Balin and in unison they said """lucky bastard!"""

 Chapter 34: starheart

    Chapter 34: starheart


    The morning was already going bad enough for Yunan so he did not expect to be called a lucky bastard by all of debauchery, if they thought getting hit by a meteorite was lucky, to him it felt very unlucky. No matter how you look at it, he was the one with the bald patch in his head, and still being taken as an altar to be used for a lucky stealing ritual, he hoped they sucked off the bad luck from the rest of his day, at least that would be useful for him.


    Standing there examining the stone "it is the culprit, there is no doubt about it, how much luck does he have to have this fall on his head" said Balin with indignancy. "Too bad it is not effective on us anymore, it would be very lucky to have it delivered to our hands" said Bai. "can you make something out of it for the kids? Their luck is beyond my imagination" added Lucian.


    "Well that boy has endless luck, since we are involved with him let''s do something good for him and create some karma to hopefully leach some of his luck, Balin you have until midday to make an enchanted ne with concealing, restraining and amplification effects, this must not be known outside the party, don''t be frugal, if there is not enough money dig through the savings, i have a feeling that us doing this is going to pay a thousand times more."


    Balin moved so fast he almost apparated outside the hall and disappeared soon after that, dustan ran after him almost as fast, Fae did some weird hand moves and then frowned and disappeared like a ghost from he spot with Lucian in tow. Leader gathered the kids around her and exined " what you have here is called a starheart, it is born inside a dying star and after it dies it is ejected into the universe, some of them have fallen in our world, while some were brought out by the dungeon as drops from monsters, that is how we know about them."


    "The starheart is only effective on those under 18, it gets consumed when being around teens and children, it uses its own energy to boost your constitution andprehension as well as the rate your stats can advance. If we first nned for three years training, with the help of this we can be done in two, also this stone that many would never look twice at, has the ability to push your stats beyond the limit of age, meaning you can get the required 10 points before you be 15 and even 20 if you are lucky before it turns into sand and lose all its power. This thing is the best item we can add to train you youngsters into masters of all trades"


    "This information is a secret you need to protect, otherwise the annoyance from before is nothing to what will happen if it gets out that we have a starheart, believe me there will parties who have not left the dungeon in yearsing to take it" said Bai "so try not to even talk about it, herees proof" he pointed at the door where Fae and Lucian were dragging over two men each into the hall. " They were eavesdropping on us in an effort to get whatever they can from the training we are giving you, this information is worth more than you can expect to aristocrats who are hoping to create better trained explorers and reach deeper into the dungeon"


    When Fae and Lucian dropped the unconscious men on the ground, Leader shot an inquisitive look at the duo, "the rest have not arrived yet" said Lucian. Bai started chanting some unfocused words that were forgotten the moment the children heard them. He then ced a palm on the foreheads of the four men, one by the other. Reina almost screamed "memory magic" she was born in a family of magic users and have seen many peculiar spells and magic used by her family members.


    "Yes" Fae responded to her "Bai is good at memory spells, he is wiping away the memories they have about what we said this morning and is recing them by the memories of us exining memory maniption magic and us capturing them for a showcase" then she helped Lucian move the ones Bai finished with to a corner of the hall, once Bai finished debauchery immediately started the training. Not unlike yesterday, Reina had to run ap every 15 minutes and everyone went on to y chess like usual while singing some popr tavern songs. Once the four men woke up the walked away embarrassed for being found out and used for showcasing, cursing theirtepanions for not protecting them when they were needed.


    Once the bell announcing the end of ss rang out, debauchery took Yunan and Leol and Reina to their dorm, where Fae cast a few spells and all of them ate lunch while waiting for Balin and Dustan to arrive. It did not take long for Baling to arrive wearing a silver colored ne, with a lower half of a sphere hanging on it, leader passed the starheart to Balin and he pressed it in the half sphere, a light shed and both the stone and the half sphere disappeared and in their ce was a ck bead, it looked like the mostmon ne that can be bought in any street stall.


    Balin passed the ne to Yunan and said " this ne has a 4 times strengthening effect, a restriction effect that will limit the radius of the stone to 3 meters in any direction around you, those around you will gain the effect of the starheart, there is also a concealing effect, so unless someone can apply a level 25 appraise on it in their hands, they would never notice anything, so try to staying close to each other to get all the time, if the records the dwarven masters left are to be trusted this stone willst about 3 years so get as much from it as you can during that period"


    After lunch the group went back to hall five and continued their training as scheduled, dagger and dodging for all the three children, and the effects of the stone were almost obvious to see, they couldst longer and were resting faster, which prompted leader to increase the difficulty by adding the divergent series singing into the mix, to tire out the kids and teach them to work together with minimummunication.


    Reina was the happiest with the effects of the stone since she was almost fully rested after bathing in the afternoon, thus Yunan proposed an intellectual passtime after ss, to gain even more from the stone, he thought about changing the general knowledge ss into application of general knowledge, and use the time from after ss to dinner time for reading through general knowledge books in their room. As for y time it was left of the weekends, the week was for working as hard as possible and they can rx during the weekends.

 Chapter 35: A spys tale

    Chapter 35: A spy''s tale


    Wednesday was ning day, and with the new n to push Yunan, Leol and Reina to make as much use of the Starheart, today''s lesson would be grappling techniques with nning to be discussed by the side. And who better to learn grappling on than the poor guys trying to make a living by spying on hall number. After a showcasing of the basic moves and the point of grappling courtesy of master dwarf Balin, Debauchery went ahead and sent Lucian anf Bai, to capture three unlucky spies from the surroundings.


    It has not been two and a half weeks since Jules has been monitoring Debauchery and their teaching hall, he duly noted down all actions that were performed. Although being unable to hear the conversations inside the number 5 hall has been detrimental to the strategist he is working with, there was no way for Jules to get close enough for eavesdropping without offending debauchery. Just yesterday Jules was lucky enough to witness Debauchery handling 4 of his co-workers like they were catching snails, that morning he thanked his lucky stars that all he did was a use a spell that allows him to see through walls, and he did it openly. It dawned on him that secrets are being exchanged in there and he would stand to gain nothing from hearing such things, thus theints of the strategist were neglected in favour of his own health.


    Today there a few more eavesdroppers and no matter how they entice him, Jules decided it was not worth it, until his employer ordered him to get something no matter how mundane it was. It has been about half an hour since the lesson started when Jules joined his fellows who were listening in, he activated his spell and the crisp voice of Leader came into his ears " please list out the ns you would consider while teaching grappling." then came a very mundane discussion led by the students on how they would teach others grappling, and soon a n was agreed upon by all was taken into action.


    It started with the dwarf talking generally about how grappling works, its advantages and where to best use it, what you might call a typical lesson. When it came to thest part the dwarf asked the kids "how do you n on doing the demonstration?", one kid who looked like an aristocrat with an easy attitude said "why not use the ones who are listening in, if there are any, let them be the test subject and they get to hear what we are saying without wasting mana, if there are none, i guess Dustan is durable enough". Jules felt a hint of danger and his heart constricted when he saw Leader nod her head, he wanted to leave as soon as possible but before he could move a muscle there was a lykan standing before him and from behind he heard a voice that felt likeing from the depths of hell "please join our lesson voluntarily, otherwise you will be forced to join like those from yesterday, we promise not kill or permanently injure you in return for your voluntary participation, any who are forced into it do not have the aforementioned rights, choose wisely"


    Jules stayed still, he watched as those fellows who tried to flee were knocked out and carried back like wet socks, those who surrendered were escorted into the hall, all that was left was Jules alone standing there, he did not want to be part of the lesson and surely he did not dare to run although neither the demon from hell nor the lykan paid attention to h he knew there was no way out of it, thus he chose to be done with it and nevere near these people ever again, when he walked inside he was received warmly by an elf "d you decided to join us, do you prefer to go first or wait for your turn?". "First" answered Jules he would rather be done with this sooner thanter, he surely did not which to see any techniques the dwarf had to showcase.


    Jules strode to the dwarf ready to feel pain, but he was happily surprised by the first part of the lesson, were the dwarf only showcased the best location to grab when grappling an unarmed opponent, other than a few touches by the kids and being spun and positioned like a mannequin, soon his turn was over and was politely sent away by the elf. He ran the moment he stepped out of the hall, straight to his employer notifying him that he would not risk his life anymore with those maniacs, and so taking half the payment, thinking he was lucky enough to escape with his life and body intact was worth the rest of the payment.


    Back inside hall number 5 Balin had gone from theoretical to practical, and thanks to the untrained hands of the students, bone chilling screams sounded inside the hall as Yunan, Leol and Reina practiced each move as showcased by balin. Each move he showed was a way to cripple and maim, broken bones, dislocated joints, strained muscles, paralysed limbs, blinded, disoriented and confused the poor unlucky recipients


    The injured were healed over and over and over again, many who passed out due to pain woke up thanks to another pain, soon the students started having pity on them and felt bad for injuring them anymore, and the lesson turned from just grappling to strength regtion, during this part, the teacher changed to Bai, who taught the kids how to judge how much force is necessary to perform the grappling with minimal injury when the objective is subduing and not killing. Bai did not forget to teach the kids all the cheap shots Balin had left out from the lesson.


    At the end of the lesson those who joined voluntarily were released, while those who ran away were left inside with all their injuries unhealed and groaning from pain. "Thest part of your nning lesson, what do you do to those who resist a good offer when they are overwhelmed?" Leader asked her students who were tired and hungry "interrogation, find all they can say without killing them then we can decide what to do with the information after lunch" Reina answered "they have been tortured enough i assume they won''t need much coercion". leader nodded to Bai and dismissed ss for lunch.

 Chapter 36: Strategy: deterrent force (1)

    Chapter 36: Strategy: deterrent force (1)


    Wednesday afternoon. Yunan, Leol and Reina arrived at the hull number 5 to a very sullen and miserable, the lesson that was nned was footwork and dodging but due to the current circumstances it was changed into target practice and strategy; the students had to shoot dart and run ap after each dart, while discussing a strategy none stop, next is how the afternoon lesson went.


    Once everyone was ready to start the lesson Leader started by a lecture. "Strategy is not for minimizing casualties, it is to win without lifting a finger, let alone having any casualties, for example: a general famous for his strategies that could cripple armies with only a handful of men, had once sent all his army but a thousand men he trusted most. That army went to reinforce a fort at the other end of the country, and as such his fort was about to be attacked, this shrewd general opened his gates told his men to hide and kill any who tried to scale the walls, then sat on the ramparts and yed his lute. The invader knew at once there was a plot on action to decimate their army, and theyid siege to the fort for a full month before the invaders backed away for fear of reinforcements reaching the fort. In this example the enemies were defeated by mere reputation and a hint of strategy, the smart strategists refused to move before having an idea about what strategy the general was employing, thus the indecision cost them a fort. The point of our lesson is the famous general not tye indecisive strategists, and so you kids are to use these prisoners to stop any for of spying in the future, the first question you must answer is ''why were there so many that ran away, and why did we release those that followed orders?''".


    "Easy" Answered Leol."Those who ran, they belong to different factions, and they did not have the luxury to be questioned, as for those who were released, because either they had nothing to be afraid of except for their lives or they were confident we will not interrogate them.", After a moment of thinking Reina continued " those who followed orders are not a problem, because the information they had were not worth anything to them, no secrets they could not divulge, thus the problem shifts to those who tried to run, they were either too scared they lost their logic; which is very rare in a spy; or they hold information that if uncovered would bring damnation upon them, they are worth questioning".


    After a moment of thought Yunan gave his insights " there should be at least one sent by the academy director for monitoring Debauchery; an unstable risk factor; there will also be one sent by the sun emperor to keep an eye on his daughter and future of the kitsune family, not out of distrust but because shit happens no matter how prepared you are. Then there are the rest, they can be divided into two groups, first is the enemies, those who which to harm both us and Debauchery are included into this. Second is those who which to sell what Debauchery is teaching, these are easily dealt with, a p on the wrist and by selling our own official Debauchery training program. As for those that which us harm Debauchery must act on the announcement they madest week, any who seek to disrupt the mission will pay, there should be an item they use to record our actions, we can use said device to record their confessions, send it to the guild as an exnation to the destruction of those who neglected the warning. The prisoner''s lives depend on them, if they confess and their statements can be verified by memory magic they will be sent to the guild to deal with, those who keep lying even when we will check their memories, they can be tortured to give the correct statements, then if they desire death give it to them otherwise send them broken beyond repair to the guild."


    Yunan felt disgusted saying those words, he knew they were only making a hypothetical situation and going overboard was okey, but if he encountered the situation in real life he would leave them to the guild and not dirty his hands, but the pleased look he saw in Bai and Leader told him he passed their test.


    "Listen here children, brutality is part of the dungeon life, if you go soft on your enemies they wille back again and again until they destroy you, but if you are brutal, you stop all those who had the same idea from even thinking about harming you, do not shy from brutality as it solves problems that are yet to bud, what Yunan described is the way you must act as a dungeon explorer, weather inside or outside tartarus."


    "Let''s continue the lesson" Bai pped his hands in the fashion of Leader "We have found exactly as you have predicted so far, all those who were released went to their employers and resigned from the job, as for these ones left here, they are those who n harm to us, there are two who are here to harm Reina, and one to harm Leol,stly there are 5 here that are trying to harm Debauchery, and so we ask again, with the utmost brutality you can think of what is the next action Debauchery should take."


    Reina was first this time "retaliation in kind, they are threatening a student of Debauchery and as such those who ordered the spies must pay with a child of their own, do not take loves but only maim and ruin the future, take away a hand and a leg, and leave it in the study of the parent, as for those who sent the spies to harm Debauchery themselves, destroy their foundation, take away their treasures and cause unforgettable and unrecoverable injury, and announce it to the world, debauchery does not just issue threats, they act on them too."


    "I would go one step further" responded leol. " Find their dirty dealings and share them with the public and the guild to ensure they never rise from their fall, andstly make sure to destroy their back up while you are at it, most would rather not get on the bad side of the guild without strong background nudging them to do it"


    "That is not the Debauchery way, not brutal enough" interjected Yunan ." You expect Debauchery to do more than warn for the threat they defied the guild to release, i think total annihtion, go into their homes amd break the front door, and kill everyone, i myself would avoid innocent people but that would take away from the threat debauchery poses since innocent people can be used against their wishes. Thus debauchery will annihte all risk factors and their backing as well. This would send a message, now and in the future do not get caught by debauchery or you will perish."

 Chapter 37: Strategy: deterrent force (2)

    Chapter 37: Strategy: deterrent force (2)


    As the discussion kept going, one could tell the fear gaining on those prisoners who were listening, not only were they shocked by the brutality being nned, but also by how the students had known how to deal with enemies in a fashion that would bring shame to most strategist. All of the actions mentioned by the students would nip in the bud any hostility towards Debauchery and their students, and they were nning to do it to all who were caught red-handed. They could not understand how kids can be so well informed in the art of punishment. They forgot that Reina as a princess would catch a thing or two about punishment from her studies.


    Leol was part of the aristocracy and those things can be overheard during meal time and no one would bat an eye at such atrocities. Although Leol was part of a stable and rather good family who were by no means harmful to theirmunity and were neutral when it came to dealing with other aristocrats. Their unity would provide them with a fair warning when someone tries anything, and since their family was rather peaceful and without ambition but the survival of their bloodline, they were well respected in the city and were invited as guests and consultants. That is when Leol came to the brutal side of aristocracy and learned how to deal with it from his grandpa.


    As for Yunan, it is as one would expect, orphanages are often bullied and trampled upon by the locals, and the orphans living inside are susceptible to the same treatment, but if every time someone bullies an orphan they are beaten to an inch of their lives, no matter how brazen you are, you would rather keep your child safe than risk offending the orphanage and have your child beaten almost to death when they step out of your vision, that means no schools, no ying outside, no friends who will risk being beaten to y with your kid and more importantly stones that will pelt you whenever you let your guard down, constant disruption to your work and worst of all, being targeted by the criminal organisations that recruit orphans. That is the way orphans chose to protect themselves, if you decided to antagonize an orphanage be ready for hell to let loose on you, because even if you make the children fear you like death, the sisters have enough backing from the pious popce and the knights of the church in worst case scenario, thus it is expected for Yunan to be taught this.


    As Debauchery continued their conversation Fae raised thest point in this strategy "How do we keep the information from leaking and deal a sweeping blow at once that those who are our targets do not get the news and flee before we reach them?". After a few minutes of deliberation Yunan presented the n the students came up with.


    "Memory maniption for these poor sods, remove the questioning part as well as this conversation from their minds, better to wipe it clean and make it like they fell unconscious during grappling and only just regained consciousness when delivered to the guild, as for dealing a big blow at once, we go out for a field trip, find a city that has a portal leading to all the location of our targets"


    "There are 8 targets, we can destroy all of them in one night if we split Debauchery into two parts each with a memory magic user, a healer and a rogue, so Fae, Dustan and Lucian in one group and Balin, Bai and Leader in the other, kill fast and silently, read the memories of the big shots in each target to see who is backing them, leave a bloody message that says ''Debauchery was here''. You are only allowed half an hour in each target and it has to be quiet. Once all the main objectives are dead, we move on to those who spurred them on us and do the same thing, total annihtion in half an hour and leave the same message and leave"


    "By morning we deliver the evidence we gathered to the guild and they will find more in the ruins we left behind, there should be memory magic that can extract the memories of the dead, thus the guild would have nothing to say a warning was issued before, and the excuse of protecting the mission is more valid since harming debauchery or its students means the mission is a failure, taking the maximum effort is not against thews of Tartarus, the only rules adventurers are bound to follow."


    "Lastly there is a possibility that the guild would punish you for using excessive force, they might give you missions that will make it harder for you to keep teaching us as a best case scenario, while the worst would be suspending your status as guild members. Since revoking it is just giving you a free rein, since they cannot stop you from getting inside Tartarus without disrupting their most lucrative operations, and cannot hunt you down for the same reason. Thus suspending you is worst case scenario, where you must stop teaching this ss and do something else to repent, we have decided to follow you in that case"


    "I am an orphan with no strings attached to me, Leol has a grandpa who will punish him for not following you and wasting a good opportunity, as for Reina her father knew the risks when chose Debauchery to teach her, and i have a feeling he would not oppose Reina following you guys until it is time to enter Tartarus."


    "That was beyond our expectations" said leader while pping her hands as praise for her students, "we can implement the strategy you put on this weekend, and as for being punished by the guild, they have the right to dream. We are happy that you are able to use the lessons we taught you this fast, both nning and strategy will be integrated as part of other lessons as you have grasped the essence of both, nning is about predicting every possible eventuality and strategy is about dealing with them with minimal effort. Since you kids have reached this point faster than we thought we will focus on physical training, while the academic part will be left to you to explore and ask about during our lessons. You made us proud"


    "Not on the weekend!" shouted Reina, "there will be parties during weekends and holidays, therefore we can not effectivelyplete the objectives without a hitch, also the weekend is our personal time, so wait for the week days. Going to field trips during the week is much more believable than during weekends, anyone would know we are up to something if we use our free time for a studying session. Wait to the week days then no one would think twice about us disappearing on the field trip since we do not like being spied on."


    "Well said" retorted Bai " since you are going with us during the mission, you will clean a level one nest as a form of ability test, you will have only next week to study and improve your fighting skills, now stand up and use any means necessary to touch or hit Dustan, while i deal with the prisoners." And so started the afternoon lesson,bat training

 Chapter 38: Not the face

    Chapter 38: Not the face


    During the whatever was left of the afternoon, Yunan,Leol and Reina tried their all and still failed to touch Dustan. Thanks to the effect of the Starheart they couldst much longer and develop a better understanding of thebat techniques as well as coordination, even if it was very superficial and could not be called teamwork, they were getting used to the fact that their attacks might affect their teammates and are starting to take into consideration the location of their teammates when nning an attack.


    Balin was the one who delivered the mutted prisoners to the guild with a note saying ''keep the spies away or let them be test subjects''. Soon he returned to hall number 5 and a new betting round started in Debauchery, as if they were not going to annihte a few families in another week and a half, obviously this round of betting was about who can get to Dustan and deal any damage. Shouts and encouragements of a weird kind filled the hall, things like "grab his legs and bite him" or "smother him to death with those fluffy tails" and of course the ssic "you are loosing my money put some umph into it".


    The ss ended on a high note when Balin grew tired of the fight and joined in to spice it up, he climbed up to Dustan''s shoulders sat there and blinded the orc for 5 second intervals to get the kids some leeway and chance, and with Balin joining the fun all hell broke loose as fae Fae and Leader buffed the kids up and debuffed Dustan, Bai would throw caltrops under Dustan every now and then, and Lucian would poke Dustan on the side if he ever let his guard down.


    Still no matter how they cheated, they could not get the kids to touch Dustan as he resisted by literally throwing Debauchery off of him wherever heid hands on one of them, he would pick up the victim and fly they will into a wall, while narrowly dodged the kids trying all they could to get to him, until the bell tolled ending the y session.


    Reina had gotten used to the presence of the boys and had be a bit more open around them, thanks to the way the treated her,and how they taught her as much as they could about everything thing that she could not do, shehad be slightly dependant on them. As for Yunan and Leol they treated her like a younger sister whom they must guide and protect, especially against the hands of Debauchery, this period would certainly be a memory they couldugh at around a fireter on in their lives.


    One might criticize them for sharing the same room and bath at an age where sexual curiosity is growing with them taking them nearer to puberty, thus something must pointed out for those people: Yunan, Reina and Leol are under the influence of a group that has no qualms about discussing the most vulgar of topics as if discussing the weather. Debauchery is a group that is not affected by sexualities between their members, they only differentiate by ability and trust. Thus it would be expected for their students to project the same mindset. As for the curiosity? Well that is left for the outsiders.


    Back in their room, the kids each took a book and sat there reading and discussing what they did not understand with the each other, until dinner time. As the kids were having a quiet dinner, a group of girls approached them to invite Reina to join their group. Since it was the first time Reina ate at the cantina she was immediately noticed by many, and hering in with two boys had already infuriated some girls since teachers forbade the mingling between boys and girls, even though the academy had no such rule.


    Reina politely declined the invitation, she was not good with strangers since her identity attracts too much attention to her. Some girls don''t take no for an answer and they started making trouble. "You there, both of you move away from her and go eat somewhere else, don''t you know it is forbidden to mingle between boys and girls, if you don''t move away right now we will report you for breaking the rules and harming a student, you will get kicked out for sure" said one of them "yeah that''s right, move away or we will get you kicked out of school, boys should stay away from us girls" said another "how dare you both gang up on her, shameless", and the the voices kept growing and drawing more attention while Yunan, Reina and Leol ate leisurely and watched the farce going on like it was something they see everyday, although the girls had high pitched voices they hold no candle to Debauchery at their most quiet.


    One of the girls felt emboldened by the cackle around her and pushed Leol''s head into his own te, sheughed saying "that is what you get for ignoring us". Leol wiped away the food on his face, nodded to Yunan, moved his te away from the wooden tray, stood up and bam the girl that pushed Leol was out cold on the ground, Yunan motioned to Reina to stay put and stood up with tray in hand and said "make us".


    The whole cantina was in a pin drop silence, the guy just t out without warning dispatched the girl as if she was a waste of space, and then his friend stood up and told the girls who were surrounding them and ordering them to move to "make them". This is what they call taunting done right.


    The stunned cackle soon turned red and pounced at the boys, what followed was a one sided show where girls threw themselves face first at wooden trays while trying to punch or grab the owner of the tray, it did not take long before the angry mob was sprawling on the floor either groaning or out cold. Once Leol found no one else about to interrupt their dinner he went for seconds and sat back next to the giggling Reina and the smiling Yunan. "Debauchery is far more influential than i thought, only one week and i am already getting into fights" sighed Leol, while Yunan answered "what did you expect, we fight for our lives all the time, it would be a wonder if you actually just stayed put after that".


    Soon after the kids left the cantina to the muffled sobs of girls clutching the precious faces that had been attacked so ruthlessly by the shameless bullies.

 Chapter 39: Inspection

    Chapter 39: Inspection


    Thursday morning was promising some stormy weather with dark clouds looming over the backwater city of Mar sara, under the faint light of dawn 3 children were doingps around the center field of the adventures academy, they were whispering to each other about something. In a dark corner a hooded figure was watching over them, there was tenderness and approval in their eyes. The hooded figure would look into the direction of the only magnificent building in the academy were a bronze telescope was focused on the kids, it seems they drew too much attention to themselves.


    Breakfast time was very boisterous today with talk about the group of girls that bit more than they could chew and got beaten to kingdome. The masses showed reverence to the Yunan, Reina and Leol who were chatting amongst themselves with excited breaths about the results of their morning workout today, they were able to run a full 10ps with a slow pace, other than that, they each finished the 30 sets of basic exercises, with Reina as the biggest beneficiary. They could conclude one more rule about the Starheart, the more you push yourself the faster you will develop.


    The morning ss today wasbat analysis through general knowledge and scientific research. What is the best way to swing a sword and generate maximum effect, how to best stab a dagger, how does parrying work, what to think about when blocking a sword with a shield, what is the difference between blocking a sword strike, a mace bludgeon and an arrow shot. The practical demonstration was Dustan wielding one weapon after another at Balin who did his best to block it all with a shield bigger than he is.


    When the lesson was about to move to the practical trials the door to hall number 5 opened and director Joey Ray made his way inside the hall. One could feel a chill permeating the air, hostility was rising and one could feel death creeping on the hall. Debauchery was angry, and their anger manifested itself tangibly in the hall, the kids stood frozen in ce, one move was all it took for the world to sunder and they were not the ones who dared start it.


    "Cough, cough inspection" said director Joey, he had his hand near his waist, the other behind his back, he was tense enough to actually touch his hidden weapons to steady his heart. "Knock" the answer came from Lucian who had drawn his daggers. The silent moment felt like a year, again director Joey cleared his throat " young man, you need to show resp" Dustan cut him off mid sentence "knock" his brutal axes were swaying beside his thighs making him look like a true orc for once. "I am the director of thi" director Joey tried to protest but was again cut off by a growling Balin "OUT. KNOCK. WAIT" his tone was moremanding and imperial. The hostility in the are grew louder in the silent hall, it grew loud enough that director Joey actually did as he was told, he walked outside, closed the door and knocked but did not step in. And then like popping a balloon the whole intense atmosphere rxed with a snicker from Fae, a chuckle from Bai and then Debauchery wasughing like they were not just about to kill a moment ago.


    "Did you like our acting?" Leader approached the scared Reina and patted her head gently meanwhile Debauchery pulled themselves together and sent Fae to open the door. Yunan and Leol finally drew a relieved breath and sat down on the floor tired and sweaty as if from intense exercise. Fae opened the door with a smile so bright it could shame the moon and said "Wee director, to what do we owe the pleasure of meeting you this lovely morning". Boom, a crack of thunder rumbled through the heavens as if to contradict the very vibe Fae was giving off. Director Joey turned pale at the p of thunder, ''even the heavens is contradicting you, can you please hide the fake smile away'' he thought to himself. "Inspection" he said. "Pleasee in" invited Fae, then with a booming voice announced "director Joey is here for inspection, he looks very cranky" the she hopped and skipped to Reina in a bid tofort her.


    Director Joey murmured softly under his breath and stepped inside the hall, Balin was equipping a shield bigger than him, Dustan was carrying a pile of assorted weapons, Bai and Lucian were helping Yunan and Leol off the ground while Reina was sandwiched between Leader and Fae who were showering her with affection, none inside the hall spared a look at the maning to inspect them.


    Once Debauchery was finally ready, each of the kids took a sword and started hitting the shield Balin was carrying, Dustan was sitting with his back to Balin as they leaned against each other, asionally there would be a hint or a correction dropped by the adults otherwise there was nothing but the sound of weapons battering a shield echoing in the hall. Director Joey coughed to draw attention, but he failed to draw anything to him, the kids were focused on the shield they were pummeling with a different weapon every few minutes while the adults focused on the children. Finally the director snapped and yelled out loud "this is an inspection, what are you doing" the man steeled himself after his outburst which turned the hall silent once again.


    Suddenly Balin hord back at the director "you be inspecting, we be teaching! Is there anything else to inspection?if you have some bloody questions ask them otherwise inspect silently we are trying to teach here" thest words were apanied by the sound of the big shield mming into the floor beneath it. "And whom can i ask?" Director Joey seemed unperturbed by the fuming dwarf who might get violent at any moment. "THE BLOODY CHEERLEADERS YOU NINCOMPOOP" Balin pointed at the adults making bets about how long he couldst before bashing the face of the director in.


    Courting death was not a trait Yunan would assign with the wizened old director but the current situation is proving otherwise, that is because director t out pointed at Dustan who had his back massage interrupted and just said "What about the orc?". That got the dwarf silent for a moment then turned to leader "Mary my love, this man is trying to ask a guy questions in the middle of his back rub, i can not deal with this level of perversion, be a darling and get him away from us please, we have about another hour of back massage therapy we need to do,e on kids work for your pay" and with that Balin and Dustan leaned against each other while the kids started pommelling the big shield again with their assortment of weapons.


    Yes, Dustan was using the kic energy from the impacts between the weapons and the shield to get his back a massage with Balin acting as a shock absorber for him, simply genius.

 Chapter 40: Again

    Chapter 40: Again


    Leader ushered the petrified director toe over. With no choice left for him after being ignored by Balin and Dustan, director Joey went ahead and stood up beside Leader when he was about to say something she stopped him. "just be forward, okey? We all know you are not here for inspection so don''t milk it, ask whatever you want, we will answer of we can."


    Director felt grateful for the exit offered by leader he nodded his head and said "your students yesterday beat up 13 girls who did nothing but try to talk to the kitsune, they came to me with their teachers today, with swollen faces, some were even blinded by the swelling. I am here to give due punishment".


    Leader pouted "are you sure my kids did it with no rhyme or reason, they beat those poor girls because they wanted to talk to Reina? Let''s find out, HALT, GROUP UP HERE" A momentter all those who were far assembled into the group with Yunan, Reina and Leol standing in front of Leader with inquisitive looks


    "This man here ims you beat up 13 girlsst night in the cantina, did you do it, if yes exin why". "We did not beat up 13 girls it is very unlucky, we beat up 14, a very auspicious number. First they were saying something about a rule that prevents boys and girls from mingling with girls to make Reina join them, then they changed targets to us and they made so much noise about how they will get us kicked out if we did not move away from Reina, and then one of them pushed Leol''s head into his te and they allughed iming that is what he gets for ignoring them, Leol retaliated by hitting the girl who pushed him with a food tray to the face, they got angry and said they would make us move by force, i told them to make us, they tried attacking us and we dispatched all of them with a tray to the face each, the 14th one who started this mess should not be able to even talk for a few days from the swelling, Leol did go overboard when he hit her. That is all the details, if you do not believe me, find the 14th girl and ask the cantina staff, the girls made more noise than a cackle, i am sure they would have seen it all." Reina and Leol nodded at his words confirming them.


    "Shall we find those rted? I do trust the kids and if they said they were attacked and only retaliated i want to punish who ever tried to harm them personally. But, since they were already beaten so visibly i will let you , mister director to handle it" she then shooed away the director and turned to her own team."Lucian, give them a ten minute rest and y with daggers, feel free to retaliate, keep them on their toes all the time, Bai do your magic thing, the stress have been killing me, you three can help Lucian toy with the kids, off you go".


    Director Joey never felt so wronged and out of ce in his years since he became an academy director, so as retaliation against Debauchery he did nothing in the matter of the fight, ''Let the kids sort it out among themselves'' he thought.


    The rest of the morning went fine and soon came lunch time, Leol took the lead and filled the table they were sitting at with enough food for 8 people,ever since they got the starheart, all their growth was tranted into energy needs, and they have been increasingly more, the more energy they used. It looked like three gluttons feasting as they chatted and stuffed their faces, when they were about done with the food a group of people loomed over their table but they were ignored as if they did not look threatening enough.


    "Were you the ones who injured my ssmates?" the one who seemed to lead them mmed his fist on the table to make himself menacing and dominant. "Yes that would be us, how can i help you?" Answer Leol very diplomatically.


    "You have two choices, either apologize right now on your knees and we can let you off, or we can bash your faces in" said the leader with a smug look on his face, as if there was no choice but getting th to kneel in front of him, either before or after beating them.


    Reina interjected "they did nothing wrong, so there will be no apology, if you insist on fighting we can reluctantly give you matching faces, now decide yourself, we are eating and don''t have time for you". Right after Reina finished her words a punch wasing at her face, she grabbed the wrist and pulled on it, the leader found himself on a head on collision course with a food tray that was not there a moment ago.


    With the leader down, the rest of the group; made of the girls fromst night and their ssmates; charged at the trio and the sounds of thunks and thuds and sobs mixed together for moment before all went quiet again. Reina went through the bodies on the floor and made sure that everyone had matching swellings, giving and extra tap here and there for those who were fortunate enough to not get the full tray to the face. Before they left for the afternoon lesson they got themselves some take away to the ss for snackster.


    The afternoon lesson was shooting bows and crossbows, one would shoot at Dustan while the other two tried distraction from the front lines, although Dustan was gentle he still caused a few bruises in the kids, by the end of the lesson each one if the kids hadnded at least one shot, or hit on Dustan, an achievement for the little ones.


    After taking a bath, Yunan, Reina and Leol decided to go to the entertainment hall for some fun. Once there the heards about how there is a society that popped up recently were you need a swollen face to join, and they had a tray wielding friend who can guarantee a matching swollen face as part of the initiation. That would be the way the students made fun of therge group who were beaten by just three people, and got themselves matching faces to boot.


    Students were ruthless, if there was a rule about not making fun of fellow students, they made stories and legends targeted at them tough about and ridicule them openly, and the brotherhood of matching faces is one of those legends who will stand the test of time.

 Chapter 41: Writing

    Chapter 41: Writing


    In the entertainment hall Yunan, Reina and Leol had some fun time. They joined a few tabletop games as well as a few games of the newly popr level up chess, by dinner time they had scratched their itch for fun.


    When the trio made their way into the cantina, they were avoided by the brotherhood of swollen faces like their were the gue, even exchanging nces would cause the poor kids to hang their heads down. One could hear the asional scared gasps and sobs sounding from different tables around the cantina.


    Yunan took charge of bringing the food while Leol and Reina found a table for them. They chatted happily about their time in the afternoon and evening, there were even some fellow students who came for some words about how they got that good and what they did for training or how much time they trained to get so good, but the trio only answered that they just worked hard and trained with heart and soul.


    On friday morning Yunan and his friends were surprised to find a table full of note books in hall number 5 and all of Debauchery was sitting down and writing something with great focus. The first to notice them was Fae who ran and picked up Reina for a bit of cuddling, it seems this was a very boring task to her so Yunan as the most senior student of Debauchery was obliged to ask about this for his fellows.


    "What are we studying today Leader, and why is Fae is this bored? Reina will suffer if all of you get that bored." although Reina herself enjoyed the cuddles. Too much of any good thing is a bad thing therefore whatever is going on with Debauchery it is bad for their health. Leader looked up and red at Fae who got back to her own seat and sat down with Reina on herp. Once Fae sat down Leader exined. "We are going to write our training manual and sell it like you suggested, after the whole ordeal with the spies there were many people contacting us through the guild and asking for the training regimen and were offering some hefty sums of money that made Dustan greedy enough to sit on a table and start writing, thanks to that we decided to use this morning to note down the points we are teaching you."


    "How is that going? Our training is not something easy to put into words, and there are a few things that you must not add in, because they might even cause deaths. Also you need to never exin the point of each training, you are writing down a training regimen and not a detailed manual" Leol listed the points he thought were the most important.


    "That is what we are struggling with" said Bai. "We are trying to make it concise yet we are not getting the point we want to express and it gets worse when we want to ssify them, my heads hurts and Balin is already snoring, we need to end this, fast!" Yunan felt some pity for Debauchery, they were not the academic types; no, they are more the type to prefer a good fight over reading a book, they are smart, they Just get bored really fast.


    Yunan decided to offer some help "why not ssify the training ording to stats, for example put chess into wisdom training, archery into dexterity, runningps in constitution, and sword training into strength, then maybe add an extra page for things like singing to help chanting, or dancing for dodging, there is no need to detail everything we do into the regimen, just basically write down we train in this and this and that"


    "You mean we don''t have to write down any specifics or all that crap to fill the pages?" Balin had woken up from his nap when he heard there was a way to ease the work. Leol was the one to answer him "No one ever said there must be exnation in training manuals, it''s just that many write them that way, on the other hand there is a better way to write it fast and not need too many words or exnations"


    "Do tell please, we need to make as much money as we can from this before knockoffs enter the market before we do" said the eager dustan with his sparkling eyes on Leol like a treasure chest. "Why not just write down our own schedule" Leol started exining his point with clear words.


    "Write it like this: Monday morning magic theory, monday afternoon sword practice. Tuesday morning chanting, tuesday afternoon dagger practice. Wednesday morning ning lessons, wednesday afternoon dancing lessons. Thursday morning strategy lessons, thursday afternoon archery. Friday morning general knowledge, friday afternoon shield and block lessons, rest of the week free time" the hall was kind of quiet after Leol stopped talking.


    "It can''t be that easy, no one in their right minds would pay for that" said Balin, while Leader had a sh of enlightenment " no ever said they needed a detailed manual, as elite explorers we would expect anyone that would read this to be very aware of the point and the way we do things, besides many will pay for this because we are elites, what do you think Bai?"


    "I am in favour of adding a few things to vour up the booklet, like a few descriptions but that is all, like you said Leader we are elites and we don''t cater to the masses, we only think about the elites and they would know what we mean by what is inside the manual. So i guess we are done with the writing part"


    A few momentster the hall was clear and a dance lesson was conducted to allow everyone to rx for the whole morning. Debauchery traded a whole morning of fun for a half an hour of a dull task that they did not evenplete. The hall was filledughter as everyone danced in every way they knew how to.

 Chapter 42: Getting rich

    Chapter 42: Getting rich


    Thursday afternoon was decided to be forbat tactics and formation, something that Yunan, Reina and Leol were very muchcking.


    the lesson started by identifying who is best suited where and based on ability so far Yunan had to take the front and let the other two to shoot crossbows from a safer distant giving Yunan the job of distracting the opponent they were facing while Leol and Reina had to deal the actual damage. There was a bit of a risk since the two needed better aim.


    Leader had some information to share with her students. "We are proud to introduce to you, our dearest students, the first manual detailing the training regimen that Debauchery came up with to train the ultimate perfect all rounder, this booklet here, generalizes the steps that will be taken to ensure the birth of an unmatched explorer. This training regimen can also be used to train ordinary all rounders, if they can keep it up without dying of boredom that is. This booklet here will be sold in an auction tomorrow Friday evening and there will only be ten of them sold."


    "We are gonna get rich!" Dustan hord into the sky "we are gonna get so rich there will be idiots who want to rob us, hahaha, let''s feast" before Dustan could start celebrating he was he was hit in the back of the head by a flying hammer. "Listen here dumb orc, if you want to feast wait until after the auction and we get rich, now shut up Leader still has more to say".


    "Thank you Balin" Leader smile at the dwarf. "We are also nning on taking our first cleaning mission for a level one nest and you my dearest students will take the lead. With this we can see what you need to work at before clearing a level one nest next week, also we will need your help plundering during the mission and from monday you will be taught how to appraise items during rests betweenbat training sessions, also it will be your first homework, and for that we have applied for the permission needed for you to go out and return before dinner, also we are arranging for you to meet and work under an appraiser during the next week."


    "Are you mad? You n to take us into a fight beyond us? No matter how you n it it is a very bad idea, the worst one you had since we met, please reconsider, our lives are not stakes at your silly bets" Yunan was terrified at the thought of being part of a fight between adventurers when he is barely strong enough to even defend himself.


    Balin had an angry look on his face. "Are you saying we can not protect you? Are you calling us weak? Boy better exin yourself or face my wrath". "What is there to exin" retorted Leol " this is a battle, no matter how sneaky you are, it only takes one stray arrow and we are dead, unless you can clean up a whole a family within 10 minutes then i do not want to be anywhere near the fight, it is not worth my life before i enter the dungeon".


    "Three" said lucian "we can clear up a family in three minutes, the whole hour per family was for looting, we only need you after the fight is over, does that qualify as perfectly safe for you two?". "If that was the case why not say it when we were nning the mission, you could have said something them" said Reina "we know you are very strong, but we never knew how strong you are, and when Yunan gave you an hour per family, it was on the premise it would take you an hour to finish it, next time please include us in when you think about adding new parts to the n"


    Leader waved her hands impatiently "misunderstandings happen, for now, you kids focus on the next task, clearing a nest and appraisal, and leave the rest to us, next time we will inform you if there is a change in ns, but still, are we not trust worthy enough for you guys to just follow what we say?". A unanimous answer sounded out from the children "No!"


    After the announcement, Debauchery and its students went back to training, cooperation andmunication were the theme of thebat drill this afternoon.


    Friday went pretty smoothly for Yunan, Reina and Leol. They focused on covering up their aiming deficiency with better team work and luring skills, as for the general knowledge, it was used on monster behaviour, namely goblins and kobolds the majority of level one monsters both inside and outside of Tartarus.


    The auction that was nned in such a rushed manner attracted many bidders from all over the continent and the prices of the ten booklets ranged from 50 thousand golden dragons and up to half a million for thest one, there were many who proposed to buy the booklets at the highest bidding price when there is more to be found.


    It must be known that there will be no one who would buy a copy or borrow a booklet that was touched by another before. The reason is simple for a party as strong as Debauchery, there is a possibility of a magic that can delete the context of the booklet of copied or sold, also there is another possibility of Debauchery using magic to impart the knowledge that is in the booklet and the words are just words, even if it was proven that all these assumptions are wrong, and the booklet was all there is, most would still buy the official release instead of second hand or a copy no matter what.


    Seeing the astronomical numbers the booklets sold at Debauchery went ahead and sold 20 more by dinner time because how easy they were to produce. Although the demand died down a bit after selling 30 booklets, Debauchery still made more money than they knew what to do with, so they decided to splurge on the children and buy some good equipment for the uing hunt next week.

 Chapter 43: Ritual

    Chapter 43: Ritual


    While Yunan ,Reina and Leol werezing around in their beds after breakfast they heard a familiar urgent knock on the door, however this time before Leol made it to the door, it swung open and Fae burst inside the room grumbling about the kids. Meanwhile Lucian just issued the standardized apologetic "good morning" to the residents as he followed Fae inside the room.


    "Get up,e on, we need to get going, time is of the essence, move move move, we have so much to do and no time at all". Fae was doing this as if practiced hundreds of times, she threw away nkets, delt a few sobering ps, brought out in clothes for the groggy children and helped them dress up."I thought we were supposed to rest today to be in top shape for the test tomorrow" said Leol while fumbling with his clothes " Is there something we missed or you forgot to mention? Could you at least tell us where we are going"


    Fae sighed heavily and patted the half dressed Leol om the shoulder "you are taking on a nest tomorrow, you need armor, weapons, first aid kits, storage items and plenty of other stuff to buy and prepare, you used to be so smart before, sigh". Yunan was rather perplexed "What is wrong with our training armor, you bought it for us so it should be good for a level 1 hunt, the same for the weapons we usually train with, they are sharp enough to hunt with right?"


    "No" Lucian answered him. "There is never enough for the sake of safety, you need at least level 5 armor to make sure you end up with all your limbs, as for weapons, we gave you standard issue weapons, they are useless and you need something more personal that would feel just right in your grip. You need also to learn how to treat wounds without magic, cooking and camping, butchering beasts, which monsters are edible, how to loot, and what to loot, basically you know nothing and you guys are going in blind, so today we need to at least prepare you for a one day hunt. Understand?"


    "Yes sir" answered all three of them and got ready post haste and soon they ran outside the room with ted expressions and the five pranced their way to the academy gates and reunited with the rest of Debauchery party who seemed as excited as the kids when they saw theming. Yunan felt a weird vibe from them and his heart skipped a beat, but before he could find what is wrong Dustan took out a throne like chair that was standing on a rectangr box with an offering table set up at the feet of the throne.


    Dustan then proceeded to pick up Yunan and seat him on the throne and kneel in front of the offering table. After him came Balin and Bai with offering incense and scented candles which they ced on the offering table before the frozen Yunan, then joined by rest of Debauchery who knelt down under the sacred throne and offered their prayer as one voice "Oh lord of luck, bless us the unlucky ones with a sliver of your immense and boundless energy, for we are believers in thine divine powers an endless luck. Oh lucky lord bless is with your favour and fortune. Amen"


    Once the ritual was over Yunan was discarded from his throne while the throne itself was reverently put away. Yunan looked back at his roommates and saw Leol face palming and Reina giggling to herself and enjoying the show. Leol walked to Yunan and removed the hat he has been wearing since Tuesday "how lucky can he be with this". The bald patch dawned out and almost all were on their kneesughing, "if he is lucky his hair should have grown enough to cover this patch since then" then he returned the hat back to Yunan''s head.


    After every one calmed down Dustan made his counter argument "On Tuesday we made a half assed ritual for the jokes and ended up with more than 25 million golden dragons 5 dayster, 25 million gold!, we can buy a few kingdoms with that kind of money, now we are taking this bastard ofdy luck to a market where treasures are everywhere, we need the luck he gives off passively to gain a treasure or two".


    The giggling Reina finally chirped out a few words with a tinge ofughter in them "if you want to get lucky take him to barber, he could not go to one all week since you guys were all eager to leave after the lessons". Which was followed by hushed voices "how did we forget about that?". "That must be why the luck took 5 days to manifest". "Let''s do it then, we need all the luck we can get". Suddenly Dustan put Reina on his shoulders and said "the prophet of fortune has spoken,forward to the best barber shop in town"


    Debauchery and their student made their way into the busy streets of Mar sara city and after asking around found and old rickety shop that had the simple sign of "barber". All the shops around it were newly renovated and had a rich and ssy feeling to them. Besides the door of the barber shop sat an old man who seemed to have lost interest in the world many years ago. Debauchery felt tricked, well in all honesty the title of best barber was with the old man and his shop since the days of old, those who led them here, led them because they grew up hearing that that shop was the best in town, although time took its toll and new barbers opened shop who were more popr than this one, the reputation stuck across generations, so it became like a tourist prank that was unintentional.


    When they wanted to go find another shop, Yunan walked up to the old man "good morning sir" he said. "Do you still offer hair cutting services in this shop, i badly need a neat haircut" he then removed his hat to show the bald patch on his head "Is there a possibility to make this look a bit less embarrassing, my friendsugh every time i remove my hat". The old man looked at his head and cracked a toothless smile then he pointed at the chair "the price is very expensive, ten gold coins, no matter how long you stay on the chair"


    Yunan walked back to the party and asked for money "i have a feeling it is going to be worth it" leader immediately took a pouch full of coins and strode over the to the old man and told him. "Not all of us need our hair done, but we would like to watch you work and then decide if we would like you to work on us, is that fine?" She ced the pouch filled with 100 golden coins into the hands of the old man who brightened up and ushered the party inside "wee to my humble shop, the best barber in town"

 Chapter 44: fun at the barber

    Chapter 44: fun at the barber


    Inside the barber shop the atmosphere was very explosive, so much ruckus and noise were spreading from the barber shop that the customers from the nearby shops and streets were drawn in and surrounded the shop and tried to look inside or gleen whatever they could from the voices that escaped now and then.


    Let''s turn the clock hands to an hour earlier, after the Debauchery party and children stepped inside the barber shop Yunan took a seat on service chair waiting for the old barber to do his work. To everyone''s surprise the old man used no scissors or any cutting tools, but created a magical construct in each hand and started muttering the chant.


    Momentster the hair on Yunan''s head grew longer and shinier and even silkier as it fed on the mana generated from the spell. That was not all the hair started swaying and changing its length into many haircuts, some were neat and clean some were ssy and extravagant, some made Yunan like a beggar, other made him look like yboy.


    The atmosphere in the shop turned from baffled to excited and then devolved intoughter as the marvelously odd hairstyles kept changing every passing moment, soon the barber stopped at a neatly short cropped cut for Yunan as he thought it suited him most.


    As per the habit of debauchery fun took precedence over everything else, and a round of coin flipping, treaties and threats ended up in everyone taking a turn to sit on the chair and enjoy the marvelous spell at work.


    Balin as lucky second pointed at his beard and sat on the chair watching the mirror in front of him keenly, soon his booming voice was heard as his beard was braided, cut, lengthened, branched, turned into a goatee, shaped into all manners of things in all colors, finally it was settled in a strikingly shiny coal ck silky thicket that had no right being on a dwarfs face.


    Everyone from the party had their turn on the chair and even more than one turn for some. They allughed together and at each other amazed and amused by the skilled spell work done by the old man, something that was both effective and fun, it was so much fun for Debauchery that Dustan tried to recruit the old man.


    Once everyone had their fun and were ready to leave the old man told them to wait for a moment, he went into the back of the shop and one could hear him rummage through the items that probably had not been in order for decades. Soon the old man came out holding a tray in hand and ont it was a very old box.


    The old man walked in front of Yunan and said "you and your friends are the funniest customers i have ever had the pleasure to work with, i am old and lost too many dreams, this here" he gently opens the box and a ck ring that shined like obsidian is revealed inside " this here was the epitome of mine and my friends hard work, keep it, and use it to make your dreams into reality".


    The old man put the ck ring on the right index finger in Yunan''s hand and as if by magic the ring vanished and melded with the skin on the finger, there was no trace left, even Yunan could only vaguely feel something was there but he could not even touch it.


    "Don''t forget toe back and y with me sometimesd, and when the day you leave for Tartarus arrivese by and have a free haircut, i know one that would make all thedies swoon over you". The old man new very well that this kid here came and brought his luck with him, why else would he remember the old box now of all the time he spent in this shop.


    For the old man luck was another facet of destiny or fate, one that was more abstract and intangible, yet this kid came here by sheer luck, reminded him of something he buried deep in his heart for decades, and brought enough business with him by simply being there.if it were any other the old man would brush it as sentimentality.


    The old man was someone who delved deep into Tartarus he knew very well that no matter how good or bad you luck was, Tartarus only gave what one needed, and that ring was something neither he or his party needed, they knew by then it was meant for someone else. They were given that ring for the sake of another and their job was to take it outside to await it''s owner.


    Balin bought the old box the old barber used to keep the ck ring, although he offered quite a hefty price the old man only took 10 gold coins stating as an excuse that it has fulfilled its purpose and is now useless trash. Balin walked out caressing the box as if his own child, once outside he told the masses that were watching them eagerly "go get a haircut inside, it costs 10 gold and it is worth 100".


    The party left the old shop with smiles on their faces chatting about the most hrious styles they had seen, Leader noticed Yunan touching his own index finger and was itching to ask about it so she reassured him "there is nothing to worry about, we can talk about it in privateter". The party made its way into the armaments market where they could buy fitting armor and weapons for the kids.


    Once again they did the same an asked about the best armor maker in the city, they were led to a joined shop with a smithy outside and a tailor shop inside the building, the couple who owned the ce inherited it from their forefathers and were masters at spell work.


    Within an hour each of the kids had a well fitting level 5 heavily enchanted studded leather armor on them, they paid around a 1000 gold for each piece. A price that was about 5 times higher due to the heavy modification and special enchantements, there were casted on them. ording the makers, these full body armors will grow with them until they are 15 and can be useful in the dungeon until they need better ones.


    The lucky ones this time were Dustan and Reina. Dustan had pestered the smith for a matching axes that had their own bloodlust, ording to the smith they were made by the first generation inside of Tartarus from the body of a freshly in dragon and were enchanted with its soul, he did not know on which floor it was forged, but he knew that the dragon that was killed to make them took a week to be in. As for Reina she got a golden bracelet from the tailordy as tribute to the kitsune, something her father vowed to make for them as thanks for saving his life, and Reina was the first kitsune she ever met whether in or outside the dungeon.

 Chapter 45: Taking inventory

    Chapter 45: Taking inventory


    During the shopping spree that followed everyone found something of value that was suitable for them and by the time the sun was setting everyone was sitting in the suite that Debauchery lived in in the academy.


    Once everyone was rested and cleaned up from the long day and the equally long shopping spree it was time to review the gains of the day since Debauchery was ted from the amount of luck that has descended upon them as each had found something that could be considered a unique treasure.


    Starting with the items they bought with a total of 10 thousand golden dragons; an amount that would allow one to live like a king for a year. They bought three especially fitted full body armors including boots and helmets, high quality traveling cloaks, twin short swords and two bastard swords, twin curved daggers and 2 long daggers as well as 3 half sized high powered crossbows with cross hairs for aiming. They also bought among other things, mid sized storage rings that had around a 1000 cubic meters of space inside, fire starters, a few bushels [1] of crossbow bolts, pots and water cans, utensils, and any other convenience items that could be stored permanently inside the storage rings.


    As for their other gains, they were more than happy to unt them over and over. Balin got himself a legacy chest, something that can only be found in Tartarus, they are usually bigger and equipped with special magic, most adventures know them as treasure chests, they have very small storage space and aremonly found in special rooms in the dungeon. However this legacy chest was different from the rest, it was smaller and had two enchantments, first was self restoration, it can absorb mana from the surroundings or directly from a donor to repair any damages including time erosion, second is preservation cast inside of it, any item inside this box will be in a sealed state and will never degrade or lose potency during a period of a thousand years without needing mana to recharge, if mana is required it would take from the mana gathered by the self restoration enchantment.


    Dustan got himself a pair of twin heavy axes named dragon ws, the were cast at the same time from the remnants of a freshly killed dragon, it took the full corpse of the dragon as well as its spirit to forge them, nigh indestructible and sharp enough to shave steel, the axes have their own bloodlust and can enrage the user, they require a strong mind and a stronger will, they can also enrage the monsters close to them prompting them to attack the user. These axes were made for dealing death and only those who can withstand the bloodlust can safely use them without getting consumed by the dragon spirit inside.


    Lucian got himself an exquisite pair of shoes that increases speed and enhances stealth as well as muffle the wearer to the point they need to talk loud to be heard when wearing them, the shoe maker that made them had them on disy and only the one who could solve a puzzle lock can buy them, the lock was broken and the only way to solve it was to pick it open. For opening the lock sessfully Lucian got both the shoes and the lock, it had a very odd function, the more you solve it the harder it gets if it is not solved within a year it would reset on its own.


    Bai got himself a golden antique pocket watch that works by filing it with mana. The seller sold it as broken antique. Once it was injected by mana it can be used both as a watch and a detection item, depending on the setting used it can detect any living aura within a sphere of 5 kilometers for as long as 6 hours. It does not need to be held in hand as long as it stays with inside half a meter radius away from the user it can project a three dimensional map of the surrounding into the mind of the user and even note if the those detected are weaker or stronger than the user, the only drawback is the need to resupply it with mana frequently.


    Fae got herself a variant pet slime, it looked like a translucent milky white jello, it was up for adoption for free, the one who caught it was a local hunter who cared only about how much he could sell it for and no one wanted to buy it since slimes are somewhat grosse in the eyes of the public, this particr slime fed only on pure water and sunlight, it could heal smaller injuries and use weak light magic, Leader was the one who noticed it and told Fae who almost choked the shop employee to make the adoption go faster. Of course to Fae the slime was nothing but portable skin care that can be raised easily yet can be used endlessly and for free.


    Leader got herself a new mana jewel for her staves. It was a palm sized clear cut crystal with a fog swirling inside, the stone was found by Yunan when they passed by a rock gambling stall, were a tomb raider, or any other kind of ruin explorer picks up rocks from the location and sells them at an arbitrary price, some of those rocks have inside them valuables some are just rocks. Yunan asked questions about the process and Leader told him to choose something from the stall and the result was a stone about 5 thousand times worth its selling price. There were even bandits who tried to block Debauchery after they got the stone, they had a taste of Dustan''s new axes.


    As for the kids, Reina got a bracelet that amplifies the magic cast, with some nice enchantments added in to reduce mana expenditure and hasten the recovery of mana among few others, the bracelet had seven gems and each gem has an enchantment on it, although Balin only named three enchantments, he told her to explore it once she has magic. As for Leol he got himself a ne that increases one''s wisdom and thinking speed, it was silver with a purple gem in it. He won it in a bet against a stranger, the bet was about who would win in game of strength between Dustan and Balin. Of course Balin won because he bribed Dustan with an extra enchantments for his new axes, as someone who had been with Debauchery long enough to know how they operated, besides even Leader bet on Balin, so he naturally must follow the master of the house.


    As for what yunan gained, it was a mystery in itself as it took some time to even show it to the others


    [1] an expression used in the middle ages for buying big ammounts of arrows as they would be delivered in bushels usually used for grains

 Chapter 46: Black fate

    Chapter 46: ck fate


    Saving best forst debauchery choose to examine the ck ring that Yunan got together. With eyes all focused on him Yunan shyly admitted that he could barely feel the ring in his finger let alone make it visible or remove it since he had no control over it.


    Balin advised him to will the ring to appear first, he needed to send an order to the ring, or the strange feeling he has by focusing on it, there is no need for mana to control the ring as it responds to the users will, the same thing like a storage ring but it takes a stronger will to do so. After a few failed attempts tomunicate, the ring answered Yunan''s call and revealed itself.


    The ring was a smooth band with shining ck luster and no traces or markings on it. It looked as though born naturally from a ck gem. Yunan willed the ring to remove itself from his finger and it slid down as if nothing was holding it in ce in the first ce at all.


    Balin took the ring in his hand and examined it carefully from all possible angles, then he cast his appraisal on the ring and frowned as he could get nothing from it, it felt like casting appraisal at a dead rock, once he opened his fist to pass it along to Bai and Lucian for identifying, the ring flew back to Yunan''s finger and rested itself there as of it could only belong in his hand. Thus the next order of business they thought about was for Yunan to tell the ring to reveal its information.


    Once Yunan ordered the ring to reveal its information it projected a screen ''mana donation required, yes/no''. After a bit of discussing with Debauchery they told Yunan to ept the donation and a few secondster Yunan felt something he never noticed before being drained from him, he immersed himself in the feeling and gauged how much mana the ring needed to function. The ring stopped absorption after taking about half the mana in Yunan''s body, it then projected another screen.


    Name : ck Fate


    Role : Guide to the heart of Tartarus


    Last User : Adun the twilight star


    Current User : Yunan the wise prowler


    Requirement : Luck


    Functions : Sealed (can be unsealed bypleting special actions inside Tartarus)


    Maker : Hephaestus


    User status


    Strength 6


    Constitution 6


    Dexterity 6


    Wisdom 6


    Note : urgent growth needed.


    The screen stayed up for about 5 minutes before Yunan dismissed it, he was anxious to hear anyments from those around him, after all no ten year old could withstand the looks pointed at him in deafening silence and a momentter a collective """lucky bastard""" sounded out in the room. Soon the ones unting unting their treasures were now trying to either steal ck fate, beat its owner or kowtow and worship the lost son ofdy luck. No need to guess who did what because i the merciful author will tell it all. Fae was pummeling Yunan''s chest in protest while Balin was trying to bite the ring away from Yunan''s finger to no avail and Dustan was doing his best to worship and absorb as much luck and fortune he could.


    Meanwhile Leader, Bai and Lucian were huddled together and discussing something among themselves. Leol stepped up and said with a loud voice you promised you wouldn''t keep things from us in thest meeting, if you have secrets to talk about wait for us to leave first". Reina was a bit more reluctant about it "please keep the secrets we don''t want to know about to yourselves, or at least wait until we can handle them"


    Leader nodded at the suggestions. "My mistake, for now how about we do a battle drill before bed time and get you used to your new items, as for what we were discussing, you will know about it sooner rather thanter so we will tell you about it after we are done with the threat cleaning mission"


    Not long after, the group arrived at hall number 5 and started the battle drill, the objective was to use any of the weapons they had to inflict damage at any opportune moment. ordingly the three students rotated their battle formation to allow all of them to try and use all three weapons to various degrees of sess.


    The battle drill ended with satisfied Debauchery, they would not need to interfere much with the children, only in the case of them freezing when faced with their first enemy, and even if they did not act, the children will be fine as long as they stay together and be cautious. There was also the fact that level one monsters could not damage a level 5 armor, only the kic energy might do residual damage to the body under the level 5 armor.


    Debauchery was silent as they tread along the way to their dorm. "We sure are very lucky" said Lucian breaking the silence. "I think it is time we get serious, luck or not we are deep in this, we can not even distance ourselves from it even if we wanted to". Answered Bai with a hint of annoyance in his voice". "This is why i hate prophecy, men are not made to be bound by a string of fate, now i truly regret not letting Dustan stangle the oracle when he wanted to" said Fae. "Whatever it is that is going on, fate or destiny or luck or whatever it is we are in this shity swamp and we can only keep going forward" said Balin. "Is it toote to strangle the witch now?" Asked Dustan with fury in his eyes, he really hated who ever that oracle was.


    Finally leader voiced her own mind " the thing about prophecies is that they are self fulfilling, no matter what we do or not do it will end up progressing the prophecy. I personally think we stick to the path we chose that day, we chose that path because our hearts wanted it, therefore even if we fulfill the damned prophecy we will have no regrets, all we have to do is live by our own standards and let the rest of the world to its own devices. As for the quest and the ck Fate we will wait until we are done with preventing the headaches. As for the hearts they can go fuck themselves for all i care"


    The discussion ended there and then and a tacit understanding was reached between the members of Debauchery its essence is basically "fuck fate and its machinations, i live by my own rules" the moto that Debauchery lived by for 5 years now since the day it was created.

 Chapter 47: A date with lady luck

    Chapter 47: A date withdy luck


    Sunday dawn. Debauchery and their students were walking out of the academy and heading to the north gates, about 10 kilometers away from the city there can be found the only nest in a 50 kilometer radius. The nest was protected by the city governor as a mine for monster cores, it was small enough to prevent export and needed to be partially cleaned every few months.


    Goblins were the species living in the nest, they had a fast growth cycle and a high fertility rate, they could capture females from multiple species and races for mating and repoption, therefore it was not weird to find human women used as incubators inside the nest since the goblins needed only one month to be born, thus human women were the next best incubators for the mostly male poption of goblins.


    Jogging all the way to the borders of the nest the party of 9 arrived after sunrise and just in time to see two goblins carrying a boar they just hunted back to the nest. What a great luck, food and two stray goblins at the same time. After a nudge from Balin, Yunan and leol took the lead with their crossbows out and aimed at the two clueless goblins, then they shot at the same time, Yunan dropped his crossbow and ran towards the goblins before checking if he had hit or not to prevent them from sounding an rm or drawing attention to the group and causing more trouble for them. One of the goblins fell down with a bolt in its head, and the other suffered a shoulder injury. By the time the second goblin stood up from the impact Yunan was there with both short swords in hand one aiming at the chest the other the head. The goblin''s head exploded and half his torso was cut through by the short sword.


    Sess, but that feeling did notst long as all three youngsters heaved and puked their hearts out, seeing death for the first time was not something that can be looked down on especially for the one dealing the blow. It took half an hour for the students to calm down a bit and hold in their urge to vomit.


    Then came the ugliest lessons. First find the monster core, it was located in the cavity of the heart, and the kids once again vomited after getting both cores, when it came to butchering the boar, the kids had nothing left to vomit as they both watched and took turns working on the dead boar. As the leader of the miniature party Yunan kept both cores and the boar flesh that they dissected.


    The morning was taken as will training for the youngsters, they were only taking on strays and fighting them using each of the weapons they trained in with Debauchery. The children adapted fast to the fighting and were able to kill the goblins faster as well as resist their own urges to run or cry or freeze.


    There was no lunch for the hungry kids until they returned to the city, they could only roast a palm sized steak for lunch, something that would barely quench the hunger they had. And since the first part of the test waspleted nicely, Debauchery led the way to the heart of the nest, all the nearby goblins either ran away or stayed put and did not bother Debauchery whilst they entered the cave where the goblins lived and started looking around it.


    They found a few caged females with bulging bellies and some were in the middle of getting impregnated, a very ugly sight to behold, the party killed the offending goblins and made a bloody mark on the cages so no other goblins would approach, at least until the invaders leave the nest. They found in some of the rooms weapons and gold. That would be gotten from those farmers around this nest they raided to get the females.


    In the biggest room in the cave there was a stone throne and on it sat a goblin twice the size and height of the other goblins they met so far. "This is the goblin leader, the boss of this nest, you kids go ahead and challenge it, if you can kill it, you can loot the treasure chest at its feet, if we have to rescue you, no looting for you" Leader told them what to do and then stepped back with Debauchery to allow the boss to fight.


    The fight ended rather quickly with Yunan drawing the attention of the boss while the other two shot bolts at it from a distance. Yunan took a few hits before he got his dodging rhythm going, his shes left deep marks on the boss and cut off a few fingers before the bolts took the boss down and Yunan cut off its head to end the fight.


    Leol went to the goblins boss and dug out its heart and took out the core from inside it. Reina just flopped on the ground from excessive stress and fear, while Yunan walked to the chest and opened it, inside it he found a pouch of gold, a bone dagger and an old book.


    Bai took the role of the appraiser " Beggars magic purse, can carry up to 1000 gold coins and seem like it only has only a few in it, worth about 200 dragons. Bone dagger with medium paralysis enchantment worth about 50 dragons. Oh this is nice, a date withdy luck, around 5 to 8 thousand years old, can''t seem to be able to open it, try it Balin".


    " Hmmm, 7 thousand years old, from the second floor of Tartarus, seems to be locked by a preset i can not see through, seems like this book was handed down from a group that fled the dungeon, the chest seems from the same period, on the back cover there is some goblin script it says.. for those that mistress favours" Balin handed the book to Yunan "read it" he urged.


    Yunan opened the book easily, and read it contents, it was a story about how the luckiest goblin metdy luck herself and went on a date with her, the story was simple and pure, it detailed how the goblin felt and how happy he was to roam the golden forest under the moonlight with the woman he loved most.

 Chapter 48: Oh fortuna

    Chapter 48: Oh fortuna


    Yunan passed the book to the unbelieving Debauchery, where was the golden glow? Where was the skill training light? How could there be nothing when he opened the book? This was a book from Tartarus, no books can get out of Tartarus, no one with status could do it, if the book was able to leave Tartarus it must have been very special so why did nothing happen when he read the book. No one has ever sessfully took out a chest or a book outside Tartarus, maybe only monsters can.


    Leaving the puzzle unsolved, Debauchery retraced their steps back to where the kidnapped females were, they were all under strange sedation. It originated from the fluids of the goblins, it would keep the poor victims in a state of euphoria to hinder them frommitting suicide or deliberately abort the fetus. Those women would not remember what happened to them afterwards and would only feel as if they were sleeping all that time.


    Taking the women with them, Debauchery returned to the city and entrusted them to the guards to take the appropriate and necessary actions so as take care of the victims and deal with the aftermath of birthing for them. After selling the items they gained and putting the treasure chest for an auction, under the urging of Yunan the party visited the orphanage he grew up in. Reina and Leol bought some sweets and pastries for the children and debauchery choose to donate money to the sisters instead.


    Yunan almost did not recognize the orphanage overflowing with noisy and ill behaved children, he left it just a month and a half ago and it was as quiet and peaceful as a grave, there were so many children and even the sisters were overworked and looked haggard. Yunan led the party to meet his mother - sister Theresa, who was so overjoyed to see him that she just and held onto him all the time they were together.


    ording to what the sisters told the nice guests who brought them pastries -since the number of pastries was too little for the kids it was diverted to the sister- the orphanage has always been filled like this before, well until Yunan was brought there and most of the kids had been either adopted or taken by various organizations to train them as the next generation of members. After that, for a full 10 years the orphanage was quiet and had an abundance of resources and donations from the public, then after Yunan left to the academy, the orphanage filled up so fast they had to get more sisters to keep up with the surge of orphans that arrived.


    Yunan could only smile silly and scratched the back of his head, it was his fault when the orphanage became quiet and also his fault for it being over filled after he left, so he decided to sink all his gained gold for the orphanage to ease some of the immense pressure on his mother.


    Soon the party left the orphanage and before they made it to the gates of the academy, there was a troop of fully armed men waiting for them at the door. The auction house had to report to the guild about a chest from Tartarus that was being auctioned after it was appraised by the master appraiser of the auction house. ording to the appraiser the value of the chest was too high for any auction not presided over by the guild. Thus summons arrived to take them to meet the chief of the guild branch for interrogation.


    The troops were sent back with a sealed letter exining the situation and the excuse that Debauchery were too tired and hungry for meeting the chief or provide any further exnation. As for the chest it would be auctioned off or the guild can buy it at the suggested price by the master appraiser, otherwise it must be returned to debauchery or else bad things happen. And so the news that a chest from Tartarus made it out almost drowned any other news and representatives from all the races met the current leader of the guild to discuss a way to deal with slippery things like Debauchery without incurring their wrath and vengeance and still keep the chest, and buying it at the astronomical figure suggest by the master appraiser would bankrupt a continent. The discussion kept going until midnight and the only thing they coulde up with is how are we going to secure the chest if they insist on auctioning it.


    It was decided that to silence Debauchery for now they would announce an auction of the chest around a monthter and negotiate with Debauchery during that time.


    As for the clueless Debauchery they were now sitting around Yunan trying to discover any changes that happened to him but failing to find anything, until Reina suggested "Maybe we could ask ck Fate since it is clearly an intelligent artifact, it asked if it could absorb mana for an action, and when it revealed its information, there was only what we needed to know and not every possible thing about it" with the consensus of everyone Yunan ordered the ring to reveal what had changed during after he opened the book and a holographic screen appeared.


    User : Yunan the wise prowler


    Title : friend of fortuna


    Strength : 6 >7


    Constitution : 6>7


    Dexterity : 6>7


    Wisdom : 6>7


    Luck : not bad > very good ; new attribute


    Note : urgent growth needed you lucky bastard


    For some reason everyone around felt like pummeling Yunan ck and blue for no reason at all, some did act on such impulse, if his luck was not bad before, how obscene must it be now.


    "It is official now, Yunan here is the friend of Lady Luck and the first person born with luck as a superpower, and for that i Balin master dwarf, will do my utmost to smooch off your luck until it runs dry, now ask little fate if you can invoke it at will, that most horrible superpower of all." Yunan checked with ck fate and the answer almost got him strangled when the screen shed.


    ''you can but that will anger Lady Fortuna, it is advised to wait until you upgrade your luck and title to favoured of Fortuna, and before you ask luck can be upgraded naturally if it is umted and not used frequently''

 Chapter 49: New training dummies

    Chapter 49: New training dummies


    Monday morning, the guild has just issued invitations to the uing auction for the most powerful and the richest people in the continent causing a greater uproar confirming the existence of the treasure chest. As for it''s authentication, the list of the invited was good enough to convince anyone that even if they showcased a pile of shit and called it magical shit it was worth buying it.


    As for Debauchery, they were so annoyed by the amount of interruptions and spies that swarmed them. In a fit of anger they caught all the spies and used one of them as a door man to stop all messengers at the door, as for the rest, they were turned to training dummies for Yunan, Reina and Leol to practice upon. Those spies who knew about the fate of the ones who were caught before them were happy to survive unscathed in the morning, but the horror they faced in the afternoon was more than enough to get them out of the spying business for ever.


    Thanks to the amount of people who were trying to personally meet Debauchery and those who came with letters to be handed to Leader only, Debauchery sent one of the captives to buy lunch for them as they stayed inside hall 5 to train with the kids. Taking into consideration that threats were more abundant in a bigger crowd. The poor guy got a few gold coins and a stare from Dustan, he lost all thought of escape, he bought food enough for 50 people and ended up watching as Debauchery ate it all and still called for more, the rest of the captives could only salivate at the amount of food eaten but none dared speak. The food shuttle made more than 6 trips between lunch and dinner.


    Fed up with being trapped inside Balin dragged Dustan with him outside the hall and climbed up to the shoulders, then he yelled at the mob blocking the way "everyone who has a message split into two lines, those with written messages can give them to my cute little orc here, those who have vocal messages can just tell me, if you think your orders have a priority over the orders of my leader you can leave right now."


    After Balin skillfully climbed down from Dustan''s shoulders both stood on either side of the door and waited, no one moved after 5 minutes so they got back inside and the dwarf said to Leader " I think they need a session with the kids, how about we pull an all nighter, my fingers are itching" there was an evil intent in his voice that made the captives shudder and feel pity for those who were outside.


    Bai went for a more sinister way of thinking "Leader, go outside and tell them those who refused the orders passed down by Balin can consider their offers refused and their letters returned unopened, if anyone voiced displeasure let theme inside, lock the door and they can be used for training purposes tomorrow morning"


    "Who would stand guard Incase they try to break out by destroying the walls?" Asked Fae who then immediately regretted it. "That would be you my dear" said Bai with a smile. "If we leave Dustan they might get so scared there is a possibility they would gang up on him and end up dead, if we leave Balin they will certainly gang up on him and end up dead. Lucian is already on guard duty, Leader can not guard them because they want to meet with her, and i have to massage leader after the hot bath, so that leaves only you for the job, so please don''t kill all of them, we need dummies to train the kids".


    With a nod from Leader, the n was put into action and about a hundred people were locked inside hall number 5 to listen to the tales of the surviving spies. Even the man Manning the door did not budge all night, he cleared his throat when Debauchery was leaving the hall and handed a list of those who came and left and whatever they left behind, although he was dreaming the might release him for being diligent, his dreams were shattered when he was told he did such a good work they might keep him as door guardian if things kept going like this.


    Although the kids did not enjoy torture or inflicting pain, it was rare to find such a variety of opponents to train all their skills with. They were looking forward to a whole week of such a good battle drill if they were lucky. Unfortunately they could only enjoy one more day of such extravagant way of training.


    Come Tuesday morning, inside hall number 5 the captives were behaving like well trained pets after Fae was done with them. When Debauchery and students arrived they did as ordered by Fae who split them into groups and one by one they would spend 10 minutes sparing with the students before delivering whatever form of messages they had brought to leader, and then leave the hall as if fleeing from death.


    By the end of the day, everyone felt hall number 5 was a bit too big and empty after having such a st toying around with those idiots who never learn. However before they could leave director Joey came by for a exnation about a few hundred bad treatmentints the guild received from guests who came by to deliver messages. The poor man was shocked to hear how his guests were used to help improve students just because they followed their own orders instead of following the orders they were given by Debauchery. Director Joey wanted to scream "preposterous" at the happy go lucky bunch but thought better of it, if one of them could imprison hundreds, he could die to mere flicked buggies if they targeted him.


    He also expressed the guilds interest in keeping the chest and pay instead with items or books from Tartarus since the guild had to have a reserve of such books inside the dungeon. As the owner of the chest Yunan epted the deal with skill books and magic books of the same value, also the guild could not decide which books he would get, but send a full list of all the books they have and he would choose based on his needs.


    Director Joey returned with the offer Yunan proposed with conflicted feelings. He was happy about the rewardsing his way for securing the chest and angry for his guests mistreatment.


    To rify, Yunan got ownership of the chest because Reina and Leol used their share to repay Yunan for allowing them to get benefits from the starheart, as for Debauchery, they were out of the picture because they did not help in defeating the goblin leader and thus did not feel like deserving of a share.

 Chapter 50: History (1)

    Chapter 50: History (1)


    Wednesday morning was allocated to a lecture about the history of the world and about Tartarus, in an effort by Debauchery to prepare Yunan, Reina and Leol for the secrets they will get to know after their first clear of a level 1 nest on the uing Sunday.


    As the most knowledgeable Leader took the role of lecturer. "Mana is the substance that had the most effect on this world since it was created. The history of the races and the current civilization was initiated by mana single handedly. The history notes that a few hundred thousand years ago a man in meditation discovered a container full to the brim with life power and was releasing the excess power to the world outside as the aura that martial artist could detect around the people surrounding them. The man shared his findings with his master and friends and with the efforts of a whole sect, the first usage of mana was perceived. At the time mana was the innate power humans needed to get stronger and create smaller imitations of the natural powers. Soon the whole world was using mana and researchers of all walks of life integrated mana into their research. And so the age of magic began."


    "When the first mathematician made the first spell construct and thus sessfully cast the full spell the world descended into chaos, and those who used magic reigned supreme. A few thousand yearster, the first case of mana corruption created the monsters we now know and love. A mana bomb fed with years worth of mana from multiple people was detonated as an act of dominance that wiped out all life in a radius of 1000 kilometers leaving a destend filled with high concentration of mana in the atmosphere. Since mana is natural to the world the animals and vegetation moved right back in without much care, but the higher density of mana caused mutations and corrupted them into angry monsters who consume mana and thirst for it leading the monsters to hunt sentient beings who are full of mana."


    "As the usage of mana grew in the world, the concentration of mana that would have taken millions of years to increase naturally in the world, was elerated to a mere fraction of the time needed and the world adapted by mutations instead of the integration that would be the case after a longer and slower exposure mana. In that era, the dwarfs created the heart of the mountain, a forge rumoured to only create items of unmatched quality. The elves created the eternal forest and the heart of the forest; a tree so big it is rumoured to cover an endless expanse of forestry under its canopy. The orcs created the heart of prophecy, near it orcish oracles see and foretell the deaths of the bravest warriors. The men however created weapons that could wipe the world clean. As for the half beasts they grew from intelligent monsters who loathed the rage and subsequently created the heart of the beast. A monster core made by the sacrifice of millions of intellectual monsters for the monster races to grow out of the rage and mana dependency. The heart of the forest lent its life force to the monsters and the half-beasts were born. They were named werebeasts then to keep the men from hunting them down like they did with their ancestors."


    "As the mana corruption took over the world masters began to walk the world, being so powerful that they could lord over an aspect of the world, for example Lady Fortuna is such a being, these beings were worshipped as gods by those who desired their favor. Among the supreme being was a smith named Hephaestus, he made a device than can absorb mana from the air and filter it down to a power source, hitting two birds with one stone, cleaning the world from corruption and create a power supply that does not need monster cores to operate and instead rece them by mana crystals."


    "When he offered the device to the humans as he needed their intellect to make it better and more efficient, they made a weapon that sundered a whole continent that was inhabited by intelligent monsters. Fed up with humans the divine smith Hephaestus wiped away the memory of the device and how to make it from all the minds in the world, all but his own. He then with the help of the heart of the forest, the heart of the beast and the heart of the mountain forged Tartarus, a ce for those monsters whocked intelligence to inhabit, it was made to keep the monsters safe inside it, and used the power of the races to keep the number of monsters in check. The heart of Tartarus was the first sentient artifact in existence, its task was to protect the monsters and reward those who keep them from overpoption as well as create a safe haven for those monsters who gain intelligence inside its depths."


    "Another function Tartarus had was unlock the limiters inside those who explored it, they grew stronger and faster and beyond what those on the outside could ever achieve. A side effect however showed itself soon after Tartarus started cleaning mana from the world, the sentient beings lost their ability to learn and control magic as the density of mana was too low for them to sense it and the difference between the concentrations of the mana pool inside the body and the atmospheric mana outside was restored to bnce it became harder to use magic for those who did not cast it before. And so only Tartarus could create new magic users."


    "The humans held the hearts as responsible for the loss of the military might and domination they had over thest era they waged war against the other races with what was left of their weapons if mass destruction and decimated the world into only one continent were the protection of Tartarus saved those who were on it. And once again the world was plunged into mana corruption and even the hearts were infected. The hearts can be considered as a life form that was created by their respective races and being inflicted with mana corruption was the objective sought by those greedy humans who lost their power."


    "As the hearts were beginning to show the signs of corruption, they all gathered and were forged into sentient artifacts that would need hosts to manifest their power and rule over the races that created them. Hephaestus obliged the hearts and turned them into artifacts of immense power to be worshiped as gods and leaders for eternity to keep the peace between the races of the world."

 Chapter 51: History (2)

    Chapter 51: History (2)


    "when forging the hearts, the divine smith Hephaestus used all the excess mana from converting the hearts and all the mana gather by the newly created Tartarus to reforge thend masses of the world into one continent surrounded by the endless ocean, he deliberately left out some inds and archipgo for those who would brave the seas" leader continued.


    "After the hearts were forged into items, the races lost the powers they relied upon from the hearts and a most absurd idea surfaced in the world, feed the hearts each other to strengthen their power, they are divine items and they like all other divine items can feed upon other items. As for the hosts of the hearts they were immersed in meditation and trying to restore their old powers do much that they did not pay any attention to their races and a new idea was formed, the hearts have be so weak they need to be fed to survive, reinforcing the former idea and starting a global scale racial war that encapsted all the races even those who had no hearts."


    "The hearts themselves were trying to restore their powers for the sake of those who disobeyed their order of keeping peace in the world. The orcs as a race that relished in the war and loved to seek for a most honourable death finally found the courage to renounce the oracles of the heart of prophecy, as they no longer could fortel death, but only life, some humans were drawn to the power of prophecy and created the church of light,"


    "The church of light was built based on the prophecy of life, they would spread the teaching of light but they never sought peace andpassion, and as the only faction with a heart humans can rally to, the church be the representative of the human race"


    "The war of the races kept raging until one man Adun the twilight star came out of the dungeon and decimated all armies that dared engage in battle no matter their race or affiliations, he dered he would ughter all those that waged war between the races, that he would ruin any country that dared to discriminate, and he dered that all those who step inside Tartarus will uphold the peace of the world and insure that all the races are treated equally in punishment and reward."


    "Adun then with the help of the strongest adventurers at the time created the guild of adventurers, an organisation with the sole purpose of rallying all adventurers under the same banner to destroy who ever wanted to ruin the world. And thus the guild was born, first it was only a union for adventurers, butter turned onto the organisation it is now for the sake of letting adventurers focus on the dungeon. As for those that sought enough power to protect in the surface world, they were contracted to be guards and soldiers, under the guild but paid by whoever is in need of them, the guild also managed to fully control Tartarus city a ce where the whole world would converge."


    "After stopping the war and insuring that the peace wouldst long enough for the guild of adventurers to gain power, Adun the twilight star met the hearts and used his own mana as food for them to return to their peak power and rule over their respective races. The heart of the forest took residence in the eternal forest and turned the elves back into the nature loving race they were before."


    "The heart of the mountain took the dwarves back under the mountains and lead them to be the epitome of engineering and technological innovation, the heart of the beast found refuge in a the eternal forest with heart of the forest and led the half beasts into the path of discarding the beastial instinct and protection of mother nature, he turned the race into the proud rangers"


    "As for the heart of prophecy it left the church of light after it had seen its own death, thest death that prophecy would ever predict, it never returned to the orcish people but roamed the world. the orcs had grown into an honorable race, although they abhorred the prophecy of life and rejected oracles from their midst, only orcs can be prophets or seers or oracles,thus they would roam the world spreading the prophecy of life to all who needed it rejected by their own tribes and kin. Although the orcs had immense list for battle, they only fought among themselves in duels and tournaments between tribes, and their proudest achievements were to die in the most amazing and awe inspiring battles. The orcs had only onew, never kill outside battle, and never kill an oracle who has not told you a prophecy. Anything else can be disputed in an arena, therefore they had customs but never rules to follow, even the eternalw can be challenged in a way, for example when Dustan did not kill the oracle when she told us that damnable prophecy. Although no orc would be faulted for mercy no orc was apuded for brutality, especially those who ughtered in the name of battle, those are destroyed when found"


    "As for the church it changed it''s path after the arrival of Adun the twilight star, they turned righteous and strived for the betterment of mankind, and for them the heart of Tartarus created the light magic, the magic that heals all, under the influence of the church, the humans delved into the dungeon to create a better future for humanity and as you can see thanks to that humans finally had a ce in this world"


    "Isn''t Adun the twilight star the first adventurer?" Asked Reina while scratching her head. Sometime during the lecture she found her hair being braided and a certain dwarf was grooming her tails as she sat on the knee of an orc


    "No answered leader, he was named the first adventurer because he is still the strongest adventurer in the dungeon"

 Chapter 52: History (3)

    Chapter 52: History (3)


    "No" answered leader, "he was named the first adventurer because he is still the strongest adventurer in the dungeon"


    "In actuality no one knows if he is alive or dead, none of those who were with him has been seen or heard from in a very long time, the most reliable news we have about anyone from the founding fathers is around 3 thousand years ago, byparison, the reliable news about Hephaestus going in and out of Tartarus are as close as 185 years ago, he was spotted leaving Tartarus with a strange type of infant half-beast on his arms. And for future reference, the reliable newses from detailed information shared by any adventurer from the 15th floor as the minimum requirements, no adventurer is taught how Hephaestus looks like until they spot him to prevent sending false reports"


    "How can anyone live past 500 years, isn''t that the limit for all the races?" Interjected Leol. "If longsting life can be found in the dungeon howe we don''t know about anyone living past that?"


    "They die inside the dungeon trying to live longer " answered leader " constitution is the stat that determines the life span of all the races, the maximum number without the dungeon is about 15 which for humans and half-beasts roughly trantes into 90 years to 100 if one avoids bad habits, for elves the 15 points trantes into 450 to 500 years, for the dwarves it trantes to 300 years, for orcs its around 150 years. As far as we know there is no limit to how high the stats can get, so maybe living for hundreds of thousands of years is not out of the question, the only catch is being able to match power with someone who could reforge the whole or maybe someone who can control the luck of the billions of living beings all at the same time, basically if you want a very long life you need enough strength to be called a supreme"


    "What was the damnable prophecy you received, that made Dustan almost kill?" Yunan felt like it was time to ask about such thing, since most the history he read about before can be summarised by knowing what Leader has already told them.


    "I can not tell you guys yet but i can promise you that you will know soon, very soon, now let''s continue the history lesson. After ensuring the evesting peace among the races Adun the twilight star kept in touch with the hearts to search for something and together they found an ind in the deep seas, ording to a prophecy, whoever reaches the heart of Tartarus can reach that ind. And so Adun arrived at the empty ind alone, around it he found an archipgo filled with all manner of sentient creatures that were once monsters in the dungeon. ording to the heart of the forest, Adun met the elder of the creatures and learned about some secrets of Tartarus, and that the role of the ind is to keep the most vicious monsters in the sea away from the continent, and after a meeting that spanned months Adun returned and dered those monsters as part of the guild, and all who met them in the seas will offer their aid, and the guild will answer their call when they call for aid. That is where most of the aquatic monster meat is from, we provide those monsters with whatever they need, especially monster cores from Tartarus and in return they gives us the edible monster meat they do not eat or preserve."


    "As for the church they were visited by a prophet who wrote a book for them and told them to nurture the souls of humans for they will be needed in the age of chaos, an age that will inevitably arrive with the death of the hearts, and so the church as an organisation that was born due to prophecy adopted the book as the holy book of eternal light, they used all their influence to create faith and piety in the masses."


    "Soon thanks to the faith of the masses and even some from different races, the light magic that was given to the church be stronger the more faith there is in the light, and to create the virtuous cycle they used the light magic to help the masses instead of the rich and noble and aristocracy. The church chose the masses for their faith and were rewarded with faith, thankfully the church has never betrayed the masses since they do not ept any ambition in the ranks of their priests or recruit those from nobility, everyone in the church higher ups is an orphan taken from an orphanage, those of them who have stepped into Tartarus are made into guardians or members of the council. But the supreme pontiff is someone who chose to serve the masses by staying in the surface world and rely upon those who entered the dungeon to create the wealth needed to help the masses. The church even had some years where no pope candidate has shown themselves and the pope seat was vacant for up to a century sometimes. There were also many times where sisters who were chosen as the supreme pontiff; as the council has both men and women in it the pope seat could be filled with either gender; but most of the sisters chosen refused the the office even if it meant that the seat of the pop stays empty."


    "In the church the pope is the public figure that deals with the outside world, they will be part of politics and government and in contact with many things that has nothing to do with faith and piety, and the job can be easily done by the council, thus the church is separated into two factions, the pious ones who reject the world, and the pious ones that embrace the world to protect the rest from being out of touch. The system for some reason works and the church has be the ideal organisation it aimed to be."


    "That would be all we can teach you about the world, oh and keep the thing about choosing the pope a secret, there are many who would do anything to get that post and are patient enough to work on it for generations"

 Chapter 53: One more secret

    Chapter 53: One more secret


    Yunan was feeling a little bit scared about the prophecy that Debauchery received, because usually you seek the prophecies, prophecy does not seek its subjects unless it was so ominous the oracle had to warn Debauchery and risk death by Dustan. If the prophecy was scarier than Dustan the ss B risk the guild has assigned Debauchery is way too low, they should be assigned something akin to apocalyptic risk or the likes of it.


    "Leader, what was that age of chaos that you mentioned in the prophecy about the church, the one that said human piety was needed in the age of chaos or something?" The question Reina asked put an ugly look on Leader "did i mention that?" She said.


    "Mention what?", " I heard nothing", "what did thess just say? My ears are not what they use to be", "nope there was no mention of such a thing" was the answers from Debauchery, there was surely something that they did not want to share all but Dustan who said "they already heard it and they are asking about it, you just fucked up Leader, why don''t you tell them and clean up the mess"


    A collective sigh came from Debauchery, after a few looks and whispers the consensus came out "just tell them leader, since the harm is already done just go with it" said Balin as the representative, most likely the one sacrificed for a beating by an angry Leaderter on. "Fine, i will tell them" said a dejected Leader.


    "The age of chaos is the prophecy all the oracles can see, thest death they can see, each oracle sees a facet of it, it''s about the death of the hearts, the heart of prophecy saw its own death, while other oracles would see a different part each, it was prohibited by the heart of prophecy to umte all the visions into one, if even the heart could not see it in its entirety then no one should know about it before it urs. ording to one prophet who saw what after the deaths of the hearts, All hell will break loose on the Burkan continent, Tartarus will fall and all the monsters within would escape into the world, mana would drown the world in minutes and even the sunlight will be hindered by the blue fog that will shroud the entire."


    "That vision is within the first 5 minutes of the death of the hearts, the furthest any oracle had ever seen, there is no time frame about the age of chaos, but we know the more prophecies about it the closer it is." There was a very ugly look on the faces of Debauchery, they knew more so much more than what they say, but they can not divulge the information or else someone might elerate the process and end the world faster.


    The students just nodded and did not keep asking about such an unpleasant subject, instead for the rest of the morning did nothing but enjoy a good chat with Debauchery about history and how fate, luck and prophecy worked in mysterious ways.


    The afternoon lesson was spent on a blocking lesson, which was a rare thing to do with Debauchery since they believed in the "kill it before you need to block it" school of thought. The students tried all kinds of shields and how to use them as well as some basic block using the weapons or the body itself.


    They also were visited by director Joey who brought in a fat catalogue of the public books the guild had in Tartarus, and another smaller golden catalogue for the books not for sale publically, and so half the lesson was spent in choosing skills and magics for everyone present, since there is no way Yunan could need enough books to pay for the chest, he decided to give Debauchery and his friends as many books as possible from the public catalogue, as for the golden one he took all for himself.


    By the end of the lesson Yunan had chosen about 50 books that ranged from healing and buffing to mastery over weaponry and elements, and some other that he saw fit to have, as for the rest they each chose 10 books each totalling over 130 books. And there was enough left from the chest to fully equip level 25 gear for everyone, and enough potions and remedies for a decades worth of extravagant use inside Tartarus.


    And the rest of the week followed on the same tone, trainingbat skill while keeping the mental faculties overclocked at all time. The growth of the three young students was very exemry keeping Debauchery in a very ted mood, they had been able to ovee all the level one challenges given by Debauchery showing the effects of both the odd training regime and the Starheart in pushing the kids into hights no other could dream about.


    On Friday morning was Debauchery did theirst minute check for the n and the items, to make sure nothing was missed and no detail was left, they also applied for a secret training camp and made sure that the guild would leave them alone by issuing a few threats. As for the afternoon it was used for rest ans recovery before every one left the academy after sundown stating that they were leavung earlier to dodge persuit.


    The party soo made it into amercial hub of a city with the most teleportation circles and had the conecting teleportation circles for the targets of the operation, once inside the city, Debauchery rented out a vi on the periphery of the city in a quiet corner as the base of operations, that in the operation instead of splitting to achieve maximum coverage they would atick together and clean everything in one go beforeing back to their base and counting the spoils and resting for the nest clean up the students must do ti start the next phase of their training.

 Chapter 54: Ready?

    Chapter 54: Ready?


    An hour before midnight Debauchery was ready to start operation "headache prevention" as dubbed by Bai while discussing how to proceed with the mission. As per habit Debauchery sat together around a meal to make the final n with Lucian leading the talk.


    "I found some interesting stuff while scouting, all the nobles who nned to harm us were warned by the same person about us leaving the academy and vanishing, the man almost sniffed me out so i did not dare to eavesdrop but i found out where he came from, the one and only enemy we ever had, as for the 8 families, well, they are too well guarded for my liking, they are hiding something big or are baiting us, either way i can promise you kids some fun".


    "We have an enemy? Since when?" Asked Dustan bewildered. "Remember that old Duke who wanted us to get him a throne and spent two thousand lvl 10 soldiers on us" Balin reminded the orc "oh the one who kept spouting things like "if you refuse me you will be my enemies something something you will pay for killing my men", how is that old man doing? i miss his food, i loved how his daughter yed around trying to seduce us all even ugly me" stated Dustan with nostalgia and longing.


    "Yeah that old guy, and he seems to have gotten his throne and quite a number of level 15 adventurers around him" replied Lucian "I think he got burned a few times with level 20 guys so he downgraded his expectations, ording to some idle chatter there were about a 500 of them, i reckon it would take us about 15 minutes to clean up their ce but we can not do it silently so i''m gonna need you dear Bai to head there first and do your thing, help them sleep tighter, get a confession or three, mark those who need to die. I need you to pull all the stops and just cover all the bases."


    "All the bases? How long do i have?" Asked Bai, "4 hours i''d wager" Lucian said "so we will take confessions from those we clean up and you my capable rogue can take your time covering all the bases, oh and please make sure to cover even those base none in this party can think or even know about, okey?" Bai looked at Lucian with a bit of disgust, it seems Bai was nning on taking it easy and ck of but now he could only stare at Lucian with a mumbled "tcheh, shifty bastard"


    "Does Bai know more bases than other rogues?" As usual curiosity took over Reina mid conversation "i can only sleep when Bai is covering up our bases, we have never been infiltrated and we can catch all those who try well before they can even start acting out their ns, the guy is a genius when ites to shifty sneaky stuff" Fae dutily replied. She knew she was feeding a bad habit by answering a question that interrupted a conversation, but who cares, not Debauchery for sure.


    "Any way, Bai has to leave a bit before us and make sure everything is in order when we arrive around 4 hourster, the kids have earned the right to follow us and watch so Leader is on guard duty, Balin will call the shots i will sneak and deal with the hidden ones and Dustan can cut down all those i marked at your leisure, Fae make sure no noise is leaked. Onest point Leader, any orders?" Said Lucian. "Total annihtion, no mercy, no prisoners" replied Leader with amanding tone.


    Bai was the first to leave the vi and into the battle, soon after, Debauchery put on some in armors, one can tell they felt sofortable wearing those armors, what most untrained eyes would miss would be the battle intent that was emanating from the armors. Those armors had seen some tough battles and have been repaired so many times they lost all the luster such good armors must have had. As for their weapons, one would be amazed at them. Aside from the daunting dragon ws Dustan had, all the rest had extremely simple weapons, Lucian''s daggers looked like cooking knives, Balins hammer looked like a short sledgehammer, his shield looked like a nk of wood, Fae had a meter long tree branch for her staff while Leader had a 2 meter long walking stick.


    At first Yunan was bewildered but then remembered something, these guys are going all out, "total annihtion" were not just fancy words, they seriously are going to do it, and they geared up for a fight in the 20th floor and they are using full power. Yunan and Reina were excited to see the full power of Debauchery, but leol was a bitprehensive, these guys scared a level 1 nest by walking inside, just walking, and all the power they showed during training was at level 1 and what scared him most was that Dustan had bad control over his strength, if he could cause havok by not trying to use force, how much damage can he do when he tries. Leol would know the answer very soon.


    When everyone was geared up and ready, Bai showed up at the door, and punched Lucian square in the jaw "you said 500 lvl 15, why are there 50 level 20 in there? Gimme your shoes" and while Lucian was still falling Bai was already taking off his shoes "if something goes wrong i will cut off your tail, ptui" and just like that Bai left.


    Leader was upset "talk" she ordered Lucian who was putting on new shoes " he is a king, schemes with other kings and organisations is in the job description, why else would a group of level 20s arrive at this time, less than an hour after i left, him trying to harm Debauchery isughable at best, something stinks and I would like to get confessions instead of making spection, but if i am right and them going against us is a diversion i think we must thank the lucky bastard for the sweet reward on its way after we end this"


    And with that the party stepped out of the vi and into the night, before stepping into the teleportation portal, the all subconsciously touched Yunan to get some of his luck.

 Chapter 55: First target

    Chapter 55: First target


    WARNING EXPLICIT TORTURE CONTENT, PARENTS BE ADVISED


    After arriving at the first target city each of the kids was carried gently by a member of debauchery and within moments they arrived at the target family estate. The estate was walled inside a 1X1 km squarespace.


    Debauchery and the kids were standing on the wall overlooking the estate, it took there seconds to cover the 5km distance between the portal and the target.


    Fae waved her tree branch and a transparent film quietly engulfed the whole estate underneath it, and when the film was fully deployed the noises of the night turned dead silent. "Silent domain" exined leader "istes the sound from entering or leaving the domain." Then it was Balin who started chanting next and faint glow could be seen over some ces. "That is not a spell but an item activation chant, the paint used by Lucian as a mark is made by Balin, and anyone who hears the chant can see the marked targets".


    Yunan could see from his position what was marked even if he could not see more than shades on the dark a few minutes before, he could see clearly all the marked people or the marked walls and even the marked vault in the underground that he could not even guess existed before. Yunan finally understood how great one must be to be called master dwarf, a mere marking paint can let you see beyond your own abilities.


    Then Lucian disappeared from the wall, to do his job of cleaning the hidden threats, Yunan could see some of the marked lights being split in half or decapitated soon after. As for the rest of the party, Dustan charged at the unmarked buildings and swung his axes at them, turning the whole thing into rubble that buried beneath it all those who were inside. Next was Balin who simply marched on a path and hit his sledge hammer on the ground towards any building he passed by and it would sunder under the shock wave.


    From his position besides Leader, Yunan could see those shades of unmarked houses and buildings falling one after the other, while Balin and Dustan passed by them like ghosts, there was no sound just shadows falling here and there and after a mere minute there was only one big vi that stood in the former bustling estate. Then Fae took her turnst, she conjured a robed figure with with a shovel in the right hand " grave robber, bring me all the valuables and kill who ever is still alive in the ruins" and with that the hooded figure floated to the ruined estates, his shovel sweeped taking out all manner of items, even the vault itself was extracted from the underground.


    At the 5 minutes mark the whole estate was a ruin and anything of value was presented before Debauchery in a cart sized pile and Lucian, Balin and Dustan were back with all the evidence they could gather. Now was the time for treasure as for the contents of the confessions, that would be left for review after the whole thing is over.


    "Come here kids, i regret that we could not teach you appraisalst week because the ident with the chest, so we will do an Impromptus lesson while sorting out the items, we need you to tell us about the item you pick and the value you would give it, and if there is a mistake we can correct you and show you how to make note of the difference" Leader who had done nothing but keep the kids beside her at all times took over when it was safe, and while they were separating the spoils of war an intruder barged inside the silent domain, he made a beeline for Debauchery with the intent to kill aimed at Leader, but with a flip of her hand Leader just brought him to his knees in front for her.


    "How the fuck do you know a level 40 spell you bitch" was the first thing he said, that earned him a broken jaw 4 times, it was healed by leader just to be broken again by another member of Debauchery, thest hit, was the hammer of Balin that broke half his face, although Leader could heal him fully, the experience of getting half your bones in your skull turn to mush was by no means pleasant.


    And soon a violent interrogation was started, the man had suffered from pains the kids never knew before, every time he lied he would feel the wrath of Dustan in ways too cruel to be called beastly. Every time the man told a lie he would start the confession all over, and with every lie, Dustan would use his finger nail to dig inside the man and rip out muscles and tendons and ligaments, he would crush bones by grabbing them from under the muscle and snapping them like twigs, the man could feel it all thanks to the enhanced sensitivity that was casted by leader.


    Enhanced sensitivity can be used by party members to avoid invisible foes and have a better understanding of the battle flow mid battle, but the drawback was that they could not suppress the amplified senses, and as such pain would be multiplied by orders of magnitude and there was nothing the user can do to alleviate it since the spell could neglect such spells as pain relief and other spells that can dull the senses.


    The man had scene his own spine pulled out from his stomach, he saw his own organs when Dustan decided a lie was too big and just ripped out the whole skin and muscle covering his insides, at a certain point was giving Balin a lesson in human anatomy when the lie included a curse at leader. Something the man now had engraved in his bones never insult Leader, and never lie to Debauchery. The man watched as his lies literally caused his body to rupture and be rebuilt just to rupture again.


    The kids were shielded from the scene but the screams the man issued were enough for their overactive imagination to run wild. Although the kids never heard the confession he made, from the severity of the torture he was inflicted he had done some unforgivable things in the eyes of Debauchery.

 Chapter 56: Conspiracy

    Chapter 56: Conspiracy


    Once the interrogation was over the man was put to sleep and sent back to the vi base, it took debauchery about and hour to pry the information from the man, so for the next targets, the kids missed out on their appraisal lesson and they would have to dy it till after the purging was over.


    Over the next few target estates there was more people like the captured man who were seized and interrogated then sent back to the temporary base debauchery had, those men tried to fight back but were either so overwhelmed by the sheer strength of Balin and Dustan that they confessed before they were tortured or they were handled gently by Fae and Lucien thus ended up tasting the worst torture from the start because they insulted Leader. This time Dustan would just keep working on the man until he lost all will to lie.


    Leol asked how they could determine if the man lied, the answer got the kids off guard, Leader had got a book from Tartarus that gave her a title "holy confessor". Leader showed the title through her status but hid everything except her name. The description of the title says " all those who either lie or intend to lie to the holy confessor will be exposed showing the sign of the liar". Leol assumed that they used an item or a spell, but a title was out of his expectations, if that is the case, Debauchery must have many other titles that are so convenient for them.


    Although the kids wanted to watch, Fae stopped them saying that the way Dustan does his torture is not something anyone should learn, if they wanted to learn, they can ask Balin for his gentler means in extracting words. The kids didn''t have to wait for very long, in the 7th target they found a female that did not belong and thus was given to Balin because Dustan hated torturing women because they fainted all the time before he could deal any real pain.


    This time the kids could see Balin working and his approach was to stack more pain with time making it harder and harder for the subject to faint because the pain does not exceed the shock threshold because it does not hit hard but gradually increases making it harder to pass that threshold. He would start by tearing off the nails in each hand, than break one finger at the time, then do the same to the toes, and then he keeps breaking bones one by one until the girl could not even breath normally, she would be fully healed and asked to confess, if she lied, it would start all over, the female gave in by the second heal.


    ording to her, those families were to make a diversion by making trouble for Debauchery and keep the guild focused on pacifying Debauchery while their group took over some vaults and attacked the allies and the caravans under the protection of the guild and eventually start a coup and dethrone the current guild master by using the high amount of level 20 explorers they recruited with promises of riches and bigger freedom among other things, including some racial discrimination against the other races.


    "Fools" was the only thing Leader had to say when she was asked by Reina on how usible that n was, especially with members of the guild leading this movement. It was not that their n was faulty, its that there were things not even the secretary of the guild master knew about, something only adventurers with a certain rank can know about. Although Debauchery did not divulge much information, there were things to be gleaned from the way Leader treated the traitors.


    Once all 8 targets were purged from existence, debauchery headed for thest target, the old king''s castle. They found Baizing about on top of the gate with a silent domain already in ce as well as illusions of guards patrolling the walls, when the group arrived as if by teleportation beside him, Bai stood up and kissed Yunan on the head and then punched Lucian one more time and threw Lucian''s new boots at his face with "ptui".


    Bai proceeded to lead Debauchery to the throne room where 50 men and women were tied and on their knees with such terror in their eyes that Yunan had to ask what he had done to them, Bai only smiled and made put a finger across his lips and all the captives nodded at the same time, whatever Bai did to them was worse than the torture Dustan inflicted since Dustan''s subject tried to lie a few times before finally giving up. The questioning was rather peaceful as Bai had done all the hard work.


    Fae sent the grave robber to gather all the riches in the castle while leader took in the confessions of the captives.


    There was a cult born from inside the guild, since the number of human adventurers had superior numbers they should have better treatment than those from the races, then that changed with time to only humans should be adventurers as well as the masters of the continent and enve all the races, as radicalism keep growing with each new radicalised member, the cult went from more benefits to world domination in a matter of a few hundred years, the cult is fully made from adventurers that were selected by the cult master from various sources, from kidnapping to buying the orphans and so on, all those were trained into adventurers and pushed to reach the 20tg level.


    The cult master chose the old goat of a king because he had the ambition that grew from having his own kingdom into growing it into an empire that spanned all the continent, a fool by any and all standards, those who are here were to act as bait for Debauchery while the cult attacked some other ces and med it on whoever was the target in that location. By the dawn of Saturday Balin went into the guild branch and issued an announcement, "Debauchery had annihted all those who nned to disrupt their mission, if anyone has a word to say let theme and die, the guild master is invited to personally witness the evidence Debauchery has gathered in the mercantile city of Damascus" he then left an address and went on his way.

 Chapter 57: Report

    Chapter 57: Report


    Inside the temporary base Debauchery had rented in Damascus Yunan, Reina and Leol worked on their appraisal training looking through the spoils of war Debauchery had gatheredst night, they were not allowed to sleep since it was already morning, they had to continue until bedtimeter on.


    Meanwhile the guild was having a meltdown sifting through whatever Debauchery left behind, while Debauchery was teaching their student how to count money and store treasures. The amount of protection requests that flooded the guild was beyond what would even wars provoke, even since the announcement made by balin went public all those who even traded looks felt a threat hanging on their necks.


    By midday there was a knock on the door of the temporary base, Fae opened the door and respectfully led inside two old men, one had a kindness to him while the other seemed too tired and in need of retirement.


    Debauchery assembled with their student in tow in front of the older gentlemen, Fae led everyone into the study where the old men sat on the sofa while Debauchery stood up in a respectful manner, something odd and rare for the bunch, Yunan did not dare to ask any question and kept Reina from talking every time she tried to say something he would pull on her hand.


    After the men werefortable on the sofa Fae excused herself "please excuse me, i would like to present some refreshments. Leader approached the kindly looking man and knelt in the most pious way "your holiness, it is a pleasure having you here, you should have summoned me over" Fae hade almost running with a try that had a bottle of red wine and two sses on it and set it up in the table before them.


    Leader red at the flustered Fae and proceeded "these are mypanions. Fae the elf, Dustan the orc, Balin the dwarf, Lucian the beast and Bai, the kids are our students the blond is Leol, a well mannered aristocra, Reina a royal kitsune and Yunan Friend of fortuna" every one bowed when their name was spoken and even Reina understood that it was not the time to speak or ask question.


    "Even if i sent for you we both know you would just run away again, Mary my child, so there is no need for a summon if an old man''s request is denied. No need to be this polite when i am here to punish you." he stood up and put his hand on Leader''s head "tell me why you did what you did and what kind of punishment you deserve"


    "You will not punish me" said Leader in confidence "i followed the only rule you told me to follow, i protected that which i live for, although it got us a very nice surprise, it started with us just protecting the things we live for, and i live to be free and without worry, they tried to get me worried and restrict my freedom, so decided to give them the thing they dread, annihtion"


    The old man flicked Leader''s forehead and sat back in his ce "can you tell us why you did this and how you came by this nice surprise" Leader motioned to Bai toe forward, he did the same as leader and knelt in front of the kindly man and took out a crystal ball that yed the confessions they gotst week from those spies who were used for the grappling training.


    The tired man had an even worse expression when he knew how his guild allowed those with the intent to harm both students and employees into the middle of an academy, he had a guilty look on his face. He looked in apology at Yunan and the other kids. But the expression turned from guilt into rampant rage as he witnessed the confessions gotten fromst night, he was positively fuming from rage.


    The kindly old man just watched silently, his kind expression turned to grief "did they confess to you Mary?" he asked with a heavy voice. "Yes your holiness, they were under the power of my confession when these were recorded, we have another were they lied and the mark is visible even through the recording" she motioned to Bai and he took out another crystal that showed Balin torturing the female captive from the 7th target. Yunan watched the surprise both old men showed at the mark an it disappearing and reappearing, although the crystal did not show what Balin did, the painful face of the girl was clear enough to be read.


    "Can you please show us on the captives, the ones who are rted to the cult, i hope you kept some yes?" said the kindly old man and immediately Leader stood up and respectfully led the way to the basement were over 50 captives were huddled together and Debauchery followed. As the older men stepped inside the basement, the captives almost swarmed over them begging andining how they have been mistreated and framed by Debauchery. All of them had inverted crosses on their foreheads the tell tale of lying in front of the confessor.


    Both older men got out without saying a single word while Bai fixed all the captive with a hostile look and silence ruled the basement. Before leaving the basement, the kindly old man passed by the pile of spoils debauchery had gotten from the plunder he ced his hands on the pile and half of it disappeared "taxes" exined the kindly old man while a single tear Dropped down from Dustan''s eye.


    Before leaving with all the crystals that Debauchery recorded even those that had torture included in them the old tired man said "they all died in the attack, i would like to take the corpses with me for burial, they all died for disrupting a mission by the guild, you have one month to prepare, you and your students are going on a vermin extermination mission. Anything else will be done through personal visits. That is all for now, have a good day".


    As for the kindly old man he asked Yunan before stepping outside "would you rmend the church to send a student to your merry band?". After a moment of thought Yunan answered "Pious men and women should not be exposed to us, the kind that does not care enough about death or killing, if you n to send someone, either send someone so pure they can never be tainted or send a tainted one who can never be pure, our merry band is a good ce for both, but not the best ce for those that are very impressionable". The old man nodded his head and left with a wave of his hand.

 Chapter 58: Punished

    Chapter 58: Punished


    After the old men left and before Reina got the chance to ask her questions from between the paws of Fae and Balin the wailing of Dustan filled the vi as he clung to leader while bawling his eyes out "your daddy stole my money, you said he was nice but he took my money, hic hic, why does every take my money waaah waaah". A true sight to behold, one does not simply witness the tears of an orc.


    Leader entangled herself from Dunstan''s clutches and closed in on Yunan. The poor kid could feel she was not really upset but not very satisfied either and he was about to pay for it, so he braced himself for a p on the back of the head but what came was an ear twist that made him cry out. "Why can''t you just say we have no more space for students? You had to give him a speech and now he is going to send someone to keep tabs on me" leader twisted harder and pulled him up to his toes "consult the adults next time you little runt, now we all have to get stuck because of your running mouth, do that again and i''ll feed you your own tong" leadr let go of Yunan and humphed her way back to the study while the snickers and chuckles of ridicule pierced the kids heart.


    Even Dustan was sniggering to himself, his lost fortune already forgotten and everyone was heading to the study to make sense of what happened. They found leaderying on the couch face down and visibly moody, so Bai took his position as masseur and got yo work on improving her mood. While the rest sat in chairs or on the ground waiting for Leader to speak but Reina broke the silence first. "Who are they? and why does leader run away from her dad? he seems really nice and kindly".


    "He is not her father he is the pope, the other was the guild leader, they are basically the most influential people on the, and they were here to deal with the mess we made, we got two punishments and that is getting of very lightly, so we can consider ourselves lucky, because even the punishment has a reward hidden in the future" exined Lucian who was now ying with Reina''s tails.


    "So i just told the pope who to send in to study under Debauchery as if he did know better, seems like i really need to stop talking freely, first was an emperor then the pope, maybe i get to talk down atdy luck next? That is doom waiting for me" Yunan had his head between his hands feeling like he just escaped cmity after punching her in the face, while Leol was patting his death seeking friend on the back trying tofort him.


    "Lucian just said we got two punishments but the way i see it is we just got out without a scratch, even death missed this guy when he punched her in the face, so what are the punishments we got and someone exin to me why does Leader have daddy issues with a dad like that" asked Leol whileforting his best friend.


    It was leader who answered him this time " we get a new student and we have to dismantle the cult we found on our own. No back up from the guild or any organisation including dad, and we have to take you with us because you know too much and might slip up if we leave you in the academy, also we need to get you and the new kid to be level 2 or 3 within a month or risk your life in the mission, that is the second punishment, dad is giving me someone to protect while having to go into the most dangerous cult this world has seen, so yeah, so much headache, and i don''t have daddy issues, the old goat is just too protective and nags at me all the time when i y outside for too long and not visit"


    "I thought you told us that only orphans are taken into the church, howe you call him dad?" Asked the overly curious Reina "also how are you nning to get us beyond level 1 outside of Tartarus i thought you said that it is impossible to get beyond level 1 without Tartarus, were you lying to us again?" That earned her an ear flick from Lucian.


    "Listen here cute little tails" said Leader unable to get angry at the girl "you kids have something that can break the naturalws, how do you think you, a bunch of 10 year olds reached the epitome of level 1 and could defeat a level 2 opponent while working together? The Starheart, as for why i call him dad it''s because the old pervert like to y father with pure girls, that is why he took me in when i was 5 and yed daddy with me, he was real nice back then, but ever since my first boyfriend he got so protective and always makes me feel like i am 5 again, although he make me want to run away all the time i can''t help but love the old goat"


    "There something else you guys need to know, we may be meeting the hearts by next month before we head out on the mission, it has something to do with the ring for mister luck here" started Balin " that thing is the guide to the heart of Tartarus and there is a quest left by Adun the twilight star for the guild, find the ck fate or find the heart of Tartarus. It has something to do with the death of the hearts ao we are nning to report it and get the rewards for the quest to maybe help you guys grow faster, as for the guild leader he wille back next week with the pope most likely to check on the ring, so i think we should report finding the ring after you guys clean up a nest on your own."


    That brought a damper on the mood, the death of the hearts was an apocalyptic event and they had the key in their hands, asides from that, meeting those you are telling will die sooner rather thanter is bad no matter how you look at it, as for the training to level 2 or 3 is another bad thing on its own, the hellish training from before will gain an order of magnitude.

 Chapter 59: Run

    Chapter 59: Run


    Saturday afternoon was not over yet. Debauchery had to unalive their captives and the executioner selection was not going too well " i am an orc, i never kill outside battle, send the shifty one, he is best used for this kind of crap". "I massaging my queen you dumb orc, just give them weapons and ughter them like the pigs they are". "Not a snowball''s chance in hell, if its a massage we can all do it, you just want to touch a female, go down there and you will find enough females to satiate you, just kill the rest and **** the ones you like till they die,no one said how should they die."


    The argument was getting heated between the honest orc Dustan and the shifty human Bai, because through bets and bribes only those two were left to do the dirty work and now they had to push the job on one another. The kids were watching the scene for ckmail materials and methods to get out from undesirable jobs a Debauchery. Meanwhile the other members of Debauchery were totally ignoring the scene until Dustan would inevitably try to drag the rest in it.


    "You are just jealous i get to massage leader and you never get the chance, besides i shifty and not a pervert, so go do your job and let me finish mine". "Fine since you are calling it a job then let Leader decide, i know for sure wolfy there would not mind recing your care for the queen, otherwise i will not budge from here".


    Leader lifted her head with sleepy eyes half open " you both go, you know i hate infighting and yet you still do it infront of me, so off with you two, Balin go with them, you three have not gone to the brothels in a few months, so go relieve some tension, Lucian bring fluffy tails ande do me, i need a nap so don''t disturb me anymore, shoo shoo" and that ended the spectacle. Fae brought the boys to the treasury to do a recap on the appraisal before heading out to buy dinner with them, while the three men grumbled at each other under the kicks of Balin who lost his fluffy time thanks to them.


    When the sun was about to set, Leader and Reina looked like they had a good nap when they came to the living room, Yunan and Leol lost their appreciation for wealth after counting so much money it started looking like stones on the street, while the men were still grumbling about the incident from before.


    When everyone gathered in the living room ready to eat, came an urgent knocking sound, from the front door, everyone looked at Leol, he did not represent Debauchery and had the look of an aristocrat, if he opens the door, who ever came would think they got the wrong vi and might let them be until morning. Leol left the table with his stomach growling and demanding to feast.


    "Mom, did you ask for a mini nun?" was what Leol shouted to interrupt who he described as a mini nun, he did not want to lie to the girl and knew exactly who sent her, the crowned cross ne betrayed her identity, but Debauchery was in no condition to ept a new recruit at the moment. The door was pushed open and Balin came from behind Leol, "what mini nun are you talk.. RUN" the door was mmed shut and Debauchery went into turmoil. Dustan was shaking Balin by the cor" why do you have to move first when cute things are around, why can''t you follow the n". Lucian was holding his head and muttering "its all over, no more fun, we are doomed, they finally got the drop on us". Fae was and leader were both hugging Reina in denial "the church has not found us, it must be one of those donation collectors, the church can not do this to us, we are fine, just ignore it and it will go away"."it''s just a bad dream, nothing but a bad dream". Finally Bai snapped and pulled his dagger "we can kill her and run, she is just a mini nun, we can run away and pretend it never happened" that earned him a collective punch in the head "you can''t kill a nun, do you remember thest time the old man got angry?" After those words were said a collective shudder passed through the spines of every one in Debauchery.


    As the spectacle was going on Yunan went to the door and invited the little nun inside, he took her to the living room where Debauchery was still in the middle of freaking out, Reina was sandwiched between the two females feeling lost for not being able to ask her questions, Leol was munching on something while watching the show with fascination.


    "My name is Yunan and he is Leol, the fluffy one sandwiched there is Reina, we are the formal students of Debauchery, why don''t you have a seat and eat something while they calm down". Yunan sat down while making the introduction. The mini nun looked at the table and had a very upset look on her face as she sat down "so much food for just nine people is a crime, how much of it will go to waste?" The nun ate in small elegant bites and looked at Debauchery who were now huddled behind Dustan and Balin who both had their shields out.


    "None would go to waste, Debauchery eats enough food for fifty men, this table is a bitcking, so i assume there are midnight snacks hidden somewhere" said Leol to the mini nun "do you think they have a phobia of nuns?". "Its a healthy fear you ignorant runt, you have no idea what nuns can do, this one is the worst kind, the kind sent by the old man, why are you eating with her, hurry and save your pathetic lives." Balin shouted from behind his shield trying to stay as safe as possible from the danger he foresaw.


    Yunan and Leol both ignored the dwarf as if he was delusional and had their attention on the nun "do you have any idea what happened to them that made them act like this? this is the worst i have seen them behave by far and they behave badly all the time". " I don''t know, dad just told me to dress like this to give them a good impression on me". " I think it worked too much, the impression you left them with is evesting". "I suppose dad was right again, he is on a streaktely".

 Chapter 60: Story

    Chapter 60: Story


    In the living room of Debauchery''s temporary base, the scene where a little girl drove a bunch of adults into the verge of mortal fear took ce. Yunan and Leol were dining with said girl under the gazes of Debauchery.


    "Tell me something, has your dad got into prankingtely? By the way you still did not introduce yourself to us, that is bad manners for a nun" said Leol half chewing half talking while Yunan walked to the fortifications Debauchery made to extract the fox girl and let her eat a bit. For some reason children were fearless when adults disy fear.


    With Reina sessfully extracted the children sat around the table and chatted while eating. "My name is Lili and i am training to be a holy healer, dad sent me here to study with you, he said it will be fun so i came by, for some reason he told me to dress up like a nun whenever they made feel bad, my dad is so overprotective, i almost hate him"


    "So you are not a nun? This is what your dad told you to put on for a good impression?", " I don''t want to be a nun, they are so uptight and no fun at all, i want to go to the dungeon and meet a hero, fall in love and have a family and live happily ever after" eximed Lili with a fervent look in her eyes. "Whoa! So pure!", "Too bad she came to Debauchery, poor girl", "i envy her innocence, hopefully shests a bit longer than Reina". The three childrenmented to each other under the questioning gaze of Lili who felt lost in their midst.


    "False rm everyone, she is not a nun, the dress is a prank orchestrated by the old man pope, you can rx and breathe, there will be no nunsing after you, not anytime soon anyway" Yunan tried to dispel the current atmosphere and ease things up, he also took a mental note of adding nuns to the newly created section of Debauchery''s weaknesses.


    There was obvious relief although partial in the faces of the previously dauntless adults as Lucian timidly asked " really? There are no nuns? We can go around freely?". Leol Answered the broken man "she had no mark of lying when she talked so that should be the case,e here and eat with us buddy, there is no danger here". It took a moment for Debauchery to regain their former attitude as they were still harboring doubts and were very reserved with Lili who seemed to enjoy being around these assortment of colorful people.


    After the feast officially started, Reina and Lili became best friends, almost immediately, one was a twin tailed princess while the other was a walking talking molester repellent simply a match made in heaven, and with the suggestions of Leol and Yunan, the nun version of Reina was born and that caused a dilemma for the molesting paws of Debauchery, on one hand they could not keep themselves away from Reina on the other they would flinch whenever she moved, this provided endless fun for the children, and a trump card that can be used in case of emergencies.


    Eventually the chatter drifted towards the elephant in the room, and by that, i mean Reina raised the question suddenly like she is known to do. "Why do you guys who don''t even care about the guild or an emperor fear nuns? That is a story that we should have heard you talk about when you were recounting all the stupid adventures you had".


    "There is a reason we never mention that thrice ursed day, we simply do not even want to remember that day, or the following months, it took leader pleading with the old goat for us to safely enter cities again" answered Bai in a hushed tone, the table went quiet when he started talking.


    "It all started when a nun hired us to take her on an adventure, and since the covenants do not allow the nuns from leaving the city they are in unless transferred, someone came up with the idea of kidnapping her" every one red at Balin who hung his head in shame. "Everything was going fine and the nun was having fun as we dodged pursuit after pursuit, the contract was about to be fully fulfilled when we were tracked down by a bunch of nuns with crowns on their crosses" a whimpers slipped out of the hunky Dustan and you could tell Lucian was shivering while Fae had already fainted.


    "They did not even say a word or listen when the nun was telling them nothing bad happened to her, they just started to beat us up, first they were using just enough strength to suppress us but we managed to run away with our contractor, that is when all hell broke loose, we were beaten up to an inch of our lives, healed and beaten again for a full week" tears filled Bai''s eyes as he recounted the story, indignation was written on everyone''s faces, even sobs were heard from Dustan, again one does not simply witness an orc sobbing like a frightened rabbit.


    "After the week ended they left us there and left with the nun in tow, we did not even get payed or get any exnation, and from that day onwards for six long months, in every city we entered, the local nuns would beats us up for just being there, they said we are not allowed to even pretend to kidnap a member of the church, it finally took all the pleading Leader could muster and a promise of half of all our gains in the future to stop the humiliation"


    Yunan genuinely felt sorry for Debauchery, with that kind of experience, anyone would faint at the mention of nuns let alone stand face to face with a fully dressed nun even of it was just a costume, Leol also shared this thought with Yunan, they also agreed that it must''ve been arranged by the old pope to meet his renegade daughter, as for half the gains that was just a cherry on top of the proverbial cake.


    They would not share this with Debauchery as it might be used in the future against the pope, they learned that from Debauchery during the chess game of thrones, all leverage is useful leverage, no matter if it was against god or the devil, leverage was leverage no matter how you look at it and with the guts Debauchery had instilled in them, there is no way they would let go of such a great thing.

 Chapter 61: Loss of purity

    Chapter 61: Loss of purity


    The feaststed for a few hours, and helped everyone rx and get to know each other especially Lili who was on very good term with Leader after she changed her nun''s dress and habit to something more casual.


    Sharing something toin about is a strong catalyst for female friendships, and fathers are the most suitable subjects toin about, more so if they shared a father. Men are simpler, they bond over silence and a shared drink, that is why men can never understand how women and their friends sustain a friendship that needs something inmon, and the same for women, they can never understand how men do not need much of a reason to be the best of friends.


    When sleeping time came and everyone went into their rooms Lili t out pushed the guys out with the reason "girls and boys can not sleep together", neither Yunan or Leol could understand why, after all they shared the same room with Reina for almost a month and nothing went wrong, Lili ended the argument with "that is just how it works ;no boys allowed to sleep in the same room as girls"


    Maybe it was like that everywhere else but when Debauchery is included those rules the rest of the world follows seem very useless to uphold, both young boys knew Lili woulde around once the traveling starts and sharing a bedroll is just like sharing a ss of water, extremely inconsequential, and would only prove the trust between the genders. After all if they could not share a bedroll when needed how can they share a death struggle? That is just basic survival for groups.


    At dawn a sharp scream woke up everyone in the vi, Lili was scared witless by Yunan and Leol dragging Reina for their morning workout, and since she woke up, the boys looked at each other, nodded and just dragged her too into the bath for a washing up. Although Lili did her best to fight them off, they merely shrugged off her attempts to damage them, as they were used to getting beat up daily, they barely viewed the fragile Lili as a mere annoyances and continued with the daily ritual of waking up Reina, washing her face with cold water and adding the asional p, once she woke up, they took Lili too by habit and washed her face too, after that they picked up the girls and dressed them up with training armors and towed them into the backyard of the vi.


    By now Reina has sobered up and Lili has gone from screams to physical abuse after feeling she was defiled by the boys, how can she be a holy healer if she was not pure, and she made sure herints were registered by both boys as she ranted about how they took away her purity mid kicks and punches, but she was very surprised when the boys just shrugged and started on their workout routine with Reina.


    Att first Lili did try to keep up but failed after the first 3ps. The yard was rather small so the kids did around 25ps to jog for the same time as the usual 10ps in the academy, they did 40 sets of each basic workout and by sunrise they had sang the divergent series up to 100 along the whole workout and they did repeat it twice. Because Lili has refused to do the same, they told her that this workout is just to keep up with the ordinary training, and that in the uing month the train was about to be 10 times as hard, Lili almost choked, her dad said it would be fun and she found herself in a training camp for kids obsessed with getting stronger. Well soon she would receive a bigger shock, so the kids let her be surprised in peace.


    After sunrise the kids returned to the vi where they entered the bath at the same time and cleaned up, although Lili tried to object she was forced inside the shared bath under the pretext ofck of time. ''what could they possibly have to do on a sunday that is so urgent'' Lili thought as she kept throwing anything she could get her hands on at the boys who are trying to corrupt her after defiling her once already, she was a pure maiden and she wanted to stay that way.


    After the bath, they found Debauchery already in the living room with a table full of food and were already having their breakfast, while Yunan, Reina and Leol took a seat and started eating unceremoniously, Lili went toin to Leader about her unfair treatment and her lost pureness, she was hit by a "so what? They did not **** you did they? They were so nice to wash you up, dress you in training gear and even helped clean up the sweat you worked out, and they did not even retaliate when you were hitting them, if i were you i''d be all thanks and smiles over such a good treatment".


    "Inside Tartarus you would die to find someone who would clean up your body after an extremely gory fight where you your limbs broken and you shat yourself from the brutality of monsters" added Fae with a tone of ''been there done that''. Lili''s face turned scarlet red at the thought of needing someone to clean her up after she pooped herself, ''i will never let that happen, never'' she made a vow to herself.


    The same for breakfast andst dinner, Debauchery ate enough for a wedding party and everyone stood up to move to the next target. It was Dustan who broke the news to poor Lili who thought she might have a day of rxation and chit chat with her new found sister. " Alright kids, we took up the cleaning quest for you, it would take about an hour to reach the location. You have it until sunset, if you can not clean the nest it will be taken as failure and we will try a clear every week, and with each failure, the training goes up a notch, we need you to be level 2 within a month so excuse the brutality"


    Although the kind smile Dustan had on his face could be intercepted as any other type of smile, Lili actually cried because she thought he was being mean and evil amd trying to harm them by giving them such an impossible goal.

 Chapter 62: Veins

    Chapter 62: Veins


    An hourter Lili watched with disbelief as the three students; Yunan, Reina and Leol; took the lead and waltzed inside the territory of kobolds. The three students had crossbows in hand and weapons in sheaths at their sides. Their armors fit perfectly and they hunted down the kobolds with an air of someone who did it before.


    The kids were organised, Yunan took the lead while Leol and Reina followed behind him. The three of them took turns on looting the corpses, while advancing slowly and killing every kobolds theyid their eyes on. The closer they got to the heart of the nest the more kobolds grouped up and the number of patrols increased.


    Around midday, the kids opted to let a patrol escape with heavy injuries while they changed their location and took a rest under a hidden groove to recover from the morning fatigue and eat some rations and rehydrate. Since the small party had no trained scouts at the moment they had to buy the help of Lucian with some monster cores. Thetest report indicated that the heart of the nest was almost empty as all 300 kobolds left have gathered and are searching for the attackers.


    The n became to fight the kobold army and leave the heart for another time or after they have decimated the army so as to not fear their attack on the heart might be disrupted by the remaining kobold stragglers. After an hour of rest and recouping the kids went towards were the army was centered, Yunan was chosen for the closebat, Leol would switch between ranged or close conbat depending on the situation and Reina was to only use closebat to save her life if both Yunan and Leol were indisposed and could not help her at the moment.


    The hunt began and with Yunan drawing the attention of more groups everytime they fought, by sunset they had killed 200 out of the 300 fighting kobolds. Although Debauchery was against a night fight they allowed it because the caves dug by the kobolds were maze like and there was no point leaving an almost destroyed nest for another group who mighte by to pick up the leftovers and end up ying the boss before Debauchery came back. Inside the heart of the nest in the cave system Yunan decided to follow the biggest tunnel because the boss should be able to make use of them to move.


    Yunan guessed correctly, the biggest tunnels did lead to the chambers of the boss, but they still had to fight their way into it, the remaining kobold soldiers had returned after sunset and were now either hindering the party''s path or harassing them from behind or the side tunnels. Now even Reina had to keep her cross bow and draw her des.


    The boss was very different from the goblin boss, it was not just a magnified version of it''s race but also something different. The kobold boss was what you would expect a werebeast to look like, twice the size of human and hairy with beastly features. Animal head and face, long arms with intimidating ws and prehensile tail. Thanks to the kobolds stilling after them Leol had to block the door and Yunan would solo the boss while Reina would provide ranged support for the one who needs it most.


    With superior equipment, the kids could afford to get hit a few times where their armor would protect them, while their weapons delt major wounds upon each contact, and so the battle went smoothly, and Reina dropped the idea of looking after Yunan and focused on helping Leol who was struggling to keep the kobolds out of the throne room. Half an hourter the boss was decapitated and its core was removed, and the Party were now exploring and exterminating the rest of the nest.


    They found themselves a few hidden chambers with all kinds of items inside them, in one of the chambers there was an egg that looked like a obsidian stoneced with red patterns and designs. Further exploration proved very fruitful as they found some store rooms and treasure rooms piled with all manner of ores and raw gemstones. They also found some precious ore veins that the kobolds left intact for some reason, one had even an aura of mana overflowing from it that even the kids could feel. Thus Debauchery has changed the schedule, they needed to stay in the heart of the nest for further investigation and maybe some mining since the expert cksmith Balin was drooling over them.


    As the ones who cleaned up the nest the Debauchery juniors had the exclusive rights to decide what to do with anything inside the cave. Thus after bargaining with Debauchery seniors they allowed them to extract the ores and share whatever rewards they have gotten with the juniors. As for how the sharing works, it was from the total value of everything inside and Debauchery seniors must prioritize the juniors in case they forged any items or found something that is more helpful to the juniors.


    With the cave secured the children decided to sleep while the seniors did their thing, they slept in the mana abundant room, because it had an amplifier effect on the Starheart and the Starheart could absorb said mana tost longer and give out better effect. Although Lili refused to share the room with the boys, the soothing effects of the Starheart helped her sleep faster and her protests were drowned in her deep breathing.


    While the kids slept to restore their strength after the long arduous task they performed. Debauchery seniors were very industrious all night long, and with the guidance of master Balin they cleaned out all the exposed veins in the cave with a surprise found in the boss room. Under the throne of the boss was a spirit vein that turned out to be a cart sized stone, it was still developing and probably why the kobolds made their caves in that location. As monday dawn arrived the children woke up to the smell of a delicious meal being cooked, it did not take long before breakfast was over and thest bit of maining needed to be done was being nned.


    The ns stopped after a cracking sound spread in the room, the egg they found yesterday was making those sounds, Reina who won the egg kept it beside her instead of putting it inside her storage ring, from the egg crawled a bat like creature with long neck and taught skin wings that extended to make its forearms and a long tail, the lizard like creature had the same ck color and the scarlet pattern its egg had, the creature crawled its way onto Yunan''s neck and coiled around it as close to the Starheart as possible and the familiar sound of """lucky bastard""" almost startled the new member Lili to her feet.

 Chapter 63: Spirit heart

    Chapter 63: Spirit heart


    What a nice surprise for Debauchery, getting rich from just following after a "lucky bastard" three times in a row, three outings with Yunan as the lead and all three of them ended with Debauchery appraising enough treasure to bankrupt kingdoms and this time was the best of them all. For the sake of simplicity, Debauchery left the winged lizard forter scrutiny, as for now they needed to mine whatever ore is emitting so much pure and gentle mana and make something from it. The amount of mana in the room had dropped significantly after only one night of absorption by the Starheart. It turns out the vein was not producing as much mana as they though at first, they found the mana in the room was just the residual mana emitted from the vein and the kobolds made repeated use of the room to achieve something. After half a day of mining around the vein, they found it was a blue crystal ball as big as a three storied house. It had a diameter of 10 meters and was emitting a trace of light as well as the traces of pure gentle mana. After an hour of scrutiny and book flipping Balin identified the ball as a mana cluster, a residue of an explosion made by those mana weapons the humans made through the device Hephaestus gifted them. It was a testament to both the genius and the brutality of humans, as the aftermath of their weapon not only released so much mana it caused a gue and wreaked havoc in thend it also created a pure mana cluster that can be harvested and be reused for another weapon. After another hour of sorting through the ores and items in the cave, even the doors were taken into consideration, Balin with a heavy look on his face threw an apologetic look at Dustan and told everyone his n while they were eating lunch beside the mana cluster. "After careful consideration for both current and future gains to be had, i found that we can forge a special item that can help everyone in this room grow stronger. The catch is that we have to use all the materials inside the cave to upgrade the Starheart and make it into something even more precious, however that will reduce the duration it willst by at most a full year." The solemn mood was interrupted by Lili who did a spit take after digesting what Balin said "you have a Starheart? Where is it, howe dad did not notice it, we have been looking for it for a month now, show it to me, i want to see it". Everyone just pointed at Yunan and collectively said "how else can 10 year olds clean a nest after only 3 months of entering the academy". Lili told the group that an astrologist informed the pope about a Startheart that was falling into the, but for some reason it changed trajectory and they lost track of it and had to search for a full month without any news. She almost pulled her hair out when she heard how it fell on Yunan''s head mid training. It was best not to tell Lili howst week they found a chest worth enough to clean out the millennia umtion of the guild,since she might just have a heart attack. After confirmation and consideration the party emptied their rings for Balin to look at in case there was something he might use from the gains of the purge. As for Balin he took out a furnace that was so big it almost filled the extrarge 20mx20mx20m boss room. After transporting all the materials for forging. The furnace made a sound and a heat wave assaulted everyone in the party. The winged lizard who was feasting on the corpses of the kobolds left behind fromst night''s fighting, made a screeching sound and spewed mes at the furnace as if in revenge for startling it in mid meal, that prompted Balin who had glowing eyes to pick up the lizard and put it beside a hole in the furnace were one could feed fuel in it and let the lizard breath as much fire as it wished. He even tasked Dustan with gathering all the corpses in the cave for it to keep it in ce. Balin took away the Starheart from Yunan and removed it from its ne, under the envious gaze if Lili who spent her time trying to find where Yunan hid the stone, she did not expect it to be there in in sight in the form of a cheap bead ne. Balin tossed the Starheart into the furnace first and then the mana cluster, then all the materials and ores he selected for this forging, and while the items were fusing and reacting inside the furnace, Balin used the leaking heat and mana to fuse the 8 spacial vaults they got into 4 small rings and decorated them with some gems. When the four rings were done, Balin passed the rings to Leader then started chanting some spell and everything inside the furnace turned into a great ball then it started shrinking until it was only fist sized like the original Starheart, he then tossed the ne that housed the stone into the furnace and it all turned into a ck bead on a metallic string, after some thought he gestured at Leader to pass him the cart sized spirit stone and then tossed it too into the furnace, the bead that was ck before turned ssy with ck veins inside it. With a move of his hand Balin pulled the final product from the furnace. And started to scrutinize it while the furnace shut down and cooled with in moments, as if it did not just spew mes for the past 3 hours, the winged lizard made its way back to Yunan''s neck where it burped and coiled itself into sleep. After a moment Balin announced his results by clearing his throat and saying with a very proud voice " Today, I master dwarf Balin. give you the first dragon forged item in thest 800 years and the first item made from a Starheart, a mana cluster and a spirit stone, and forged under dragon breath i name it the Spirit heart. It has the following effects : it can assist the growth of anyone by a maximum of 10 points per year in each attribute, it allows those who are near it to sense mana and gain insight into manipting it, and with the proper training it will boost all mental and physical faculties of those in its area of effect, i am pleased to announce that thanks to the dragon breath the stone can support its effect of a total 3 years instead of the predicated two, congrattions"


    -----update on the naming quest-----


    The origin of the following names have been guessed correctly : Bai, Balin, Fae, Mary, Theresa, Lucian, Hephaestus.


    The following names are up for grabs : Burkan, Adun, Dustan, Mark, Mar sara, Joey Ray, Leol, Reina, Damascus, Lili.


    If there are any names i missed feel free to correct me in thements. Enjoy the start of the new arc

 Chapter 64: Explanations

    Chapter 64: Exnations


    The scene stayed in a solemn mood for a few seconds before congrattions started flooding Yunan and the previous ritualistic throne made a new appearance amongst Debauchery who made another ritual for luck and fortune and prosperity. This time Yunan took his ce on the throne voluntarily before Dustan could put him on it like a sack of potatoes.


    The ritual proceeded with everyone but Lili singing the praises ofdy luck and her friend, then the altar master Dustan presented the glorified spirit heart to the worshipers before solemnly cing it on the altar as a gift to "the lordly lucky bastard" in an appreciation for the gifts given through him bydy luck and in hopes that she may grant them her favour in the future toe.


    Lili was looking with held breath at the beautiful and solemn ritual, the kneeling worshipers, and only woke up with Dustan again throwing Yunan from above the throne, while everyone dusted their knees as if they did not just kneel down to the boy mere moment ago, while the throne was solemnly stored with great reverence. Only now did Lili''s Brain start working again and with righteous fury hord at the people grouping up for information sharing "sphemy".


    That did not even phase Debauchery in any way, they knew for fact that the ritual worked twice before and thus it will work again, so everyone just ignored Lili who was apprehended by Leader and brought in to the group to listen to the wisdom of master Balin. The lecture started with a modest "exin" by Leader after which Balin started to talk until it was near sunset time.


    "Let''s start with the Starheart, the one we had was a prospective of 20 points in three years and only works on children under 18, no need to mention you would require training as intense as ours to even gain 10 points from it, thanks to having us that is guaranteed 20 points. Next is the spirit stone, usually the bigger ones are fragmented into smaller stones and those are used in jewelry to create wisdom boosting items and they are worth a hefty sum each, but the stones decay after being mined and turn to sand after a few years, therefore there are very few of them at the same time in the markets"


    "Then there is the mana cluster which can act as those mana potions of old, but in a gentler way, it does not shock the body into recognizing mana but gently introduce the two until one can naturally use mana without need for Tartarus, the gentle and pure mana it containspliments and amplifies as well as restore the Starheart, so with enough minerals thebination of the three would take around a year from the lifespan of the Starheart and instead amplifies its effects to a wider range of beneficiaries, but all of that was amplified once more by the magical powers of dragon breath."


    "We dwarves always made our furnaces using dragon mes to keep them from shattering or melting during a forging no matter howplex it is, a side effect was that the furnaces have a bit of the dragons me in it forever, and that might be what drew our little friend here to spew fire at it. We dwarves have always partnered with dragons when there were dragons still roaming the world, until 800 years ago when all dragonkin died and only eggs were left behind, no one knows exactly how they died or why, but we know they all died within one week."


    "The little critter may look like a wyrm or a wyvern but it is a dragon and a very rare one at that, do you see that egg shell he left behind? That is the mark of a true dragon, all other dragon kin eat their own eggs after birth, but dragons do not eat the egg shell but let them umte in the nest, as a beacon home. A dragon can recognise its own elders by the scents left over by the egg shells, and the dragon ns are formed this way, only a member of the n can be recognised by its own egg shell since all the n members are born in the same nest. Any way, that little critter is an actual dragon and it has taken lord lucky here as its master, most likely because the effects of the Starheart and the mana cluster helped it hatch"


    "To the main point, the spirit heart, since it kept its effects from the Starheart then if we do a good job raising the kids we can get them the full 50 points of growth in each attribute, and we the adults can have our 30 points just by staying beside them which is a good trade for staying outside of Tartarus for the long three years, that is some crazy growth no matter how you look at it. Thanks to me adding the enchanted ne there was no need to spend mana on new enchantments, and the effects are satisfactory, the effects of the spirit heart is amplified by 20 fold and the area of its effects is 10 meters around lord lucky, and the concealment have grown from level 25 to level 60, so only those under its effect can notice the stone. That is all there is to know. As for the rest of the gems and precious ores that were not beneficial to the forging, we can sell for a good sum of money".


    "I ept being around the heart for two years as the payment for the pleasure of forging the spirit heart, as for the payment from having the aid of the dragon i have forged 4 storage rings for the juniors" Balin stood up and started packing his furnace and checking it for any damages or any residue that might harm the furnace. "Next is me, as thanks for being around the spirit heart i will pay with the exclusive knowledge of beast-men on scouting and the ranger upation" Lucian made his contribution. Next was Dustan " i can only offer small things for my share of the heart, i will make sure every item you wish to sell is sold for a better price and i will teach you my bartering techniques and an orc exclusive appraisal skill" then dustan stood up and started ying with the raw gems and the ores that were to be sold.


    "I Fae of the elven race will share the healing and mana maniption ways of the heart of the forest, if that is not enough i can give you my body to do as you please with " she winked at Yunan and made an alluring pose. Bai was more a bit more mature about this " i will teach the shiftiest ways of rogues, even some skills from Tartarus that i think only i know, beside that i have nothing else to give". Leader passed the rings to Yunan and said " i don''t have much to offer than knowledge and the loyalty of Debauchery as long as i live" Yunan only answered "epted and that was it for the equivalent exchange Debauchery had.

 Chapter 65: Adults

    Chapter 65: Adults


    It was time to go back to the academy, they were alreadyte by a whole day and it was already going to be the the second day if they dy any longer, thus Debauchery started cleaning up after themselves, Yunan took the opportunity to stock up on corpses to feed the newly hatched dragon, he also made sure to take the egg shell with him.


    Balin took another look at the cave system making sure nothing was left behind while Dustan made sure that he grabbed all the valuables he could get his hands on, while Fae and Leader prepared a teleportation spell to send everyone to the academy without having to waste time of traveling. Reina was holding the baby dragon in her arms while Lili was still trying to make sense of what she witnessed today and the words spoken in the party.


    After teleporting everyone to the academy, Leader left Lili with a few words. "We in Debauchery have many rules that we do not enforce, there is one unbreakable rule that has a punishment of death even if you hide under the skirts of those damnable nuns, whatever happens in Debauchery stays in Debauchery, any information leaked no matter how trivial it is, death is the only escape you have" and with that the seniors left the juniors and each group headed to their abodes.


    Yunan, Reina and Leol headed for the baths while Lili followed behind them in a trance, she never thought about how serious it was when she came out to have fun, and the value of information and items that she came into close contact with almost toppled her world view, not to mention how trivial it seems when Debauchery reacted as if the things said and done were like daily urrences. As the group arrived at the baths sweaty and itching to clean up, Yunan booked a bigger bath for them, and everyone proceeded to get inside, Lili was still reserved about bathing with boys, and she tried to take Reina with her but Reina just jumped in the hot pool in the bath and only took off her clothes after.


    The bath was silent, as the boys helped Reina clean up her tangled hair ruffled tails, but when they were done, they were faced with another line of questioning from Lili. "Howe you bath together? Its indecent. If it''s about helping the girl clean up it is done so just leave okey?". "Why are you acting like we are breaking the naturalws of the universe" asked Leol " what is the harm in bathing together if we n to face danger and death together? If it is so wrong to bath with women why can adults do it? I have been bathed by my maids until the day i came to this academy and no one told me it was wrong, howe you are saying its wrong, it is nothing but a bath"


    "It is wrong because it is wrong, there is no point in doing it because it''s wrong" Lili retorted at Leol with her air of righteousness. "Why are you here then?" Yunan made his point "if we are being indecent why are you watching us? You can go to another bath and we can meetter on, but you trust us enough toe inside with us and preach at us as if you are not doing the same". Lili was stumped "it''s not the same, i am here to stop you so i am not part of it, do not try to get out of it, you are doing something wrong and you should stop it"


    "You should leave" Yunan said as he stood up and helped The already groggy Reina out of the bath "This ce is not for you, if you can not trust us with bathing i don''t think we can trust you with our lives, you are weed toe back when you are ready to trust us with your life, otherwise just stay with your daddy and live like a spoiled brat for the rest of your life, because there is no one who would fight with their back to you if you can not trust them" Reina clung to Yunan as he carried her to the clothing area.


    Leol finished after Yunan "bathing together is not obligatory, it''s just a thing that we did out of convenience, but if you resist our ways it means you do not trust us, you could have wore something like maids do, or maybe used the partition board over there, you are not even trying to trust us and you expect us to follow your ideas and orders, you could have waited until you integrated with us and then split away during bathing time. We are doing this for Reina because she can not handle bathing alone, we would not mind if you offered to take care of her but you just had to go with wrong and indecent, if you are not ready to trust others with your life just stay in some church or orphanage were its safe, danger requires trust and trust requires eptance."


    Leol walked out of the pool and followed after the other two and left a speechless Lili behind him. When Lili came out of the bath Yunan was carrying a sleeping Reina and standing beside Leol as they waited for her, "you can sleep in her bed, and we can figure the rest out tomorrow, i will bring dinner to the room so just follow Yunan to our ce, if you feel like you don''t want to share a room with us feel free to ask and we can take you to the seniors or do whatever you wish" with that the boys separated and Lili followed after Yunan.


    Inside the room Lili said something that almost took Yunan with surprise "we are just kids, talking about death and trust and all those things is for adults, we still have 5 years to grow up, why do you want to act like adults? It''s not fair to treat children like adults". "life is never fair sweety" answered Yunan as he tucked Reina in his own bed " we became adults the moment we chose toe to this academy, those 5 years, those are just the time it takes to realise the horrible truth of the world and the dungeon, if you want a bright flowery world to live in than make it on your own, if you want to be a child for a bit longer, this group is the wrong ce for that"

 Chapter 66: Trust

    Chapter 66: Trust


    After a quiet dinner Lili and Yunan talked about the situation in Debauchery and how it works in this group and she was surprised by the answer given by Yunan. "Be yourself, trust the others and work as hard as you can". Lili was a bit confused, from all the long speeches Yunan and leol gave her, she only looked at it as using trust as an excuse to do whatever they wanted but now she understood how important trust was to a group like Debauchery, the only way they can be themselves and work as hard as they can is if they trust each other. Not just any trust, itsplete trust where you doubt your own words if they say you did not say them.


    These revtion also drove a question to her mouth "you''ve only known Reina for a month so howe she lets you do whatever you want to her, and why are you two so protective of her, i could understand it if you guys were childhood friends but a month is too short". Leol Answered immediately "I''ve only know Yunan for 3 months and we are the best of friends, we did not even study with each other full time until Reina showed up, he was raised in an orphanage and i was raised as an aristocrat, he chose to be a hero by entering Tartarus while i ran away here because i hate politics and only want to help my family from the background. Yunan never asked my background, he even let me join his lessons whenever i wanted, he dragged me to the morning workout because he wanted me to be more than what i resigned myself to be, and when i met Debauchery for the first time he introduced me as his roommate, not an aristocratic or friend or anything else, just my name and my upation."


    "It did not matter to Debauchery if we were friends or not, they just saw a seed of trust between us and nurtured it, they did not stop me from attending the most wanted training regime in the continent and did not even care if I leaked it, they just epted me, i was weak so they went easy on me. Debauchery let us do what we wish, although there were consequences to our actions the worst was Yunan getting suplexed because we didn''t share the reward when we sold information about how to get a response from Debauchery."


    "Our first night with Reina was very funny now that we look back at, she just rxed herself and slept in Yunan''s bed as if she was home, she did not even bother to move when we helped her changed her clothes, although her face was beet red she just epted that we are only helping her and she trusted that, the next morning we had to show her how to put on training gear, how to run properly, how to do squats, push ups and sit ups properly. After that we had to show her how to clean herself up, and then it became a habit to bath together after training because Reina was always too tired to bath alone and would sleep in the middle of it most of the times, after that we learned how to care for long hair and tail fur from Fae who had neither."


    "That is the reason we care for her, she was a princess and knew that as her fellow students and maybe future Party in the dungeon she could trust us, her face still goes red when we help her change or dress her up but that is the extent of it, she left herself under our mercy and we can not let her down, as for me and Yunan, well let''s say we bonded over caring for Reina more than we did over the previous two months we were alone"


    Lili finally understood how and why this weird party worked so fine even including the idiotic things they do all the time, it was never about what they do or say, that is just them being themselves, the most important thing was never said out loud or shown off, it did not matter what personality they had or what actions they did because that truly had no effect on the party in the critical moments.


    Everyone went to sleep soon after, they had a very early morning and no doubt a busy day to go along with it. At dawn the usual scene of the boys waking up the princess changed into Lili and the boys waking up the princess. Lili had the same furious blush on her face as Reina, but she kept her mouth shut and helped with small things to elerate the process, once they were outside the room and walking to the field for the work out Leol patted Lili in the head and said "you did good".


    They did the same workout for Lili that they did with Reina when she first started, and thanks to the effects of the spirit heart they could push Lili a bit harder. During bathing time they set up a screen between the boys and the girls to help ease Lili a bit, ultimately she had to ask for help from the boys, it was less intense atmosphere thenst night. As for the morning lesson, Debauchery was missing and only Dustan showed up, thus it wasbat training, Yunan instructed Lili on how to use the crossbows and aim, but she still needed a lot of exercise since most of yer bolts were friendly fire, leaving more marks on them than Dustan did. They also taught Lili about the basic use of swords and daggers as well as the importance of moving during a battle.


    Debauchery were called in by the guild headquarters when they sent Balin to do the paperwork for the secret quest about finding ck fate and had to give a detailed exnation to the guild master on how it came into their possession as well as how it worked. The guild master almost flipped his desk when he heard how Yunan got it after a ying session with a barber, and he had the urge to strangle those in front of him for allowing a kid to keep such an important item, an he was dumbfounded by their excuse. "The lucky runt grants us outrageous luck, and we treat just so-so i fear for my life if we treated him badly" exined Balin.


    Lucian confirmed "the bad luck that will befall us if we try will topple nations, we certainly are not taking it away from him, if you want to try, just make sure you have some connection withdy luck becausest we checked the runt was her friend and just so you know, those who thought about harming him were found out because we needed to train him in unarmedbat so be careful."


    "The purge ofst weekend was kicked into gear because we needed training partners for him and chose those who were spying on us because they were the closest, a whole cult was exposed by a freaking ident because they had the idea to target him and were not even sure they would do it, so think carefully, because bad luck is the sort of thing that can ruins and just your day" leader finished Debauchery argument and gave a warning to the old man who was on the urge of tearing their limbs for using such a stupid line of reasoning.

 Chapter 67: misfortune

    Chapter 67: misfortune


    After Debauchery left the office of the old guild master and returned to the academy for the afternoon lesson, they arrived around midday and found the juniors ganging up on Dustan using him as a training dummy for the newest Member Lili.


    As punishment for ganging up on Dustan the juniors had to face Debauchery seniors inbat while they used level 2 power level instead of the usual level 1, and so everyone was stopped from having lunch and spent the rest of the day fighting with all they got to spare themselves some pain, not even Lili was spared.


    Meanwhile the old guild master was in a bad mood after he heard the warning of Debauchery about even the thought of harming the young man, so he decided to put it to the test, he called his secretary and advisors to discuss how to take away an item the guild really wants from a 10 year old kid.


    On of the advisers had the handle of his cup break and dose him with the hot beverage inside the cup while he was detailing a n to send someone to steal the ring from yunan''s room while the kid slept, he was told that Debauchery keeps a sentry around the kids at all times because of the purge.


    The secretary who was bringing some food for the advisors when it was lunch time, hit his pinky toe on a piece of furniture and fallen face first while another adviser took the food and the tray to the face while saying "why not just order Debauchery to kill him", the guild master almost choked on his own saliva as he saw the series of unfortunate events that gued his office while only discussing the possibilities of harming the boy.


    Another adviser who tried knocking on the wooden table to ward off bad luck, brought the table oh his own knees because somehow the legs splintered by his light taps, and it got worse by every passing moment, a chair broke under the skinniest of the advisors introducing his chin to the uplifted side of the table. Those one the lowered side had food and drink staining their precious expensive clothes.


    When things quieted down and the discussion resumed a man barged in to dere that some kind of virus has spread in the reception hall and every single one in the hall is acting like crazed maniacs and destroying whatever they couldy their hands on, even the floor tiles did not escape them, while he was talking the fire rm sounded and the fire extinguishers flooded the office with the white fog of carbon monoxide.


    While trying to evacuate the office, the advisors seemed to find that there was always something hindering their movement causing them to fall or bump into each other, letting out thuds and moans and groans as they trued hard to leave the ce.


    The guild master ordered his subordinates to stop thinking about harming the boy and that he would take care of it. "It''s just thinking about it what could go wrong?" just as he finished speaking a piece of the roof descended on his head revealing an infestation of termites in the ceiling that was only treated against termite not ven a month ago.


    The guild master was finally convinced by the horror of bad luck, and these tiny misfortunes that can be counted as daily urrences were just at the idea of harming the boy nothing serious, well until the wood knocking advisor said " if the kid is behind all this misfortune, i will personally castrate him" his words hung in the air for a moment but soon the floor underneath the man caved in, hit his head on the edge of the pit he was falling into and proceeded to fall all the way to the ground floor from the 5th floor making flips and turns as his body slipped through hole after hole while his head hit the solid floor time after time.


    Still spouting threats at the unknown boy, the man was the most superstitious of the advisors the guild master had, he was still in office simply because his superstition save the guild from a few hassles across the years of his service. The man decided to take the metal stairs up for the guild master''s office but a piece of debris rolled under his foot prompting him to fall face first into the metal stairs.


    The old man angrily decided to forgo the stairs and directly jump through the holes he made through the floors and grabbed the old man by the cor and asked in a very annoyed voice "WHO. IS. THE. BOY" the old guild master looked bashefuly at his old friend "A friend of Fortuna, as proimed by ck Fate".


    The superstitious man let go of the guild master and was now calmer he said in a low voice only for the guild master to hear "if you want to die go die alone, now tell me who he is since i need to suck up to him to get back my own tiny bit of luck that i just lost thanks to you" the quiet voice had a very threatening tone to it.


    When the old guild master was about to say something the old man stopped him " don''t tell me, i don''t want to know" he pulled out a ring from his hand and said "give him this and say sorry when you meet him, make sure he epts the apology even if he refuses the ring. If he asks for more as long as he epts the apology i am fine with ving for him, i just want my bit of luck back, you hear that the lot of you? Send some gifts and apologies for the kid, or else bad luck is gonna haunt you for a very long time, Fortuna is a fickle woman and no one must ever cross her"


    "You just calleddy Fortuna fickle, are you trying to y with me?" someone had to voice his suspicions, the old superstitious man turned to him and said "Fortuna is a self proimed fickle woman, it''s apliment, now you better beg for forgiveness for calling Fickle and insult to Fortuna" before the old man finished talking a rotten piece of wood fell on the doubtful man and exploded on his head filling it with termites that took only moments to spread under his clothes and all over his skin.


    Seeing his point exined for him the superstitious old man made his thanks fordy luck and prayed for better luck for himself then proimed in a very righteous voice dy fortuna is not unfair, she used our misfortune to show us the possible dangers of this building, all must thankdy luck for her boon"


    As for the old guild leader was quite happy with himself, he knew this was the bit of luck he picked up when visiting Debaucheryst, since he was the only one who was beneficiary from this ordeal, he found that being lucky and being the friend ofdy luck were on two different levels.

 Chapter 68: dinner

    Chapter 68: dinner


    Back in the Mar sara academy Yunan and the rest of Debauchery juniors were soaking in the baths after a grueling battle drill, fully unaware about how now he was a stigma on the minds of the top advisors in the guild, luckily the guild master only told them that Debauchery found the ck Fate and did not specify who or else he would have been drowned in gifts and apologizing old men.


    Lili was the one who felt the training today the most, even with 20 times amplification of the spirit heart she was still fighting heavy eyelids as she floated in the pool in a half-dead state. "Is it always like this? This is torture!". "You get used to it" interjected Reina who was holding the newly born dragon.


    "I never think i would be able used to this kind of torture" said Lili in reminiscence about her old life as a care free student who only had to read books and solve questions only once a week. Leol told her with pity in his voice "Today was just an upscale of an ordinary boring afternoon, the real torture is the unarmedbat lesson, my body was disassembled in ways i never thought possible"


    "That was ordinary? That is by far the most unordinary afternoon i ever had!" Lili was feeling her sanity under attack at the moment. "Well that is obvious, wait until you see Balin work on dislocating joints and then you will understand that normality is just glorified boring" Yunan was easing the horrors of the future in her young brain.


    "I miss boring" said Leol before the door to the bathroom flew open and Fae burst inside "what are you kids doing in the baths this long, get ready we have dinner with the old goats and you are called" A collective sigh escaped the juniors and Lili who almost screamed at Fae but from the looks of her fellows this was not something unusual.


    "Say goodbye to the boring life and ept in your mind that nothing is strange when Debauchery is included. It will save you a few shocks and surprises". Advised Reina as she got out of of the bath and let Fae dress her up, the look Reina had was that of eptance the futility of struggle.


    The juniors were teleported along with Fae and Lucian to some kind of secluded vi, when they arrived, Fae just barged inside followed by Lucian with an apologetic look, momentster Dustan came out and herded the juniors inside, in a big room there was a table full of food and two older men sitting at the head of the table, on their right sat Debauchery while the seats to the left were empty, Dustan pushed the juniors to the left side seats and pulled of a leg from a goat like creature and bit into it as he took his seat.


    "That is not enough" were the first words spoken after the juniors arrived "not nearly enough" mumbled Reina as she sat down between Yunan and Leol while Lili had tears in her eyes and dove into the embrace of the kindly old pope "Dad!" she cried with tears of both happiness and dejection.


    A few minutester the feast took off Debauchery style, food was flying everywhere, drinks were shared, and cheers were sung, well there were 3 shocked faces who barely ate anything as they watched the horror show of unmannered buffoons eating and singing in merriment. After they got roped in the show by the buffoons they rxed a bit and enjoyed letting go for once.


    After dinner was over every assembled in a study room, the kindly old pope and the overstressed guild master invited everyone to sit down. The pope started talking first " as you probably know i am old goat the pope of the church of light, and this here is Martin the guild master, and we are here to see the ck Fate, so if you kindly show it to us" Yunan nodded and talked to his finger "ck Fate can you join our conversation". A screen showed up with a "YES" in bold print.


    Yunan have been feeding his mana to the ring ever since he got it and it no longer needed to syphon his mana before each time it tried tomunicate. Both the pope and Martin could not see the ring and only the screen which prompted some doubt, so Yunan hurried to amend the situation. "ck Fate please show yourself and your information.


    The familiar ck simple band appeared on Yunans finger with a small screen that stated the information about the ring that it showed to everyonest time. That drew the attention of the old men, Martin asked "please answer me this ck Fate, in which floor does the heart of tartarus exists?", a screen popped up "in the control room, it does not exist in any floor".


    "Alright that confirms it" said Martin "the guild would like to acquire the ck Fate, so please state your conditions, we are ready to pay any price in our power". Yunan thought to himself for a moment and then said " I don''t think it works that way mister, i can tell you honestly that even killing me is not going to help with you getting this ring, it chooses its owner and it would have already left me if it wanted to be follow you, so you have to ask ck Fate for that" simultaneously a big "NO" popped up from the ring.


    Martin had an ugly look on his face but before he could say anything Yunan cut him off " i never believed in fate or luck until i met Debauchery" with all the seriousness he could muster at his age "if there is something you need ck Fate for, you cane by ask it any questions you like anytime, if you want secrecy i can even leave you alone" Yunan ordered the ring mentally to fly to the hands of Martin "but i have to tell you, this ring waited in a box for a 100 years to find me, i do not think anyone can stop it from returning to me no matter how they try" the ring flew back from the clenched fist of Martin as if it was ethereal.

 Chapter 69: Valyrian

    Chapter 69: Valyrian


    Although Martin was upset he gave a sigh of relief. If only those chosen by the ring could use it to reach the heart of Tartarus then he would have to trust in Hephaestus like his own ancestors before him did. For now, the ring was safe and unless something went terribly wrong the death of the hearts is not going to be something bad. ording to the records kept behind by Adun and Hephaestus, the hearts would live until they fulfil their destiny, and since thest bearer of the ck Fate; Adun, did not break the world, there is little chance this one would.


    Martin nodded to the pope to indicate that the purpose of the visit is fulfilled and the ring is authentic, thus no need to care about it for the time being. He then turned to Yunan and said "the hearts will want to meet you as well to inform you about somethings that you should know about, and that would be all, i hope that you can finish your training very soon so that you can enter Tartarus as fast as possible. As for the side of the guild, we will register the kids here as temporary members of Debauchery and you can be privy to all the benefits they are able to get. Onest thing, i have some apology gifts, we have angered Fortuna by thinking about harming you and we got our fair share of bad luck" he passed a ring to Yunan "can you forgive me and my friends?".


    Yunan just waved his hands and did not pick up the ring "no harm done, you can reassure your friends i do not hold grudges, you are forgiven" that earned him a few hits and curses and a promise to not hold back anymore.


    The old pope then asked suddenly "that ne you have on you, what is it? I can feel mana from it, i can feel my old bones happy to be around it, where did you find it? Was it the ck Fate?". After a nod from Leader Yunan exined "it''s called a spirit heart, made from a few tons of ores, a Starheart, a mana cluster that has a diameter of 10 meters and a spirit stone with a 2 meter diameter forged by dwarven hands under dragon breath, it has a 20 time amplification on an ordinary Starheart, and an effective range of 10 meters, it has a level 60 concealment and can work on anyone with a guaranteed 10 points per attribute per year even for those with the mark of Tartarus, it willst for 3 years, if we kids train diligently we might even get up to 50 points per attribute by the end of the 3 years. Or so master Balin appraised it"


    "HOW?!" eximed both old men as they lunged at the young boy and took away the spirit heart to observe it closely. Yunan just shrugged "it was luck really, the Starheart fell on my head during training, master balin kindly made a ne for it that had amplification, restriction and concealment, on Sunday we went on a level one clean up mission and everything else was just there for the taking, we only needed to mine some things and that is it really, nothing more than luck i suppose"


    "Such marvel, you can feel the harmonious powers inside it, powers that should not mix together, coexist in one little bead, even the raging dragon breath is contained with in, wait i thought dragons died out 800 years ago, does the dwarves still have those containers with dragon me with in?" The question was directed at Balin who pointed back at Yunan, Yunan took out Drogon from his pocket, it fell into sleep during bath time and was still curled into a ball. "Its name is Drogon we found its egg in the nest we cleaned and it hatched the same night, while we were still mining out the caves".


    The old men let the spirit heart drop on the ground and almost flew at Drogon and picked him up with utmost care as if it would break at the mere touch. While the elders were upied by Drogon, Yunan took out its matching egg shell, to provide proof that it was a true dragon and not just a dragon kin. The old men were almost drooling at the sight of both at the same time. After a few minutes of scrutiny and book flipping the old men put down Drogon and put it in its shell where it coiledfortably. Then they gave it along with the spirit heart back to Yunan.


    "Master balin, are we wrong to assume this hatchling to be a valyrian?" The old pope approached Balin with such glistening eyes that Balin was taken aback. "Yes, that is what i came to conclude after consulting with the books left behind by the ancestors on dragonkin, and it is a healthy male valyrian with quite a bit of innate talents" confirmed Balin.


    "In our records dragons only take Dwarves as masters, howe this one is different?". "Well that is not true, dragons bond with those they are mostfortable around. many dragon bonded woulde to live in the old forges under the lonely mountain, and get paid for lending their dragon breaths to the forges, those who do not know, we just look for ourselves, at least when dragons lived. It is worth mentioning that dragons are more likely to bond with a dwarf if other suitable masters are in the same ce, the dragons had always been close to us dwarves, but there are no absolutes in the world."


    The old men looked at Yunan with mixed feelings "are you truly a friend ofdy luck?" Yunan nodded and pointed at his ring "ording to the ring, let me show you" a screen popped up but there was a change in it, it read as follows "title: close friend of Fortuna. Luck very good >extremely good (caused by the acquisition of a valyrian dragon)


    Note: get stronger fast you lucky bastard"


    Ignoring the old men everyone in Debauchery, both seniors and juniors beat up Yunan mercilessly for a full 5 minutes, even the old men felt satisfied with the beating poor Yunan took.

 Chapter 70: Dont even dream about it

    Chapter 70: Don''t even dream about it


    Malicious intentions is the difference between the getting a building to break on your head or getting to deal as much punishment and pain as you feel like to Yunan. Although Martin thought this point was attributed to the residual luck Debauchery gets from just being around the boy, the rest of Debauchery knew the secret long ago, when they could put the boy through harsh training and there was no bad luck retaliation even after he became a friend of Fortuna.


    This time Debauchery chose the reason of keeping the boy mentally stable and reduce the chances of arrogance or reliance upon luck. A good excuse if ever there was one to beat up a child and teach him a lesson, no matter who protects you, there is always a loophole to be taken advantage of and Debauchery has already found it long ago.


    After a good beating and a full heal, Debauchery and friends returned to the merriment of a party, well mostly theyughed at Lili who poured her heart and indignation about her few days in Debauchery. Things like how she was manhandled by the boys and was forced to take baths with them, or how on her first day as an official student, Debauchery took it upon themselves to do a level 2 battle drill, or how the shameless Fae burst inside the bathroom without even a notice. The popeforted her and said "that is how adulthood is, one day you meet a person and by the morning they are taking your clothes off or helping you dress up, there is no need for shame between adults because they all know what is under your dress whether they seen it before or not, as for the mad training, life sucks and is not fair, get used to it"


    Although the kindly pope said those words he still kept his daughter in his arms providing her withfort and words of wisdom, as well as sneaking a re now and then at Yunan and Leol for soiling the purity of his little girl. Martin was merely watching with fascination the weird ways Debauchery made their interactions or the subtle nuances between themselves and their juniors.


    He saw a stronger bond than he had expected, although he dealt with Debauchery before he never seen them in their natural states. It simply was liberating to see the way they go about and how they have no regard to rules and customary behaviour, they just did what made them happy. It was the kind of stress relief he can never experience


    Not long after the kids were taken away by Fae to sleep because they needed to wake up early and workout, and only the adults were left in the study room. Leader had gotten her hands on the now awake Drogon and was feeding it stripes of meat, Lucian, Balin and Bai were tossing dice and how too much luck ruined the enjoyment of gambling, while Dustan had leader in hisp and was using a weird massage technique with his meaty finger digging here and there on her skin and prompting the asional alluring moan from her.


    Fae returned with a serving of tea and served everyone in an elegant manner that was not there moments ago. After finishing their tea, the adults had a solemn mood rece the merry meeting.


    "About that prophecy, what do you think will happen, and is the boy part of it?". Pope asked and was answered by Balin "we do not care about the prophecy or have any interest in knowing the future as for the boy, it was by mere chance that he became our student and mere chance was why we took a liking to him, he is lucky, maybe it is fate maybe it is not, we do not care, he is our student and if the prophecy says the world will die by his hands, we will spank him if he does it but not before, and since only the heart of prophecy knows the whole point of thest death, we in Debauchery can not muster enough willpower to care at all"


    "But the world could end in a few years, are you not afraid?" Martin added and Lucian replied to him "We do not fear death nor do we care about world end, this world should have died in the race wars and the current world would have been something else. If this world was doomed then all that Hephaestus did was to dy the result for a few more years, fate doesn''t miss no matter how far away we run with the target, so its futility itself to attempt to save a dead world"


    "Fine just share with us the prophecy that was delivered to you, we know that you didn''t want to hear it, and that you are not even trying to get away from it or actively seeking to fulfill it, so it must not be something very special or consequential" asked Martin


    "Don''t even dream about it" Dustan had a tinge of anger in his voice "that was a prophecy forced on us and none of us has uttered it or discuss it ever since the day we heard it, and we do not n to discuss it until it is revealed. as for the prophecy we have more puzzle pieces and understanding but it will never be shared by us, so go torture that oracle who is keeping silent under your interrogation"


    Leader had a more diplomatically correct answer " I think we all know how prophecy works and if the oracle who saw it chose to not talk about it then it means it is not meant to be known by anyone other than us, well, at least for the time being, so please take that into consideration. We are mostly waiting for the oracle to make the prophecy public so we can share the insights we gained about it but until then we prefer to keep it under wraps even amongst ourselves because there is always a possibility of someone listening on us, right?"


    The rxed old men had their senses spread around the estates but they were one step toote, the eaves dropping female was already standing between Bai and Lucian restrained and incapable of even blinking. Fae exined to the old men we found her when we came with the kids, she was stupid enough to try sending a message with us here, well we first thought she was with you, but when she made a report we figured she might want to hear more and baited her while we got our hands on her report, sorry for not telling you"

 Chapter 71: Torture

    Chapter 71: Torture


    The old men felt like they have gotten too rxed for their own good, they would never have thought to be spied upon in a such a remote retreat, since they already had enough spies around them most of the time.


    "Do you think we should let the kids dabble into torture as tomorrow''s lesson? Oh look at the poor thing already thinking about her lies, how cute, we don''t need a confession little one, we need a test subject, you will do just fine darling" Dustan proposed with a beautiful smile on his face.


    No that the old men thought about it, there was almost a serene moment this night when Fae served tea, that almost scared the old men, such efficient behaviour, not to mention using a small errand that consumes so little time to intercept a report and return, they also made sure the listener was more focused on the conversation than on if her report made it or not. This is what you call an impable team skills. Debauchery found a target, monitored it, noticed a discrepancy and even set up a trap and executed an extremely daring operation with so littlemunication that even the old men themselves did not figure out while it was going in front of their own eyes, no wonder the spy did not even react before getting captured.


    The next order of business was not to get intelligence from the spy, but they thought of training their students in torture instead of interrogation, an odd thing to think about, but it was also an introduction to interrogation if they squint really hard. Most other groups would think about extracting intelligence from the captive but Debauchery seems to be so sure that the information can be extracted it''s just a matter of using a rare resource of an enemy captive to educate their students even if it was something as despicable as torture.


    As for the captivedy was feeling she just fell into the hands of maniacs and she is not going to get out of this unscathed, so she thought about her training and thought about ways to get out of this hairy situation with minimal damage, especially since both the pope and the guild master are here there is a chance she would be taken away buy them for questioning and that is more manageable than these maniacs.


    Debauchery tied up thedy and sealed her mana and paralysed her muscles just in case, she was given to Bai to hug and keep an eye on for the night. It was a long night for thedy who kept waiting for the **** toe but only around dawn did she figure out that ''hug and keep an eye on'' was meant literally and not any metaphor for anything else.


    At dawn Debauchery juniors woke up and started their routine, getting the girls ready, work out until sunrise then take a bath before breakfast. After breakfast the old men joined Debauchery in the back yard to watch how will the lesson be conducted. Only Lili was surprised to see the captive who had been restored to her normal conditions and only tied her to a chair. As for the rest of the students it was just another training dummy for some lessons they had not taken yet.


    Leader started the lecture "Today''s lesson is interrogation techniques, you must extract the information we need from this spy, if you fail by midday, you will be taught torture, and you will perform it on her, no matter if she confesses or not, you will have to apply torture until you master the techniques, you may start". The captive had a dumbfounded look on her face, she was going to be a training dummy for those children no matter what she does, and even if she told everything she knew to them it might not be the information the adults want. She could lie and be tortured to oblivion and back or she could tell the truth and betray her faith, and so her faith won.


    It took a few moments before the kids made any move, and the old men were about to stop the lesson when Yunan took out a chair and sat in front of the woman and asked "are you going to answer our questions truthfully? That way we don''t have to learn torture and you can skip the pain four untrained children can cause, what say you?". "Never" answered the woman with spite, she had a smug smile on her face but that smile disappeared slowly as the she listened to the kids.


    Leol and Reina approached as well and took out their own chairs beside Yunan with Reina in the middle. "If that is the case then let us share some truths with you, and them we can start with the torture training right away, so listen to us please". Leol started the conversation and passed his turn to Reina "To be honest with you, the only reason you were captured and not killed is those maniacs want to teach 10 year old how to torture and corrupt our minds in the cruelest of ways, everyone here knows who sent you and why, we even know the whole reason behind your religion, but we have to torture you because you think your precious faith is worth more than our sanity".


    Yunan followed "let me tell you how this will go on, you will be our training dummy during the days, and a pleasure toy at night, by the time we master our torture techniques you would have been broken a few times and repaired again because you are the only one dumb enough to spy on this group making it impossible for you to get the relief of death or be reced for a temporary respite."


    "Then after all is said and done and you are voluntarily telling us your life story and anything you might think we want to know, that shifty guy over there, will use his memory magic on you, but there is a catch to his magic, anything he reads is deleted, the name of your beloved pet, the name of your most loved, their looks, your faith, your drive, your motives and all the sacred things you keep close to your heart. He will read them and delete them, then you will be an empty soulless husk with no love, no drive, and no faith, you will be a dead tool for these two old men here to spy on those who loved you and cared for you."


    "You will happily betray all of what you stand for just to please the same old men you tried to protect all you have against, i feel bad for you, more than i feel about having to endure the trauma of torturing you for the rest of my life." The three kids stood up and said at the same time "thank you for listening" then turned to Balin "since there is no point in asking questions let''s start with the training and be done with it"

 Chapter 72: Interrogation

    Chapter 72: Interrogation


    The captivedy had a very pale and ugly look or her face, she could barely believe the barbarity these people had, she was prepared to die or even be tortured, she was mentally ready for everything she was taught about what happens to captured agents. But this was not in the books, in fact such acts even her religion thought demeaning and they sought to cleanse the world by all possible means. Abuse for the sake of abuse. They would not even let her be traumatized or shut down her own emotions, they will make sure she feels every bit of it and they would not stop even when she was broken and begs for any release, and when they are bored of her she would be turned into nothing but a husk empty from all she treasured and fought for her entire life and then she would be used to betray all of it, he friends and family he lover, her god and even her faith. That is worse than bing a traitor no matter how you look at it.


    "What happens if i answer your questions" the captive asked a futile question in ast attempt to save herself from such fate. Leol answered her "best case scenario you will die immediately, worse case scenario prison and you have to provide information whenever needed, if you do especially good, you can name those you would like us to keep alive and they can join you in prison" he did not mention the nightmare scenario,for her to be nted as an informer inside her own cult while thinking all of it was a cover, if Bai was merciful.


    "I will talk then, ask whatever you want" the kids returned back to their location in front of the captive and started interrogating her. They asked her name, age, her family situation, where was she born and raised, where did she study, are there any other locations she is aware of, how many of her superiors are in the guild, how many operatives does she know about and their locations, where in the dungeon are they located, are there any bases in the church, and many such question. The woman was true to her word and she answered honestly, even when the others asked their questions she replied with a dispirited look.


    Once all the questions were answered and recorded Bai went ahead and read her memories about some details she missed out, or visual and auditory information that can not be described urately, such as faces and voices, the ns of the bases and holds she was part of, and such details that can only described without perfect rity.


    But when Bai ended his memory magic she finally understood that she was yed with by 10 year old, the possibility was real but these people were not as much of maniacs as they are portrayed, sheughed heartily when she understood that even if she talked or not, she and everyone she new or cared about will die and all she did was give the kids what they wanted, because she clearly heard the woman who threatened the kids with torture assure the kindly looking old man she assumed was the pope that she would never teach it to them until they are ready for it in 10 years or eventer.


    It was a ruse and the kids used it to perfection, manipting her into voluntarily cooperation, this Debauchery party is very scary, she was told they were only level 20 just like her, but shepletely outssed by them even in the mind games, and in the end she didn''t even retain the dignity of her faith nor her family, she just betrayed it all willingly, it would have felt better if they just read her mind. She really was broken beyond repair now and not even time can heal her from this one.


    Thedy made her piece about death when the big scary orc approached her, but she was surprised that what came was a whisper and not death, the orc was even gentlemanly about his request "Lady, i like your body type and i was hoping if you could give yourself up to me for a night of pleasure, i promise you i don''t have any weird or twisted tastes, so think about it" thedy did not even know whether tough or cry, but she still smiled at him and said "if you promise to kill me after you had your pleasure, i will let you try whatever you wish, anything as long as i don''t live after you are done with me". Dustan just nodded at her and whispered "Deal".


    As for the rest of the day she watched Debauchery beat the living daylights of the their students healing them rest for a bit and start all over again. For the whole time she sat tied to her chair no one paid attention to her except for lunch where she was hand fed by the scary orc. She did not even try or want to escape, she wanted to die, but she had to wait for the orc to finish teaching the kids how it feels to be sent flying by an orc.


    When the sun was about to set everyone went their own way, and the vi was left only for her and the orc who untied her and motioned for her to follow him, he did not even spare a thought about how she might harm him not because he was naive but because it was futile.


    As for the kids, they were finally able to return to their room and rest properly, they sent the girls to get dinner, while the boys went ahead and brought a bed and a closet for Lili, although everyone could neatly in the room it felt a bit crowded, until dinner was served and from then on it felt cosy and warm.


    It was finally time to focus on training before the mission of "cult hunt" -as dubbed by Dustan- was initiated, the kids did not have much time and only the road of struggle would yield the sweetest of fruits.

 Chapter 73: New target

    Chapter 73: New target


    The week passed by almost peacefully in the Mar sara academy, there ware little changes in the training, with the exception of the missing Bai, Debauchery continued overpowering their juniors with level 2 fighting power, making every single battle training a struggle for the kids who have just reached level 1.


    Remarkably enough Lili caught up with the other kids in term of fighting skills and overall capability. It turned out she had a talent for growing under stress and duress. Which put some pressure on the rest of the kids, if Lili just kept advancing at this pace she would overtake all of them, and they could not just let it happen.


    Along with daily battle drills the kids were required to y chess thrones and sing different songs at the same time without getting influenced with each other, other than that, outside battles the kids were required to keep moving -dancing was most encouraged- while studying other forms of knowledge, like math and physics. The rule of no homework was still in effect and the kids always could rx after the second period was over.


    During the week, the only incident happened thanks to the brotherhood of swollen faces who seemed to have recruited older kids who were about to leave the academy and enticed them with Drogon who became the hottest news, but thanks to the fear left behind by the purge, no one dared to even confirm it.


    Well, as to be expected, when the brotherhood ganged up on Reina and Lili who were assigned for bringing food that day because they looked to be fragile little flowers holding a freaking dragon, the brotherhood of swollen faces was henceforth aptly renamed the brotherhood of dislocated joints. The fight did not evenst long enough for the girls to do more than dislocate a few shoulders and elbows before most the attackers were already down and moaning from pain.


    Lili had learned a lot from Debaucherytely and the most recent lesson was to never let anything grow into a future headache, and ording to Debauchery the only way to deal with a problem is to use sufficient deterrent force. And so both Lili and Reina took their time dismantling the downed opponents by dislocating the 6 most crippling joints, elbows knees and shoulders. They avoided hip bones because they still could not dislocate them as cleanly as Balin.


    The poor brotherhood of dislocated joints stayed floored until midnight when they were noticed by a guard who reported the assault on over a 100 students of both genders, of course when director Joey woke Debauchery juniors up in the small hours of the night, the excuse they gave was "look at them! How can such delicate little flowers do such a thing? The swollen faces are the worst they could pull and that is on the premise of self defense, dislocating joints methodically is a no no", to solidate the story the girls made heaving sounds when the words "dislocating joints" were said prompting poor Joey to apologize for the disturbance and leave the juniors alone.


    On the weekend it was time for hunting again, this weekend they assaulted a level 2 goblin nest that had stronger and smarter goblins who could use ranged poisonous attacks, as well as a better equipmentpared to thest nest. They ended up only hunting on the periphery and avoided getting deeper inside the territory as well as the patrols that started to show up when the goblins began to disappear.


    It took all 4 kids to attack and kill a single goblin, and they took twice as long to kill the groups of two patrolling goblins, and they avoided the rest, thanks to the constant vigil, the kids had learned faster how to recognize trails and marks to escape danger under the guide of Lucian. The true beneficiary from the hunt was Drogon who seemed to enjoy gorging itself on the higher level monsters, to the point it started to refuse eating the level one kobolds.


    On sunday afternoon before Debauchery made their way back to the academy for the new week, Bai arrived and the return was dyed because of the nature of the report he was bringing. First thing Bai did after everyone sat down in a circle was to praise Fortuna and ask her for more stability in luck and fortune.


    Bai had found the bases of the cult known to thetest captive, he found them under evacuation and thanks to the chaos and some lucky encounters he could save some documents and read the memories of some of the enforcers, he also traveled along for the newest location as well as receive the same information as the cult members about the new contacts in the guild and the order to leave the old contacts alone since they werepromised.


    He also managed to loot one of the vaults and pinned it on one of the enforcers he encountered and read. He took out a ring and passed it to Leader after he took out 4 matching light armor sets , the armor sets - armor and two short swords- has a multitude of enchantments, including a fitting, a shadow meld, and night time invisibility. Basically this armor would fit who ever wears it no matter the shape, it would look like part of a shadow if the wearer stood in shadows they be harder to notice, finally it would grant invisibility during the darkest hours of the night or unlighted locations.


    He also found out the location of some other bases where they train their members, as well as the central base in this area, Bai decided not continue his investigation and return to Debauchery to let the cult feel a little bit of peace before a new purge started. Under Leader''s order both rogues -Lucian and Bai- were to infiltrate the central base and find the location of all the bases under its supervision and return before the weekend because the next weekend hunt would not be monsters but humans.


    The kids were not as happy with the hunt as they were with the rogue armors and ended up ying with them all night long and using them to y a few more level 2 goblins i side the nest and slip out almost undetected.

 Chapter 74: Attributes

    Chapter 74: Attributes


    On Monday morning all of Debauchery was present at training hall number 5, and today''s lesson was killing moves. The presence of Bai and Lucian and the showcasing of their technical knowledge about the most effective ways to dispatch a victim silently and with discretion, as well as all the one hit kills through all kinds of armors, was most helpful to the kids.


    Bai and Lucian only needed one night to do what they needed to do, the central base was almost empty with most of the personal working as enforcers and tying up loose ends. the duo practically walked in, found the archives and records, read a few memories and walked out within 2 hours, they even took an Inventory book of the things in the treasuries and armories of all the bases under this one, as well as select a suitable target based on the number of people and the role of the base.


    During the whole week, the juniors were tasked with integrating the one hit kill techniques into the battle training. By contrast, in theory lessons the kids had to identify the most used offensive mana constructs based on the shape and mana feeling, and thanks to the effects of the spirit heart, recognize when magic is being cast when the magic construct is not disyed like in the case of Bai''s memory magic.


    When friday came by, Debauchery announced they will increase the intensity of training from low level 2 to medium level 2, since the kids had reached the peak of level 1 and are more or less able to cope with being attacked by almost twice their numbers with rtive ease. The effects of the spirit heart were too magical. Yunan also found a new function in the ck Fate, not only can it scan its master, it can scan those who allow it to as well, thus by on friday afternoon Debauchery juniors had officially reached peak level 1 and can graduate from school and enter Tartarus as level 1 adventurers.


    Thanks to the rigorous training and stimting behaviour and lessons, Debauchery juniors had acquired the perfect all rounder score that was most elusive to many, 10 points in all attributes thanks only to the passive effect of the spirit heart, relief and restoration. This has proven the theory posed by Leader that everyone is born an all rounder and onlyter in life when all the effects hidden in the body and mind are fully explored would one start to specialise. Also being peak level 1 fighters, they had to learn the next skill, force control or holding back inyman terms.


    In light of the good news as well as the expected purge tomorrow Debauchery went ahead and spent a fortune on renting a whole rxation establishment for themselves with all services included. First a feast were everyone ate till they almost burst, then was a lecture by leader under the delicate and skilled hands of the professional masseuses. The lecture was basically about how levels and attributes worked, some knowledge that is taught upon graduation.


    "The attributes are very different from what most think, strength is the muscle efficiency instead of muscle mass or lifting power, for example Balin and Dustan have basically the same numbers in strength, yet one of them looks like a walking muscle and the other is lean and skinny, also Balin can lift more while Dustan could drag more, the same with dexterity, it does not reflect flexibility but muscle contraction and the reaction time to new orders from the brain, for example Fae and Lucien have the same index in dexterity, but Fae can kiss her own posterior, while Lucian can catch up to 12 daggers thrown at him while throwing 15 of his own each second, constitution is how resistant one is for both external and internal injuries as well as disease and poison as well as mana contamination, it also determines your age."


    "Wisdom is a bitch to exin so perk your ears open and don''t ask questions till i am done. Wisdom is about the mind and the brain, the higher your wisdom the better your brain works and the better your mind could perform, for example you guys have a better mind than brain, since your brains struggle to keep up with your mind. For example when we do battle drill, i can see you guys think about the next move while you are still performing the current one, but you have to wait for the move to end or break it to transition into the next one, if your brains were on par with your minds, your muscles would start to prepare for the next move while performing the current one without need to break it."


    "Constitution also enhances the brain and the nerves as well as transmission speed between the brain and muscles, thus with Wisdom you can make use of your enhanced brain better, and your mind would be able to react faster to signals, but if the mind is too advanced for the brain it will cause a slightg that is fatal in a fight, that is why we are teaching you both nning and strategy, so that your minds can work on multiple subjects at the same time in order not to tax your brain too much."


    "As wisdom grows theg between mind and brain grows with it, therefore being able to lower theg by upying the mind with more than just extend right arm to stab, pull right arm from stabbed body, and so one, you can think about the position of your friends, what is the best way to reduce time in the battle, who is the weakest link in the enemy and how to exploit it, who is the weakest link in the party and how to mend it, this would give your brain time to send the signals withoutgging too much behind the mind"


    "Wisdom also controls how much mana one can store inside their body and how much of it you can use, those who have full control over their wisdom can use more of their mana to cast a simple spell turning it into a devastating attack, for example this is ordinary fireball" Leader extended her hand to show the fireball, then with her other hand cast something 5 times as big and its heat is felt across the room "and this is 3 time more mana than ordinary, do you understand now?"


    "Lastly wisdom has the most marvelous effect of thinking speed, the higher your wisdom the faster you can think, for example any mathematical equations that takes you a minute to solve we can solve it in a fraction of a second, shorter than the time you need to blink, but faster thinking speed does not mean smarter, or better, it only means you can use your mental faculties faster and that is all, smarter means you have more knowledge to draw conclusions from to solve problems faster"

 Chapter 75: Lost?

    Chapter 75: Lost?


    The lecture continued on as the soft snoring of a rxed Dustan made a background ambient noise in the atmosphere. Debauchery seniors were reveling in the rare moment of indulgence while the juniors were keeping their full attention on the lecture.


    "The levels are much easier to understand it is basically a divergent series like the one you count only with a base of 10 instead of 1, it goes like this: level 1 peaks at 10 points, level 2 peaks at 30 points, peak level 3 is 60, peak level 4 is 100, level 5 is 150, level 6 is 210 and so on and so forth. For example to be a certified level 1 you need 2 attributes with minimum of 10 points each, to be level 2 you need between 11 and 30 points, a level 3 needs 31-60 points in two attributes."


    "That is the basic premise of the levels ording to the guild, but we Debauchery prefers to only mention the peak of the level. Because anyone with only 11 points will have a hard time in level 2 but with 30 points one can go unchallenged in level 2, and can head to level 3 for better experience. This type of exponentially growing need for attribute points is what holds most adventurers at level 10, the huge number of 550 points is really daunting yet easy to get within 3 -5 years for diligent people, the rest can take decades to reach it thus the stagnation"


    "But those who are diligent in fighting and challenging themselves inside Tartarus would be able to have higher constitution than the others, allowing them to resist longer and advance further. As for aging, it can be easily calcted, for example a normal adult with a peaceful life would reach 10 points in constitution almost always and they could live up to 100 years if there was no damages to the body, like sickness or poison, stress and the like, after the first 100 years every 1 point corresponds to one year. However due to the damages one umtes while pushing themselves, the life expectancy can be shortened down to half, that is why there are remedies to relieve some of the stress on the body after a long period of time in the dungeon, or you can just have a cheat like the spirit heart which will guarantee no hidden dangers from the training period, thus when you guys reach level 2 you would be able to live 120 years no matter how much stress your body takes."


    The lecture then became a question and answer session about silly things like how to recognize the really old ones or if eating the monsters inside the dungeon is beneficial, things that would attract the minds of children now that the gates to Tartarus were open for them to ask about and study. When the questions were answered and there was nothing much to discuss or exin for now, Leader sent away the massage therapists and led Debauchery into a hot spring to soak and get some privacy.


    Leader started the nning meeting when everyone was settled in. "Bai and Lucian have chosen a target for us, an academy in a smaller town south west of the lonely mountain, the town ording to the records is both an academy as well as a resting spot for the agents, so we will target it as our first mark in the dismantling of the cult. You juniors are to raid the academy while we clean up the town, we will take care of the teachers in the academy as well as anyone who might be a threat to you kids, but you have to apprehend everyst student in that academy, you can choose to kill, maim or just incapacitate them but you are not allowed to miss anyone, as for us we will deal with the rest of town and clean up."


    "ording to the looting rules we have in Debauchery You keep what you kill or in this case, you keep what you apprehend, only the vault will be shared by everyone, the rest goes to who ever got his hands on it first. Point of order, the juniors must never step out of the academy unless we take you out ourselves, that is all, we move first thing in the morning. any changes to the n will be done after the initial scouting or during the mission itself".


    Leader ended the meating then and there and sent everyone to sleep. Yunan, Reina, Leol and Lili were given a newly married room with a bed big enough for 10 people. The kids did not take separate locations but strangely huddled together, it was the first time they all shared a bed and the first time everyone stuck so close together. Reina was first to start this huddle, she sandwiched herself between Yunan and Leol pulling both of them closer as though she was starved for warmth.


    Lili just stood there for a moment before she threw herself on Yunan''s chest with tears streaming down her face. She thought he was the most mature of them, since he acted and thought the most adult-like in the whole of Debauchery, even the adults did not give her that feeling. Lili looked up when she felt Yunan''s hand pat her hair, she found tears streaming out of everyone.


    It was not fear or rage or hurt that caused them to drop tears but grief, for the first time they felt their humanity under threat. It was the very bad feeling you have when you know you might have to do something that will destroy the precious little thing you kept safe deep inside your heart.


    Debauchery juniors also had that feeling, it was like a heavy cloud that darkened their usually happy and peaceful hearts. Killing was another part of Tartarus, that is inevitable, an indisputable truth, but they never thought about doing it themselves, and so when Leader told them to handle those in the academy, it meant they had to kill, even if they chose to not kill anyone, the amount of harm they must do is beyond dislocating joints or swollen faces and it broke their hearts.


    They might have grown more callus emotionally thanks to hunting monsters or witnessing torture or Debauchery seniors clean out thousands of people like ants. they were only watching, detached and untouched. But now it was their turn to do all the things they thought they were detached from.


    Reina was the first to ask the bitter questions like always. She inquired from Yunan''s with a sobbing voice "Will you kill tomorrow?". Yunan hugged the little fox closer to his chest and kissed her forehead " i don''t know, it is a battle and i don''t n to die yet, if ites to it i might end up killing but if i had the choice, i would only disable or knockout, you all need to do the same, we are a party, we stay together and fight together, if killing is a must, i will take care of it."

 Chapter 76: First battle plan

    Chapter 76: First battle n


    "Does that mean you were ready to kill when you chose to be a hero?" Asked Lili the purest flower in this group. "No" answered Yunan "heroes are just and only kill the most evil monsters, even the worst scum of the world are only captured and sent for trial, I never thought about inflicting death on others, i only wanted to be a good hero, But i learned too much about how ugly real heroes are, and then i met Debauchery, they were the true heroes in my eyes, they only did what they thought was right, they never struggle like those in the stories. It was not about morality or the benefit of others, it was not justified or exined, they just did what they wanted, and even they followed a code they never break, because their definition of right or wrong is alien to the world"


    "I love Debauchery for being true to themselves, they caught spies that meant harm to themselves but barely thought about it, however, the moment we innocent ones were possibly in harm''s way they did not bat an eye when killing thousands, and then came this cult who ns to ruin the world and they did not even think about letting them do as they please even before the guild master gave them the mission"


    "I want to be like that, true to myself and if killing is the only way, i will do it, but i have this voice in my head telling me ''not yet'' so i will do my best, no matter what happens, i won''t have to kill and neither do you, we are not Debauchery, we cannot be so steadfast like them, not yet, so we will do whatever we can to keep our humanity"


    "Leader said we have to apprehend everyst students but she did not say how, we are smarter than we were and we know more than we should about schemes and strategy, and that is our way out, we only have to capture all of them, as for killing, there is no need for it be because Leader promised to take care of All the threats, so we y it safe and do our best, but if ites to it do not hesitate because our lives are worth more than theirs"


    "Does that mean you think we are worth more than the others?" There was caution in Reina''s voice but Leolforted her sweetly "he means our lives and all lives are worth more than those that decide to kill, maybe also because he has a harem fetish and wants you both in his harem, so be careful with him around". That remark caused a few chuckles and lightened the mood for the kids who kept talking about silly things even past midnight. They slept with heavy hearts but not as heavy as they wereing to bed.


    Saturday morning workout was reced by a scheming session in the hot spring, the kids still huddled together close, still feeling the cold touch of possible murder in their hearts.


    "We can just go wild and Knock out every person we see then we can gather everyone and tie them up inside some hall and wait for senior to finish their end" said Lili who was pumping herself up for a big fight. "Too much time needed, we need to go fast because those seniors are beyond strong, they will be done with the town before we finish the first fight and they will just watch how we do our job" Leol exined the premise of the mission.


    "We can just round them up in the central za and just use some kind of drug to get all of them to sleep" added Reina. "That is too risky and might not work if there is wind or they have antidotes on them, besides Debauchery did not say they would give us anything to use so we have to think without such items" Yunan took apart the strategy "but the idea of getting them to follow orders is not bad but how are we gonna make that happen?"


    "The control and monitoring room!" Eximed Leol "if we can get in there we can control how the students behave until something changes and we are exposed" the idea of how to get the mission done efficiently was now formting slowly. "We can get Dear Debauchery to get us inside that room and then what?", "There is the threat of teachers doing something unexpected if we start by ordering the students", "we can start by assembling all teachers then guide the students to do what we need them to", " how are we gonna do that when there is fighting noises inside the administration building", "easy, Debauchery is very quiet when you need them to" ,"so what do we do?"


    "How about this, i have a very stupid n that might actually work" Yunan came up with the first formted n. "We capture the director of the academy, edit his memories to make him think we are inspectors on a mission. We then tell him to use the control room to dere an urgent order of business. Gather all the personal, guards and teachers included into the conference room where Debauchery will be waiting for everyone to arrive and annihte them at once. As for the students they were to return to their rooms and stay inside, all the weapons must be ced in a visible corner away from the student and await our inspection, he would say that students from the central base are doing the inspection for the students, so that everyone will not be bothered by our ages."


    "Then all we have to do is take a list of the students and their rooms and just get inside each room, Knock out who is inside and tie them up then move to the next room. as for the noise we say we had to move the beds and wardrobes to look for contraband. What do you think?".


    "It''s so stupid it might actually work" said Leol, "what about the girls?" Asked Lili "the same treatment for all, just make sure they do not make noise before they are down" answered Yunan. "What if they don''t believe us?" Asked Reina. "They are part of a secret cult that relocated whole towns because one agent did not return, even if inspections are not that frequent they are not out of the norm, we just need to y our role as tyrannical students with highest privileges from the central base, the arrogance is not needed but they must think we outrank even their director to follow our orders"


    "That is a very good n" leader apuded and almost scared the children to death they didn''t even notice her when she came, and she was not alone, even the hulking Dustan was in the same pool and the kids did not even realise it.

 Chapter 77: Mission accomplished

    Chapter 77: Mission aplished


    The children felt happy as their first battle strategy was apuded and approved by Leader, even Lucian, the guy with the n was nodding his head satisfied that his students could identify the most important factors to deal with and address them in a battle strategy, but all good things muste to end.


    "There are a few points we would like to include, first you are the inspectors, under the lead of an enforcer, act arrogant and entitled, keep quiet and do not answer to anyone, as for how you deal with the students that is your responsibility, we can only make the director do the announcement and the rest is up to you, take my watch and use it, no need to feed it mana, and keep the detection only to ten meters" Bai told the kids the basics and sent them to get ready.


    The kids put on the matching armor sets that Bai got for them, they exchanged their old rings with the fancy jewelled storage rings that Balin made and put Drogon in the hands of Reina to care for. The watch was given to Yunan due to seniority and he wore it under his chest piece as a ne. When the kids were ready to move they found a well dressed and groomed Debauchery waiting for them within a teleportation circle. The kids stepped onto the circle and poof they were gone.


    Everyone appeared momentster outside the town, Bai made his way stealthily inside the town and marked the location they could safely teleport to before sending a signal and waiting for everyone to arrive via teleportation. The director almost had a heart attack when an enforcer''s token appeared on his desk simultaneously with some strangers arriving at the office. but then he saw how impably dressed the strangers were and the four kids with matching armors that identified them as his superiors.


    While the director was still sorting out his thoughts the enforcer badge in his hands flew away under a gesture from the woman who seemed to lead the group. The token did not fly to her but to a man beside her that was leaving stealth and appearing to have been here for a long time, "inspection" was the only word the materialising man said as he caught his token. The director almost bowed before he finally noticed that the group was notpletely made of humans but before he made a an objection he heard a young voice full of contempt.


    "Not only do we have to inspect a backwater town, now there is a low level idiot trying to dy us! all we need now is the dumb orc telling us how to inspect, humph!" the arrogance dripping from Leol''s voice was enough to silence the director, then next to him the voice of Yunan rose to give non-negotiable orders "assemble all personal, all of them, no exceptions, you old people deal with them, order the students to return to their rooms we will inspect personally, anyone who leaves his room dies, 2 minutes."


    Leader and the rest of the seniors bent to their knees without much hesitation "yes your holiness" answered Leader. Fae escorted the children out of the office while Debauchery red at the director as if anymore dy was sphemous. The poor director almost ran to the control room with Debauchery behind him being menacing enough to make the air feel sharp for the director.


    The announcement was made and by the time the kids were leaving the administration building, the students were on their way back while the personal were assembling as fast as they could, Fae handed a clip board with the list of students and their lodging rooms to the kids, bowed and went back to the building following the stream of humans back to the conference room. As soon as Fae and all the other adults disappeared inside the building, the kids followed the map to the first building and started their "inspection". All the kids were in double rooms so the team split in two, one boy and one girl in each team and they started knocking out the students room by room. It took them about 3 hours to knockout, muzzle and tie up all the students. By that time Debauchery had cleared the town and unexpectedly have opted to not kill anyone that day.


    When the kids left thest residential building they found the academy''s main za full almost to bursting with tied up people in varying degrees of decency and in all kinds of positions. The children reported the sess of their mission without any deaths or injuries. When all Debauchery was present the graver robber was summoned by Fae to assemble all the valuables and split it into three hills, one form the academy and was property of the children, one was from the town and was property of the seniors while thest one was a big vault that would be distributedter on.


    Balin stored each in a different ring, even the vault itself was put inside a ring. It must be mentioned that normal storage rings can not store any other storage items or any spacial items inside of them, but the rings Balin made were capable of such feature mainly due to the ungodly enchanting ability the dwarf mastered inside Tartarus. The kids never knew about such a thing but the captives knew it very well because often they were holding multiple spacial items on their person at any given time.


    Once Balin finished collecting the loot, Leader sent a message to the pope who arrived minutester with a legion of nuns and priests behind him, some nuns even waved their hands at the shivering and sweating Debauchery. This troop was something the current pope had created with orphans hand picked by himself and isted them in training, they were loyal to the church only and were the secret trump card the church used to deal with hidden dangers.

 Chapter 78: Growing into Debauchery

    Chapter 78: Growing into Debauchery


    The legion of priests and nuns handled the captives with an efficiency rivaling that of Debauchery, the only difference was that they needed verbal coordinators giving orders and organising the minute details. On the other hand Debauchery barely needed any outwardmunication at all.


    When the legion has transported all the captives and documents and whatever useful things about the Supreme cult, they returned to wherever they came from to the relief of Debauchery seniors. The town has be a ghost town and only Debauchery and the pope were left at the central za in the academy. The pope did not hug his daughters but stood in front of Balin ;who was doing his best to hide behind Dustan; the pope put his palm up and said "taxes".


    Dustan who did his best to stand between the two was seething with anger, add in the stress from the legion of nuns earlier and he exploded on the pope. " We worked hard for this old goat, we killed no one and even gave you all the captives, they should be worth at least six times more than their treasures, you need to pay us 3 times more instead of taking from us. You are getting too greedy for your own good old goat."


    The pope looked at Leader who simply nodded at him "he is always correct when ites to money". That prompted the kindly old man to drop his hands and usher Debauchery to follow him to the cantina of the empty academy. There were some sisters inside preparing food for theing group. One of the sisters respectfully led the team to a back room with a luxurious furnishings and a big table where everyone can sit and talk.


    Everyone was seated and food was served, Lili was first to reprimand the sister for the empty table as she saw it "we need enough food for 60, this barely a snack for me! Get more as we eat" the poor sister just nodded her head and left the room to get more food for those who took over the sin of gluttony from the devil.


    "So we found out this cult is named " The Supreme Cult", literally, not just a glorified nickname like we thought, we have finally found someone who is more arrogant than you kids, what a surprise" the pope chuckled at his own quip while Debauchery had poker faces at this wanna be cool oldie.


    "Back to business, can you hit another academy before sunset? Do that and i will not tax you for anything you get from this sickness calling themselves a cult, also i want to see the kids fight, no matter what strategy you used to capture this one. You have been training my cute daughter under this spirit heart of yours for two weeks, if the kids can defeat all the students in the next academy, i will gift you a mana bomb to y with as well"


    "Are you serious old goat?" Balin almost jumped out of his seat but then sat down with a frown muttering to himself for a while while Debauchery continued their conversation with the old pope. "We can do that after lunch" Bai took out a notebook and flipped a few papers back and forth "we can also get you inside to watch, but it will be harder to get everyone captured and uninjured, so excuse us if we go bloody during the take over". This was the blunt way Debauchery did business. With a nod from the pope Bai passed the relevant information to Lucian and discussed it among themselves.


    After lunch the kindly old pope took with him two sisters and teleported outside the next target along with Debauchery, this time, Debauchery went ahead and started with the town by using a gue dual spell that would release a potent virus that can cause a whole city to fall unconscious or make anyone below a certain level to liquify from the inside out. There was an effective range limit since the virus could not live in open air for more than 10 minutes.


    The whole poption of adults started dropping unconscious suddenly, it only took 2 minutes before every adult was sleeping peacefully. Before the sisters beside the pope could start summoning their legion, the grave robber was already half way done with the town and by the time the first portal was opened and the first nun stepped through it, the grave robber had gather everything of value into a pile beside Dustan who stood like a mountain guarding it while Balin categorised it into the corresponding storage rings.


    The academy was in turmoil, as the students were panicking because all adults suddenly fell unconscious, they ran from building to building trying to find any clue about this mystery when they heard the call to gather at the central za where a group of people suddenly appeared. Dustan raised his voice to draw all the students and when everyone one was there, he left his ce to leader.


    "This is a raid by the church, each and everyone of you is a captive on death row, the only escape you have is to defeat these kids, anyone who is capable of handling them will be spared from death and instead trained into elites by the church, if the kids are still standing when thest of you is down, then there is no more to discuss." With that the adults withdrew amd left the juniors surrounded by almost 500 students from all ages and sses.


    The smart ones started by running away to get weapons while the dumber ones just charged in fists first. these ones were the first casualties as the juniors used Fae''s techniques of one hit Knockout to get rid of the swarm a fast as possible, then they took their time dismantling the cautious ones who did not charge first, by the time the weapons were introduced, the numbers of standing students went down to a quarter, and that made the rxed juniors even more rxed. They had fought Debauchery for so long and suffered from the dirtiest moves one can think off, so these students were barely good enough to stimte them.


    "Now we start the real fight scene, you girls can take a seat and watch while we deal with this" Leol rolled up his sleeves as he tried to y with the minds of the now shaken armed foes. Lili did not even look at him as she retorted "why do we need to bother the men when we, the delicate flowers, can handle this bunch of wimps, i find it a waste if all of us were to let loose at them". Yunan chuckled and said "if we end this before the afternoon bell we can get to soak longer in the hot spring, so let''s just do it fast, whoever downs the most gets to sleep with Drogon tonight"


    It seems the juniors are unknowingly turning into a miniature version of Debauchery.

 Chapter 79: first region, clear!

    Chapter 79: first region, clear!


    The fight went as might be expected from shaken foes and overpowering heroes, veryughably easy. Yunan took the lead attracting most the of the aggression followed by Lili who broke through the ranks then came Leol who picked off the stragglers that escaped from Lili while Reina took out her crossbow and went for blunted bolts and head shots from the rear.


    Soon all the students were on the ground either knocked out cold or moaning from pain and unable to get up, shortly afterwards the legion of priests and nuns took over the fallen students and transported them away, while Debauchery made their way haggard and out of breath towards the cheerleaders.


    The fight may have been easy but there is not a snowball''s chance in hell that four kids can take on 250 armed foes without paying a price for it. Although the armors were fine and in good shape, the wearers were not, they used up too much stamina and took on too many hits for the sake of ending the fight faster.


    As they arrived they saw Debauchery seniors paying their due debts, that is why the juniors did not count their takedowns, they knew full well that Debauchery seniors were already keepin tabs for their bet. "Who won?" Lili questioned first. Balin pointed at lucian and Drogon was passed to Reina.


    Reina had taken advantage of her teammates and the confusion to focus on those who were closest to being taken out of the fight and sometime she even stole some from her teammates, a fine strategy worthy of a disciple of Debauchery.


    By sunset the kids were soaking like kings in the hot spring paid for by Debauchery, they enjoyed the back rubs and the rxing aroma of the bath as much as they enjoyed the professional hands that massaged their tired bodies.


    As for Debauchery, they went on a rampage after doing a hot spring version of the ritual under the amazed gazes of the servants, they just got their hands on a mana bomb from the old era and they needed so much materials For balin to tinker with it to his heart''s content.


    They decided to leave the academies as numbers training for the kids, although 4 vs 6 battle is hard enough when the 6 are of higher level, they needed to learn how to conserve their strength for hordes of less powerful creature of be overrun by them. First they targeted the residential towns and storage location and leaving the inhabitants and workers for the church to deal with.


    They also let the kindly old pope include the guild master secretly so as to prevent information leaks, and other preventable mishaps that can be rted to The Supreme Cult. the guild master was impressed by the amount of information extracted as well as the number of captives, he thought Debauchery would just go for the kill and send the relevant information to both men. Well he was impressed too early.


    The following morning Debauchery took down another academy with better results this time for the juniors, theysted longer and took less damage but they were still recklessly charging instead of keeping a formation and deal with the threats one at a time. As for the afternoon Debauchery juniors almost lost Reina because she was focused by archers instead of Yunan or Lili who were trying to draw most of the aggro.


    Thus the first thing they did in hall number 5 on monday morning was ask about formation, and how to execute them proficiently. That lesson was a bit harsherbat simtion since Debauchery seniors decided to target the ws in the juniors formation making things worse than usual. As for the afternoon it was left for dealing with the cult.


    By the end of the week Debauchery had eliminated a total of 14 academies and a total of 40 towns and the central base in the region surrounding the lonely mountain. Since the region was as clean as they could make it, Debauchery decided to return to th level 2 goblin nest for the weekend while balin was tinkering with the mana bomb.


    Yunan, Reina, Lili and Leol were now more attune to the concept of a formation and were able to fight with a 4 goblin unit rtively easily, this weekend they made it halfway through the goblin territory before being forced back by the increasing number of patrols and the members of each patrol from 4 to 6.


    On sunday the kids refused to join any form of training or action, they wanted to have some fun and y around to relieve some of the stress they were under by fighting every single day in thest 3 weeks. Something no ten year old could sustain any longer.Yunan had the bright idea of visiting the old barber with Debauchery and this time Bring the pope to feel what it means to be the butt of a joke and still enjoy it.


    Although Lili did not get the point of spending your free time at a barber shop the infectious enthusiasm disyed by Debauchery got her curious and tingling with anticipation. The pope was easily dragged in by the mere sentence "don''t you want to spend time with your daughters on their only day off in weeks? What a bad dad!". As to be expected the old man was beside Debauchery with in 5 minutes with his trusted sisters by his side.


    The barber shop was still as old and rickety as it was but there was a crowd around it with many raising prices as if gold coins grew on trees or something. The old man would only work on those he liked and no amount of money would make him choose you. When the old man saw the smiling and anticipating faces on Yunan and party as they pushed their way past the loud, he stood up and weed them inside with a big smile. "Coming back for more, eh? I thought you forgot about my old bones"


    Yunan passed the old man a storage ring and had to wrestle Balin and Lucian for first turn on the barber chair but they were all waved away by the old barber who pointed at Lili to be first and thus the quiet barber shop went back into the roarousughter once again

 Chapter 80: Fun barber shop

    Chapter 80: Fun barber shop


    Experiencing something first hand is much more different from hearing about it, Lili only knew that this barber shop would be the greatest pass time in the city, she was not so keen on changing her hair style.


    The first thing the old barber did was grow Lili a majestic beard and make it look even better than the one Balin had, then he started changing the color and length. The shock faded pretty fast when Lili saw her eyebrows reach her nose and her eyshes grow so long Lili had to keep her eyes open forcefully. Her turn ended when the barber stopped with her having a chest reaching blue beard and a moss green short hair.


    Next up was Reina who put Drogon on the old barber''s head and sat on the chair expectantly, her turn was a bit more fun as the old barber only grew the fur on her tail to look like a peacock''s feathers with all kinds of shiny colors on it that danced as she waved her tails about, as for her hair he took the liberty to strip away the long fiery hair and leave only some 7 colored stubble and the next person was called in.


    The two girls were now standing together like fashion mannequins with the weirdest looking styles. The old man pope was forced on the chair next by his trusted aids who were smiling from ear to ear, and the result was magnificent, the barber transformed the thinning grey hair into a magnificent lion mane, then into a hermits look with long heavy eyebrows as well as the obligatory silky smooth mustache that were as long as the grey goatee. Then he was given the coolest haircut an old man can get which was changed to the most old fashioned hair one can think of.


    The final form reduced everyone to gasping for breath and clenching their guts as theyughed so hard, some were already rolling on the floor, the old man had the glossiest hair that even maidens dream about, eyshes to die for and mud brown armpit and chest hair reaching up to the old man''s knees.


    The fun time in the barber shop included even the sisters who were also stripped from their habits and were disyed on the mannequin''s line along with everyone else before them. The old barber opted for fun this time instead of taking requests and ending the it with a suitable style, he just made the funniest style he could think of for the person and put them on disy, to create a most outrageous line up.


    The fun was interrupted a few times by those who thought it was okay to force their way inside and threatening the old barber to work on them. The poor guys witnessed what must never be seen by outsiders and while they were still shocked at the outrageous line up, they were beaten to a pulp until they forgot what they just saw and then thrown away like wet socks, strewn up in shapes that should not be humanly possible.


    Under the care of the old barber, once everyone had their fun, he made suitable styles for everyone and sent them away glowing like stars. Everyone had enough fun to release the stress of a few years, even the kindly old pope looked more pope than before simply due to the halo of lightheartedness he acquired inside the barber shop.


    After everyone separated from each other and went their own way, Yunan took his friends to visit his mother under the light of the sunset, the orphanage was much less noisy than it was and the kids were more agreeable and cute. Probably because Yunan cared about how his mother was feeling.


    Sister Theresa was tending to the flower garden with some of the kids helping her here and there. The juniors greeted the sister and sat around her chatting about the events in the barber shop while the mighty valyrian Drogon was reduced to distracting the children who were with sister Theresa and kept them busy enough to allow Yunan some precious moments with his mother.


    The family gathering ended rather quaintly with Lili striking a chord with the kind sister Theresa since she is an orphan too, and was chosen by sister Theresa as her newest child and made sure that Yunan took care of her and did not let others bully her, if only she knew how close the 4 have be after facing all kinds of trials she would not even bothered about the motherly signature voice line "take care of each other and don''t bully the girls they are my daughters too".


    Back at the academy the kids were practicing their appraisal upon the newest loot they acquiredst night from helping out with the central base, more precisely them looking through the big amount of data to locate links with other bases and the next stage in the cult chain ofmand, even though they found nothing in the records they found some hidden treasuries and other useful information about hidden bases and possible links to the cult. Thus their personal rings have been filled with so much valuables they did not know what to do with it other than train their appraisal skill. As for money, they have long passed the point where money had any influence on them.


    Not to mention them having enough treasures to live like kings for a decade, they did not have to spend much of it at all, even Balin was not taking any of it for creating and improving items for them because he himself had nowhere to spend the money he got since he was in charge of the treasury department, even though Dustan would seem the best candidate because he loves money,Balin got the position thanks to him being the minister of foreign affairs, thus finance was just lumped in too.


    All in all, Debauchery had took a huge step in clearing the threats of The Supreme Cult, as well as inject the church and the guild with a greater understanding of the opposite side and helped them prepare ording to the lowest level they found in the chain ofmand. But what kept Debauchery tense was the meeting with the hearts a week from now, right after the graduation ceremony for the kids.

 Chapter 81: Cunning

    Chapter 81: Cunning


    Debauchery has cleared the first part of their mission and were ready to move forward to the next region and and keep working on dismantling the cult that chose to target them for a misdirection. But first, two events were needed to be taken care of.


    First early graduation for the kids, since they were officially level 1 and they would need to travel with Debauchery, toplete their training outside of the academy as well as take them away from the public eye. It was already known that Debauchery had found the ck Fate and it was most likely with one of their students, in addition to the fact that Drogon the only dragon in this world had chosen a kid as his master and bonded with him.


    The second event was the meeting of the hearts, although Debauchery had not made anything public the event was already taken care of and the level of secrecy is unprecedented. ording to the n the heart of the mountain hatched, the Dwarven masters will invite the young dragon to help with the forging of some items while the hearts will be waiting for the ck Fate in the lonely mountain hintends hidden from all the dangers and spying eyes.


    The kids did not even know about what was nned for them since a risk was always a factor. ording to the n Debauchery came up with for the uing week, Yunan, Reina , Leol and Lili are to focus on the level 2 goblin nest and fight the boss before friday, they can fight without pause if they feel like it, but if the boss is not dead before Friday morning there was a punishment to be dealt.


    Since the cult was fully cleared in the region around the lonely mountain, Debauchery had the opportunity to guide their students along their fight into the nest and the first lesson on Monday morning was traps and kiting.


    The idea of fighting with traps and tricks was always present at the minds of Yunan and his friends but Debauchery had refused that battle style because it would not grant them the challenge they needed to grow, but now it was time to learn the way of the hurried and the cunning. "Leaving traps behind you is an act of buying time when chased and an act of idiocy when not, there is only one wrong way to fight and that is to fight straightforwardly. that kind of fight is for the entertainment of nobles and kings, true warriors only know the art of killing and not showmanship" introduced Bai.


    "Cunning is not a detriment nor is it a bad trait, but the sign of those who cast the thoughts of right and wrong when the need to live rises. Anyone who uses his cunning for anything but survival is a pretending idiot trying to outsmart those who are, by nature, dumber than him"


    "Cunning is not the ability to create a strategy or a n, it is to mend both when all goes wrong, and cunning is the most useful skill you will learn from me. So perk you ears and listen well i will only say this once, how much you understand from this is up to you."


    "The first rule of cunning, never show it off. Second rule of cunning, never get caught. Third rule of cunning, as long as you live long enough for another thought, there is still hope for survival. Those rules are the only ones and they are the rules you will break most of the time so at least keep them in mind and do not break them too hard. Next is critical thinking, only think about your objective, any spare thoughts may be the death of you. Focus and knowledge, learn how man thinks, learn how beasts behave and learn how nts grow"


    "Knowledge is the mother of cunning and traps are its father, traps have only one rule, never step in your own trap, that is all. Now onto the reason you are learning this, how do you make goblins fall into your traps? You think about how to lure them before you make a trap that works best with your luring method, it is a mistake to build a trap and then build a strategy for it, so based on the intelligence of the goblins and the environment, what is the best way to draw as many goblins as possible without risking the failure of the n"


    "We can reliably draw the attention of at least one patrol of 6 per person, any more and they only watch from a distance while one group handled the threat, if they deem the threat is too big or they are enraged they would send all the nearest patrols to eliminate the target with utmost brutality" answered Leol "the safest way to draw as many as possible without risking the failure of the trap is getting them angry by sniping off their patrols and driving them into making bigger patrols, that way we can increase the number of pursuing goblins while reducing the number of enemies. Two birds with one stone."


    "The problem is not making the bigger patrols follow us into a trap, but something that will kill all of them instantly or near enough, also the trap must be enough for twice the amount of monsters we are targeting just for safety, also we must be able to run away from the location if things went wrong" Lili pointed out her point of view.


    "Maybe we can use the forest and the valley to our advantage, that way we have better options for our trap" Reina added a new point the other two missed. "We are thinking too much" said Yunan "why do we have to make a trap when a strategy is all we need? Strategy is trapping the opposite side in our own machinations and controlling their actions so why do we need all of this nning, if we want to fight numerous foed there are so many bottlenecks we can draw the goblins to where only 2 or 3 goblins can pass at once, 2 of us can keep them busy while the other two shoot as many arrows at the troops trying to push their way into the bottleneck. That way we only fight with numbers we can deal with, and have two rested members to switch with in when we get tired, we also need something a goblin to keep calling for help to attract as many as possible"

 Chapter 82: too many

    Chapter 82: too many


    Bal pped his hands after Yunan said his piece "thatdies and gentlemen is cunning, you kept your eyes on the target and choose the most efficient and least time consuming methode. You kids have no experience building traps so forget about using them, use the kind of traps you can already use, strategy and nning, the bottleneck strategy is good but there is a downside, you don''t know how many you can take and how the goblins would act inside one."


    "We have already did this with the kobolds, we can use the smaller tunnels to keep the numbers manageable, but the timing must be at night when most the goblins are all sleeping, we can upy a room and let theme in twos and threes by using tower shields to block the doors." Leol interjected.


    "We only need one big shield and we can choose how big the gap we let the goblinse through and just kill them at leisure but we need to mind their numbers and our stamina so how should we arrange the formation?" Reina added


    "Keep Reina holding the shield since she would just need to keep it in ce allowing the goblins to filter through a small gap, Leol would rest and rece her for half an hour intervals, while Lili and i can deal with the individual goblins, as theye, and since there will be very few goblins to face we can switch ces to allow everyone to res" Yunan chose the formation.


    "For this strategy to work, we need to seriously cripple their numbers during day time, forcing them to send out patrols out in the night, while we are inside dealing with those who are tired from the patrolling during the day. So i guess we need to archers and two attackers, and the archers need to aim for the kill instead of making it easier for the attackers, we all need to aim for the most efficient kill, this is not training anymore."Lilipleted the strategy.


    "Leol you will stay with Reina in the back and use your bow to draw the patrols, Lili and i will deal with them as they get closer, and move on to the next patrol and repeat this ad nauseum. Thanks tost week we now can deal with both hordes and higher level adversaries, so let get it done with, we only have 4 days" Yunan took the role of the leader and issued hismand


    The four fighters put on their matching armor, each had a crossbow hanging on their back, with the handle above their right shoulder, at their sides were two short swords matching the armor they had on. They walked into the territory of the nest heading towards the nearest goblin marked in the watch loaned by Bai


    It only took three dead patrols for the goblins, who have been targeted too much recently, to go into overdrive and send out their patrols in overwhelming numbers, and since the kids were not shy about announcing their presence, they dove right on any patrol they saw dispatching it with fury, then they would meld into the shadows, waiting for the next patrol to cross their line of sight.


    By the time night arrived our heroes were almost too tired to stand up, thest fight they had was almost too much, they fought 5 patrols one after the other with thest two arriving mid fight and making the already hard fight harder to deal with. After a hearty meal and a good two hour rest, the kids used the invisibility in their armors and sneaked inside the nest with Debauchery in tow.


    Inside the nest the found a rtively small guard room that could be blocked by a tower shield and killed everyone inside making sure their death screams aroused enough of a raucous to draw the attention of the goblins, and sure enough a tide of goblins swarmed towards the room.


    The shield was set up in a way that would lead the iing goblin into direct contact with the attackers while keeping the one behind the shield safe for just enough time for the goblins attention to be drawn by the attackers. Reina took the first shield shift while Leol was told to make a rampart of dead goblins to protect the girl and make it eventually into a wall to rece the shield.


    It was a good n if not for Drogon trying to gobble up the corpses, although it was still as small as a kitten, no one knew where all the food it ate went, for example it ate all the 300 goblins killed by the kids this morning,yet it was still feeding like it had not eaten for weeks. After being reprimanded the sad Drogon only ate they pity goblin Yunan would throw it him when Leol was too busy to clean up fast enough the piling corpses.


    By morning the numbers of goblins dwindles steadily, the kids had now built a good fortification in the room simply by stacking corpses, they made a one goblin narrow chute where goblins have to pass through to get to Yunan and friends, on the other side you could find two kids acting as a guillotine for anything that passes through, while another two were sleeping beside a visiblyrger Drogon who was eating everything that came out of the chute with in seconds.


    Debauchery were having a hushed discussion about this current situation on the further side of the room away from the kids. "Too many, there is no way a level 2 nest could gather so many soldiers even in a year, this nest was reportedly cleared by the local lord just two months ago, there something fishy is going on here". " they are too young to be born more than 6 months ago, at best the oldest is around 4 months". " if the bastard did what i think he did i will make him suffer". "We can not be sure until this is over do not act rashely". "Wait for the kids to finish their mission and we can see what is going on"

 Chapter 83: Darkness

    Chapter 83: Darkness


    Yunan mind was working overdrive thinking about what was going on with this nest. Even if it was level 2 nest this was too many goblins by any count, there should not be this many, but the reality is that Drogon ate so much he practically grew overnight, from a kitten to an adult cat size, he could now even fly for a few seconds.


    About noon the goblin stoppeding through for some reason and Yunan told Drogon to clear out all the corpses they had painstakingly stacked all night long. The valyrian dragon was all too happy to oblige, the corpses and the monster cores inside them were too appealing for Drogon.


    Yunan assembled the kids for lunch and ate while Drogon was wolfing down Goblin corpses. When they were done and fully fed and rested they waited for Drogon to finish his meal, before cautiously leaving the room. They found a patrol waiting for them which they dispatched easily, afterwards everyone tried to make as much noise as they could but no more goblins showed up.


    Debauchery started cleaning up the nest and taking everything they found. They found the treasuries and armories like in the other nests, they found and killed everyone in the residential section, they were merely the weak and the elderly, there were also a few females there, but not enough to popte such a number of goblins.


    Soon they found out why there was no more goblinsing at them, in the boss room behind the throne there was a doorway, and it was guarded by what seemed to be everyst goblin in the nest, Dustan counted around 1300 of them all standing guard with ferocious faces and the boss waiting in the middle of the room for the intruders.


    Yunan decided to try and pull over some goblins to reduce their numbers but no matter how many he shot by his arrows only the enraged roar of the boss was heard, none left their positions. Therefore Yunan took out his swords with Drogon on his right shoulder he gestured to his squad to stay behind, as he walked to the center of the room the boss rushed at him, a level 3 boss was too much for Yunan but nothing to the newly hatched Drogon.


    Yunan relied on his armor and swords to break the first strike and ordered "Incinerate it" followed by a wash of mes engulfing the bossing out of the little dragons maw, the boss was charred ck within a second and fell whimpering, skin splitting with each muscle it moved and its whimpers grew into howls of pain. Yunan quickly nted his sword in the skull of the boss ending it misery.


    The rest of the goblins charged at Yunan only to be met with the same fate as the boss, Drogon had found his new favourite vour of monster meat, bloody on the inside and charred on the outside, and it did not wait for Yunan''s order this time but just extended its own neck and spewed enough mes to cover the entire half of the room that the goblins were on.


    A secondter the mes were gone and nothing but charred corpses remained, the fire was enough to boil the brains while leaving the tender organs still bloody and juicy. Drogon waited for a nod from Yunan before it started eating the food it cooked, while Yunan stepped over the burnt bodies to reach the room behind the throne but was stopped by leader.


    "You probably should not see what is in there" the kindly old pope had arrived sometime ago when Yunan was not paying attention, probably summoned by Debauchery, he could never tell when they were casting magic even when he saw them do it. Yunan could feel the magic cast by the nuns and priests whenever they met but never from Debauchery unless they wanted him to feel it during training.


    Yunan looked at leader and asked the obvious question " how bad is it?", Leader leaned forward and whispered to his ear "so bad you will kill, you will enjoy the feeling of their life slipping out between your fingers, you will be tainted". Thest words made Yunan shudder he looked behind him at his friendsing over and decided "will we see something like this in the future?".


    "Not likely, not on this scale, and there is nothing worse than what is inside there, all the darkness in the world is behind that door, and if you see it, there is no turning back, i would strongly suggest that you would not witness this until when you are mature enough to understand it" Leader was not in any shape pushing away Yunan but merely looking out for him, it was his decision whether or not to step behind that door.


    The old pope was about to summon his own legion but leader stopped him, "they cleared the nest and they get to decide what to do with it, i brought you here so they know the extent of what they might witness, if they decide to hand it over, it is yours, for now wait for them".


    "That is what leader said" Yunan was sitting in a circle with Reina, Leol and Lili. they were discussing what to do about the door and what was behind it. "If that is the case maybe we should pass through and take a look, it it will never get worse than this i prefer to see it now and never feel bad ever again" said Lili.


    "I think i know what is behind that door, it will break us, and not even time can heal it, we may grow to be perverse if we see it ourselves, but maybe there is a way to know that can be much easier to handle." Reina was a royalty and the perverse ways of the ruling ss were no secret to her, she just never saw it with her own eyes.


    "Whatever is behind that door is not much of a secret, the problem is how intense it is, we can already tell what is behind there, but the adults think it much more serious than that, therefore we have two choices, we can let them clean up and see the aftermath of that, or we can barge in now and never know who or what we will be after we step out" added Leol.

 Chapter 84: depravity

    Chapter 84: depravity


    The kids discussed between themselves for over half an hour beforeing to a consensus. Leol as the diplomat, walked to Leader and the pope and said solemnly "you can deal with it however you see fit, however, we want you to see to it, that the bastard and all those who knew about this and were part of it, all of them, no exceptions, will be killed and all their property seized and used for the rehabilitation of the unfortunate ones behind that door."


    "Old pope has to personally make sure not a single thing is missed. as for those in the families that did not know about it, help them start over under the eyes of the church, call the guild if you need to, just make sure those who knew die and those who did not can have another chance. We also expect that not a single coin from the gains to be diverted for anything but healing and taking care of the poor souls."


    "We would like to go to another nest to feed Drogon while you deal with this, if possible, otherwise send us back to the academy. We prefer to be anywhere but here," Leol went back to his friends, Reina was holding a fatter Drogon and Lili was clutching Yunans cloak, they were visibly nervous and in distress.


    Under directions from Leader Fae took Drogon from Reina and sent everyone back to their room with Lucian who left the room promptly. In the quiet room the girls cried themselves to sleep while hugging each other. They hade to frightful conclusion, something they truly wished to never hear about again.


    "ording to the information Leol provided, behind that door was the only room that they did not find in the nest, the nursery, where the birthing mothers and newborn are kept, and ording to the numbers they had fought, there were too many females behind that door, and the only way they keep the door to the nursery there is if someone else made enough room and tunnels to hold such a staggering number.


    If what they thought was true, behind that door is were the local lord keeps his toys, he shares them with the goblins as a for of protection, since no goblin would kill a fertile female, thus he built cells and room where he would keep all those girls he kidnapped or raped or bought in an effort to keep them from reaching the public.


    Also since he was the local lord, him cleaning the goblinss him more profits the more women he sent into the mines, there was also the possibility of him exchanging with the goblins for those he fancied once more. Goblin may hate humans but if there was a human who gave them women periodically, they would allow him to satiate his desires and whatever he wanted to do as long as no women died.


    Even if he brought friends, the goblins will not attack them because more often than not, those who were into such thing had a surplus of girls they wanted to silence, thus the huge number of victims that is behind that door, and adding how perverse the higher ss can be, a few torture rooms are not out of the realm of possibilities.


    But what Debauchery found was something beyond what the kids imagined. They did not only found discarded females, they also found humans there, and all kinds of fetishes one might think of were found in a well maintained system of caves, that was almost as big as a town.


    There were room for every torture tool in the book, there were rooms where one can watch, there were rooms where one can participate in all the depravity possible. There were even some who were directing what is going on in front of them gleefully.


    Inside the cave were not only men but also women who were introduced into this kind of depraved life style under the guise of excitement and never before seen entertainment. They were from all sses of aristocracy and royalty in there, all of them were either watching, betting or participating in this or that.


    Well not for long, under the efficient hands of the church''s legion, they were all captured and scanned for information by Bai, those who were victims were sent into care locations, as for the rest, well let''s say, Debauchery did not like to take that kind of prisoners, and most of them had their necks broken after Bai read their memories, he would write down a list of names after every person and pass it to the unfortunate priest assigned to him.


    It took until the morning of Tuesday before everything was done and over with. One has to mention that dragons love to eat creatures with mana, in them, but Drogon, in a joke of fate, refused to even spew his me at the corpses of those who were caught, it refused to even sniff them let alone eat them, the whole reason why Debauchery wanted to keep him.


    Drogon was a smart Dragon, it knew right from wrong, and it understood, the words it heard and the orders given to it, it followed orders and knew when to y the rebellious child, but this time it took Debauchery by surprise, the Dragon refused something most monsters would kill for, just because he thought it would be beneath him to eat such dirty corrupted creatures.


    Today Debauchery took the kids into a level two kobold nest to remove some of the sorrow they had, but now matter what they were so dispirited that Debauchery decided to let Drogon loose in the nest and took the kids back to the academy where they were told to take the rest of the week as a holiday.


    Sometimes it would take time to restore spirit, especially since the kids could figure out what was behind that door, it was a bit less of a shock then if they would be told or see it but a shock nheless. Thus Debauchery allowed the kids to take a break and heal their minds slowly.

 Chapter 85: Through the gate

    Chapter 85: Through the gate


    During the week, Yunan and the others barely left the room, they looked tired and haggard. Fae woulde by every day and order the kids around for while before she leaves them well fed and cleaned up, even Drogon seemed like he lost his appetite during the time the juniors were depressed.


    "We are still too fragile, i thought that we had steeled our hearts after going through so much" Reina said the first voluntary words the kids spoke since they returned. "Maybe we are still too young, you know. no matter how hard we try to be adults we are not adults yet after all" she just voiced her thoughts to no one in particr.


    "I think we chose the right thing by not meddling with things above our own tolerance, I would rather feel down and depressed than turn into a monster before i know it" Leol also did the same. " I am d we have been taught by those idiots. At least they did not treat us like kids and tried to protect us, they treated us like they would their own."


    "Well Friday is tomorrow, whatever big thing they are trying to get us into, i think it would be a good distraction. I owe Lili a hug too, i was wrong. I now understand why Lili was right, we should just enjoy being kids as long as we can. Because adults don''t have the luxury to walk away from the darkness." Yunan also made a point.


    It was not a conversation or anything like that, it was just a few kids voicing out their inner thoughts with each other, there was no other purposes than just sharing what is in their minds.


    "I think i deserve more hugs, well i need all of them, i need hugs when i wake up, i need to be hugged to sleep, and everything in between. i deserve it forsting this long and staying sane, so all of you should hug me all the time." The response Lili got was not the affirmation she expected but a smiling "pervert".


    After that the exchange turned into a talk about puberty and when it was going to hit and how it will change everything, it was amiable and jokes andughs were exchanged for the first time in a week, maybe they are still not fully healed but its a start nheless.


    When Friday morning came with the inevitable Fae invasion that marks every notable event, Fae was standing dumb at the doorway when she found the kids dressed up, and in the middle of trying to get Drogon to spit out something it was chewing on.


    The kids followed after a sad Fae and fist bumped with Lucian, who was waiting outside. As revenge for not getting to dress up the kids she took over Reina and embraced her until they met the rest of Debauchery.


    For once Balin was a bit fidgety and nervous, he had groomed his beard from whatever monstrosity Fae called a braidst night, he was dressed like proper gentleman. When he saw the kids he looked around them making sure they were dressed properly.


    "We are heading to the lonely mountain, we will meet the masters of the Dwarven empire and Balin is nervous that something might go wrong, he has not been there in a while and if he can not impress the oldies he needs to make sure they won''t be displeased with us" exined Dustan who, for the first time ever since the kids met him, did not look like an ugly orc but a handsome one instead.


    Yunan passed his storage ring to Dustan "do me a favour and sell everything inside, we need so many monster corpses and cores to feed Drogon, today he was chewing on some globe with mana in it." Balin looked at the valyrian dragon angrily and reprimanded "never eat enchanted items, if you get hungry bite them until they feed you, got it?" Then he turned to Yunan andpany "let''s hurry to the guild, it time you got your own ounts and we can deal with the trash as well as the food in one go".


    The trip to the guild was fast, all the kids had to do was fill out a form and that was it, next they met the banker and gave him their rings to appraise and liquidate into gold, the banker almost had a heart attack when he saw how big and how full the first ring he picked up was, he took a look at the other rings and actually had to take a moment to calm down. "There is too much, we can not appraise all these today so you have to leave them behind, follow me".


    The banker led the party to an empty vault he estimated to be big enough "please empty your rings here" he instructed the kids who did as told and emptied their rings into the vault, a momentter the vault was bursting with the luster of treasured items and golden doubloons, while the banker betrayed a look of greed from his eyes. "It will take a few days for us to verify its worth, please be patient" he said while obviously gulping the greed away.


    Dustan fixed the man with a good old orcish stare and the greed vanished and was reced by integrity, afterwards the party bought all the monster corpses present in the guild at that moment, Before teleporting to their destination the literal doorstep of the lonely mountain, thest abode the Dwarven masters chose for their best forging and home for their best works across the years.


    At the doorstep there were two Dwarves who looked like metal statues, the were what you expect to see when you hear the expression ''armed to the teeth''. After examining the arriving party they nodded towards Balin who led the party between the two guards and into the gate that was built on the face of the mountain

 Chapter 86: At least try living

    Chapter 86: At least try living


    Behind the marvelous gate leading to the heart of the lonely mountain were some majestic looking guards making a file and awaiting the arrival of Debauchery, at the end of the line there was a female dwarf who had no armor and very casual smile on her face. She scrutinize Debauchery carefully while they approached her. When Balin stood before her he bent forward in a show of respect and reverence. "It was not a waste to grant you my furnace after all, you have made my old bones proud" she said as her eyes never left the bead of the Spirit heart and the Dragon coiled just above it on Yunan''s neck.


    "You tter me master, i was merely lucky to meet this young man" Balin had nothing of his usual bravado and arrogance before this woman. "You forged it nicely, it took me a moment to find it, now i can brag about you in the council, my talentless disciple returns with a handful of dragon forged items forged inside a dragon me furnace. That makes you the first in 300 years to light such a furnace, you must be very proud, but howe i do not feel that you carry the items forged in it"


    Dustan passed his ring to the female dwarf like he knew her for years, " if you are talking about the perfect pie big ass oven he uses to forge, he never lets us bake in it unless he is already working on it,tely only this kid gets him to even take it out" inside the ring were the well worn out arms and armors, the strongest Debauchery had, the Dragon w axes and a colorful collection of pies".


    The dwarf master led the party along with the file of guards deeper inside the mountain with her eyes firmly appraising the craftsmanship of the items inside the ring, she stopped only twice the first to ask about the dragon axes and the second was to ask about the pies. She already had a mouthful of pie when she asked who baked them.


    Yunan finally understood where Balin developed his personality, such unfettered master was guaranteed to raise a disciple like Balin although her calling him talentless was a bit of an understatement regarding the man''s talents. "This is my master Mina, she taught me all she knew about craftsmanship, she is so talented she can forge better items in her sleep than what i can do in my best of days" balin introduced his master while she stuffed her face with what she called the "delish" pies in Dustan''s storage ring.


    It did not take long before they arrived at a room where there were a bunch of old dwarves waiting for them to arrive, the old dwarves bowed to Mina and her guests then started firing up a mechanism that worked like a portal, walking through it would lead you to a sealed room with so many enchantments on its walls, even Yunan who could barely sense mana felt suffocating from the sheer amount of enchantments in the room.


    Inside the room everything was made of stone, there was arge round table with 5 seats around it, 2 of the seats were taken by an elf and a minotaur. Near the walls there were other chairs set up for observers and escorts. Mina led the party in and took a seat while saying "wee to the heart of the lonely mountain, please let the bearer of the ck Fatee forward and take his seat among us."


    While Yunan moved to the seat indicated by Mina he took of the ck Fate ring from his finger and ced it on the table he then sat down and observed this strange meeting. As he was thinking, the ck Fate shined and floated to the center of the table showing a screen that read "greetings to the hearts of Burkan, it is a pleasure to meet you once more".


    Out of nowhere a very handsome albino orc stepped into the room and sat on thest empty seat "you always were able to sense me when others could not, how is you mistress doing?". The orc seemed more familiar with ck Fate than the rest. The ck Fate shone once more " Tartarus is almost finished with the preparations, but my mistress is having a bad time with epting death".


    "Let me officially introduce those on this table, our youngest is the current carrier of ck Fate Yunan, he is not the prophesied one, but who cares, if the ck Fate likes him he is more than good enough, the elf is the heart of the forest Yggdrasil, besides her is heart of the beasts Asterion, the albino is the heart of prophecy Helios. And i am mina the heart of the mountain" Mina then looked at Yunan with a piercing stare. "Now that you know who we are, we would like to give you a mission that only Adun hase close to but refused to finish. We would like you to take the heart of Tartarus out of there and use Tartarus to fulfill its intended purpose".


    "I think you are being too rash masters and mistresses" answered Yunan "i am but a child that is still learning about the world and life, i still have three more years before i can even step into the dungeon and i may die during that time. All I know is that this ring chose me to meet the heart of Tartarus, and i do not want to be bound by anyone or anything, if it is fate then you don''t need to give me a mission, if it is not fated then even if i ept the mission i could notplete it"


    Yunan willed the ck Fate to fly back onto his finger "it is truly an honor to meet youdies and gentlemen but i fear that this meeting was a wasted one, if the reason you brought me here is to give me a mission. Everyone is always talking about prophecy this and prophecy that, but here i am wearing something that should be in the hands of another. I only believe that my fate is my own and that chaining my fate to anything is wrong, i may take mission now that i am in training, but that is the extent of it, another opportunity to train."


    Yunan stood up from his chair " i know that you are dying to fulfill whatever destiny you were made for or something like that, what i don''t understand is that you are eternal, what is the haste for? If you have seen all the wonders of the world, than i can understand that, but i know for sure you have been hiding in your own holes waiting and waiting for the day to end your lives, let me tell you this, if Adun himself refused to finish the mission, it means the chances are all those you might send down there will do the same, so stop holing up and get out to the world, if you are waiting for death, you might as well try living"


    With his words still hanging in the air he retreated beside his friends and sat down amongst them, he was home with them, and they were going to truly live, unhindered and unchained, let the world follow their prophecies and destinies and whatever they wanted to follow, this band of kids would not be following the stream.

 Chapter 87: Prophecy and future

    Chapter 87: Prophecy and future


    The stone chamber fell into an awkward silence, it took a while before Helios broke the silence with a rather bold statement that should have been thought of before.


    "Do you mean to say that i can not see beyond our deaths because there is yet to be a future after the the event?" The statement put thinking frowns on all the hearts present, even Debauchery looked a bit perturbed and another bout of silence hit the room. During this time, Yunan and the kids had a confused expression and looked to Debauchery for rification.


    The silence was broken when the ck Fate shined a message for all to see "suicide" it read. Gasps filled the room and even a scoff from Mina was heard as if the thought itself was absurd. Yunan stood back up with a nudge from Reina and took back his seat on the table besides the hearts. He looked at the Helios and uttered a simple "exin" that had enough unquestionable authority in it.


    " I reject the thought of suicide because those behind you are my murderers, i have seen it a million times, they murder all of us, that is when the dark haze of mana shrouds the world" the pure rage on Helios took Yunan by surprise. "Just exin all that we need to know, i would rather not cause the suicide of the hearts just to keep away from a mission in the far future" Yunan made his mind clear that information must be given.


    "The future is not fixed, every decision changes the future no matter how small, some decisions have a negligible effect some are the difference between a thriving world and a dead one. That is why prophecy exists so that the harmful future can be changed. The orcs created me to ensure the most epic deaths they can get, it does not mean that you can change the future by acting against what you may think is hindering said future sometimes acting to stop a future only fixes it"


    "Therefore we who see beyond the veil can see one possible future that has not been deleted or fixed, for example you throwing away the meteor that burned your hair would have never gotten you the spirit heart and that future where you having the spirit heart is deleted, you probably could not cleared the kobold nest and thus the dragon would have remained dormant, you would be weaker, poorer and much less lucky than you are today."


    "The future is ever changing, but we oracles can pinpoint an event and see it in one of the possible futures, and the death of the hearts have never changed in the thousands of years i looked at it, no matter how many times i look it is the same and i can never see past the event"


    "I support the ck Fate if what you are saying is true" Yunan responded to Helios "there is only one future where the hearts die and it requires the hands of Debauchery to aplish, you also used a very peculiar word to describe the deaths at the hands of Debauchery, you called it murder, not killing, harvest, use, forge or any other word that might give a purpose to death, you chose murder, even you,someone who seeks death, are feeling bitter about those deaths"


    "Why would Debauchery murder the hearts? How can they? Hephaestus made you eternal, if a host dies you just switch to a new one as for the damages, you can regain your powers just by waiting a few years. The only way for all of you to be mortal is that all of you chose to renounce your powers, dispersing them. If that was all then the worst that happens is a boost of mana for Tartarus to absorb. But one of you will use all of that mana to do something that even your deaths can not pay for, the event will be so big that even the death of the hearts can not stop it, something that can shroud the whole world in death so that even Tartarus can not clean it fast enough"


    "Suicide, not by your own hands but suicide nheless, i bet if you wanted to see my own future for the next 1000 years you can, i can even promise you that you can see the future of the ck Fate for hundreds of thousands of years. You can see all the hearts live if you wanted to see it but death is only there when you want to see it"


    Leol stood up at this moment "begging your pardondies and gentlemen there is an alternative but it is very hard to even think of" he turned to Leader and asked "Leader Mary may we know what is the prophecy that was delivered to you". Leader looked at her team and after a round of nods she stated that thrice ursed prophecy as if reading from a book.


    "oh indulgent ones, wash your foggy path with blood, the blood of millions or the blood of four, it matters not, for when the hearts fall none shall live toment, find the fate and break your own destiny. Murder is your sin, and murder you will, for the death of the four will bloody your hands. Pray for luck oh unfortunate souls, death is the only path you can walk." Leader sat down after she introduced the prophecy that Debauchery has avoided for years already.


    Leol stood back up and cleared his throat "betrayal. someone will drain the hearts and only killing them might stop the weapon, that is what sir Helios sees every time, that is the murder both you and the other oracle agree on, however Debauchery has a choice, to either kill millions of people or stay passive and wait for the time they murder the four hearts."


    "Another part of the prophecy i find very intriguing is that Debauchery has a foggy path, and they had to pray for luck, i think this is the part of the path that has fog in it, thanks to our lucky mascot i think I know who are the millions that have to die. The Supreme Cult".

 Chapter 88: Ploy

    Chapter 88: Ploy


    Leol continued with his spection. "Debauchery here have been known for their mercy on those that wronged them, at worst merely destroying whatever army that was bold enough to try to anything. This reputation is so strong that the Supreme Cult chose them to create some sort of distraction, even though Debauchery announced that they will not stay passive anymore. The n for the distraction was probably dyed and changed because Debauchery retaliation was too ruthless and swift, that even if they wanted to use it as distraction it was already over by the time the news spread."


    "There is one more thing that drives my point further. When we dealt with the cult, we were very lenient with them, we chose capture most of them instead of killing because we kids wish to stay pure a bit longer, and there are many that survived, who otherwise would be dead, from what we know, this region around the lonely mountain had around half a million members, and we know for sure the cult has roots in every region on burkan. I would like to propose the death to all of those captives in the hands of the church, because if only one of them runs away, it may push forward the operation that will kill the world."


    Leol sat back down and let the room exchange looks and nods until Asterion spoke up for the first time, "i can provide some locations where this cult exists thanks to some beasts that are connected to me, however there is one that makes me nervous, there is a manaboratory inside the eternal forest, i know about it because the humans came begging us to open thatboratory for them under the excuse that they are looking to use the technology of old to enhance the technology of the new era" Asterion looked at Yggdrasil beside him.


    The delicate looking elf said with a most enchanting voice " we are monitoring them but currently they are studying a mana shield that disruptsmunication and ensures secrecy, we have sent a few of our men to inspect them but there is nothing out of the ordinary, they are truly studying the technology of the old era".


    Yunan also added his insights into the table "I suspect that you are looking at the front they want you to see. The actual technology anyone would want to study should be hidden with the utmost secrecy, i believe that they have already transported what they needed that specificb for, and they left those technicians there to gain whatever they can legally, using that technology to draw the attention to the ces they want us to look at. Well, regardless of all spection, Debauchery has a new target and we would like the four of you to disperse into the four corners of the world, it would be best if you got new hosts and just disappeared from everyone''s field of sight."


    Mina spoke atst, "there is a ce that Hephaestus built for us if we ever wanted to hide, we will be there ourselves, if you had any information or a message you wanted to pass on find Hephaestus himself, only he and us know about the location and only we can enter it. We will head there immediately, as for you honourable guests, you may stay in the lonely mountain as long as you wish"


    Right after saying that Mina teleported Debauchery back to to the were the old dwarves were waiting, they were waiting on Mina so they did not pay attention to Debauchery who were led by Balin to leave this ce for the academy, it was almost noon and the graduation exams were taking ce for those who wanted to take them.


    Back in the stone chamber were the hearts were smiling at each other, rather happy about what they did. The conversation going on was something like this "smart little rascals, they caught on fast enough without much goading", "especially the children, they were trained very well", "do you think they caught on our ploy?", "I don''t think so, with such a heavy atmosphere we forced, they should not have enough brain power left to think about anything else", "your disciple is really dumb, just like you said, it must be luck he could use that broken furnace of yours".


    On the way, out of the lonely mountain, Debauchery only broke the silence when they were alone, the first to speak was Reina who giggled to herself ."They need acting lessons, even my dad can lie better than them", "What do you expect, they can''t just be like hey we need your help to stop you from murdering us, but you have to finish killing the millions you''re already nning to kill off fast" ,"They have their dignity to look after, but if we are destined to murder them i think dignity should just be thrown away at that point", "Even the ck Fate was in on the ploy, how naive do they think we are?", " since we yed along just let them think they did good, we got a new target to go for, do you think it''s time to break dad''s heart?", "Well he did take a new daughter, probably from the captives", " wow your dad has a very big heart!" "What big heart, he Just likes to y daddy with little girls, he did not even hug usst time we met", "and that is why you never anger a woman", "we women are good at holding grudges, better kill us if you want to rest easy", "so we do the old pope first, then we go for the cult?", "Sounds like a n", "forget those for now, we have graduation exams to attend"


    Debauchery returned to the academy while Bai was sent to the eternal forest, ahead of the rest, to do his shifty business, as for the juniors, they arrived at the central field where they joined the contestants lining up for the the status test. The nervous atmosphere did not seem to affect the mood of Yunan and friends who were happily discussing about how they could start fighting level 2 nests to feed the glutton Drogon who has grown enough to fly but stillzes about on any head it findsfortable.

 Chapter 89: Graduation

    Chapter 89: Graduation


    The graduation exams started with the attribute check done through touching the same crystal ball that was used in the enrollment day. Yunan took his turn first, he scored 13 points over all four attributes. Since luck was not recognized as an attribute when the crystal ball was made it did not detect the luck value that Yunan had.


    The rest of the kids all scored 12 points across-the-board. The slight difference would be either thanks to the point nk proximity to the spirit heart or just luck or maybe both,no one knows. Instructor Mark remembered seeing Yunan at the enrollment day since he was the ultra rare perfect all rounder, but the appearance of 3 others as well as their ages struck him hard enough his jaw almost unhinged itself to drop lower.


    As for Leol''s teacher, he was feeling like he just lost a gem because he did not pay any attention to the boy, even allowing such a seed to be brought up by another. As for director Joey, he just chalked it up to how weird Debauchery is and was adamant on not thinking about how it took only one month for thetest recruit Debauchery got their ws on to go from a wisdom primary to an all rounder, something like that should be written in all training manuals.


    The second part of the exam was to fight a peak level 2 teacher in a one on one fight, for evaluation, then if there was a party they can challenge the teachers to gain better benefits for their party from the guild. As for those who were good at wisdom they would have a chat with a teacher about the subject they are most familiar with. Well as to be expected, the level 2 teachers did notst much against the well trained Yunan and friends.


    The kids participated and won in every category that one can take the exam in, swords, daggers, shields, bows and crossbows, unarmed, and all the wisdom rted exams were aced, even strategy and formation were aced to a degree the examiners could just gape wide and just write down the maximum points possible.


    As for the party challenge the teachers thought 4 vs 4 was challenging enough but Lili out of pity told them to get at least 4 teacher for each of them, when they did not take her seriously, Reina just waltzed to the group of teachers and had all 4 of them down within 5 seconds, then she looked at the referee and said "it would not be even a challenge with less than 15 people so please arrange some"


    What drove director Joey to almost tear his hair from disbelief was not them taking on 15 teachers who were superior in rank, but the fact they had enough time to chat and change roles during the fight. The fight started with Leol with a tower shield and a short sword in each hand, Lili had twin short swords , Yunan had twin curved daggers and Reina had a bow and a quiver full of arrows.


    Leol bashed anyone who came close enough and thrust at those that kept their distance away. Lili just charged into the formation of the enemy giving Yunan the time to sneak behind them and deal with their healers. When the attackers who surrounded Leol and Lili tried to protect their healers, they were pelted by a rain of arrows. Yunan would call out any magic that was cast and warn the most likely target making the caster flustered enough to break their concentration and canceling the spell in some cases.


    After the first 5 were downed Yunan exchanged location with Reina and Leol did the same with Lili, this change in formation was so fast and smooth that the teachers barely had time to react before another 5 were down and another formation change urred, this time it was everyone swarming over thest 5 teachers and took them out.


    Perfect scores were not rare with well trained kids but not perfect scores in every category, that was something never seen or heard of before, add in the overwhelming performance that made the perfect scores feelcking and you have yourself a unique event that may never ur again. Since the kids were officially graduates of the adventurers academy, they were offered the usual contracts as well as the chance to enter Tartarus as soon as possible, but the kids declined on entering Tartarus so soon, however they took the time to register for an active party under training by Debauchery, and they chose the name ''Valyrians'' for themselves.


    It might be a bit corny or even pretentious to name the party after an extinct dragon that was revered and looked upon with respect and fear when it roamed the world, but hey this particr party actually had a Valyrian dragon and a lucky one at that, so whatever others thought about the name it was something only they had the justification to use.


    After the Valyrians officially graduated, they just ignored Debauchery and went to meet Yunan''s mother, sister Theresa, and pass her the good news, they did not forget to take with them the sweets that the sisters loved as well as transfer an anonymous donation to the orphanage from their newly opened and already full ounts.


    Today sister Theresa took it upon herself to make celebratory dinner for the kids in the back rooms of the orphanage where only sisters are usually allowed, but since the newly graduated Valyrians had brought so much sweets with them, there was no harm in letting them inside. The feast was not as frugal as one would expect from a sister struggling to keep an orphanage fed, since most of the ingredients were provided by the kids, Theresa did not hold back when making the best dishes she could make. The dishes full of love and happiness tasted heavenly.


    Although the kids did pretend to be full to bursting so that they would not make the sisters feel bad of embarrassed for not providing enough food, they ate again just after leaving the orphanage. Before Yunan said goodbye to his mother, he left her with a ring that had many monster cores and some jewelry for her to use when in a desperate situation. After returning to their room, the kids spent theirst night there in a very good mood, they packed the little things they had in the room before going to sleep, if they were lucky, Fae would not burst inside the room before sunrise.

 Chapter 90: In the eternal forest

    Chapter 90: In the eternal forest


    Luck was not on the side of the newly created party since Fae was already herding the kids outside of their old room by dawn with sleep still hanging to their eyelids as they nodded a few times before meeting with the rest of Debauchery.


    "Is this pay back for ignoring the lot of you yesterday? I had a mother to please, I think you already know you are in second ce when ites to mom right ?". Dustan had a victorious smile on his face "this is for not inviting us to such a delicious meal, how could you be so ungrateful!". "Wait, did you steal from an orphanage" asked Reina incredulously. "This is Debauchery we are talking about, of course they did steal from the orphanage" confirmed Leol. Fae rushed to defend Debauchery "hey!, we are not thieves, we just made a trade, we took the food and left behind enough gold for them to feast for a year", "did you ask first?", "No!" "Thieves!"


    The bickering did notst long after, thanks to Bai dering that he was the thief and if one is unhappy about it they can fight him, the Valyrians just shrugged it off and said "telling the truth is better than lying" and ended it at that. Fighting a cranky Bai before dawn was not a healthy option.


    The destination for today was the eternal forest, home of the beasts and elves, a perfect training grounds for level 2 and 3, as well as a good feeding ground for Drogon thanks to the huge number of nests in the area, Fae teleported the group under the world tree, and made the arrangements allowing the kids to hunt and train in the forest as well as allow Debauchery to roam freely in search of the cult.


    By noon everything was ready, and the first lesson was started "ranging and hunting in the forest" it worked like one would expect from Debauchery, Lucian would teach the kids about how identify tracks and traps, finding frequented paths, recognising the beasts by trail and what they leave behind. Meanwhile Dustan and Balin are to ambush the kids and run away with gueri tactics, While Leader and Fae were to use magic to confuse the kids or lead them to traps or ''encounters'' as Leader named it.


    As for Bai he was infiltrating theb that the cult operated, he took the easy route of inserting himself into the memories of every person in thatb from the guards to the scientists, and enjoyed the best treatment as well as all the information they could possibly give him. The way Bai read memories was like a search engine looking for a keyword. He can read an article but might not understand it, so he got the scientists to teach him about all their findings. This helped him sort out and understand the memories he got and make sense of them. He also got more information about how the cult worked and how information was on a need to know basis, if a region was lost one day, no other regions would know about it, maybe with the exception of the higher ups in the central bases.


    After that he nted himself in the memories of the transport team and sent himself to the central base that was responsible for the eternal forest, it was a global district responsible for all the scientists and technology recovery from the old era, here he sneaked about and found a list of sites and their findings. Bai then manipted the officers in there to send him all reports and notify him about any new uncoveredboratories and the technology inside of them.


    This special base was connected to the highest authority in the cult directly but they had to wait for the cult to contact them when there was a report to be made or something that requires the attention of the higher ups. Bai then returned to Debauchery while waiting to be notified about the link with cult arriving at the science base.


    The first month of training without Bai was mostly about scouting and identification of the world around them, as well keep a part of their brains focused on danger detection, with the current attributes the kids had, it was hard to keep vignce at all times but it was beaten into them by the unpredictable attacks from Balin and Dustan, they did not care about time or what the kids were doing, even the most embarrassing times were not safe from the duo.


    The Valyrians who barely left each other before, were now sticking together no matter what they were doing, from drawing water from a spring to shitting and pissing under guard. As for the innate vignce they had learned, it only manifested during sleep time, since the kids were being consciously vignt any other time. The kids also learned the basic scouting techniques Lucian had and were able to locate nests on their own to either hunt or leave alone.


    The second month was mostly about fighting level 2 and level 3 monsters, as well as training Drogon into a creating a telepathic voice of his own tomunicate with the kids, and that took feeding him a dozen level 2 nests before Drogon was big enough to project his voice into Yunan''s head, the first words it said were "hungry, food". And after eating his meal he told Yunan "strong monster, strong Drogon". Drogon also learned how to control the output of his mes, he went from filling a room into small precision fire balls that hurts only one target, it also learned flight and spotting for his group helping them avoid those nasty ambushes.


    On the third month, the kids were tasked to hide away from Balin and Dustan and take them on wild goose chase while staying out of their sight, they learned quickly how to fake tracks and hide their own but the hiding was a bit too much for them, and that is when Bai made a neededeback. For the first time the kids thought that having Bai around was very nice and they made sure to suck up to Bai for all his experience and expertise.

 Chapter 91: A celebration

    Chapter 91: A celebration


    One week after Bai returned to Debauchery, Yunan, Reina, Leol and Lili sessfully lost their hunters Balin and Dustan for an entire morning, it seems Bai was so good at the shifty stuff, he was very good at teaching it as well.


    In the next three months, the kids have fully solidified their position as level 2 adventurers, and were able to sessfully eradicate a level 2 nest with ease, as for the level 3 monsters, they could barely gang up on one and get away without injury. As for Drogon it has grown to the size of an eagle, with a two meter wingspan and a sleek body along with a prehensile tail that looked sharp enough to cleave through flesh. The ck scales with the scarlet red patterns on them were so lustrous and shining they looked like rubies iid within obsidian.


    That evening Yunan used his ck Fate to check on the status of his friends and was happy to announce that everyone had finally reached the mark of 15 points in all attributes. This prompted a call to celebration by Debauchery who were now getting bored enough to take any excuse as validation for having fun, leading both seniors and juniors to Damascus to have as much fun as they could.


    As to be expected from someone who spent more than six months in a forest doing nothing but training, they were refused service in every establishment they tried, well all but the bath house, where they got to clean up and change into clothes more appropriate for the season. Debauchery and the youngsters had what you might call a splurging fest, they had ordered enough food for a hundred people including drinks and any other services avable for purchase.


    And once the alcohol levels reached the first threshold, the feast had be a carnival or a miniature circus, with games like how high can you toss the dwarf, or how long can you spin the orc on his head, there were contests like how much can you drink while upside down, or how much dragon me can you handle, and things started getting out of control when the alcohol levels reached the need for physical contact. Reina was exclusively imed by Leader and Fae leaving behind Lucian to be the victim of vigorous molestation.


    Bite the ears and step on the tails, singe the furs and drown the wails, was a the gentle way to exin what Lucian went through along the night. The kids had been hurting very bad fromughing at the antiques Debauchery managed toe up with under the influence of alcoholic beverages.


    When it was time to sleep, it fell to Yunan and Leol to clean up and set up the bedding while Lili tried and failed to extract Reina from the hugs and cuddles of Leader and Fae and eventually managed to get herself squeezed in a passionate hug by leader who beganining about the pranks her "daddy" put her through, along with her friends, andmented the fact that he has not contacted her for six long months iming her daddy dearest had found a cuter daughter and forgotten about her.


    That night and for the first time ever, Yunan and Leol were treated to the drunken rantings of women, and they came up with only one description, so many feelings, contrary to the drunken rantings they heard from the men While putting them in bed, all love and friendship and talks about how much they appreciated each other, while the women had a totally different rantings, how they feel about this and that, and howe the others were not having the same feeling, or how their hints are misunderstood and neglected.


    By the time the group fell asleep it was almost dawn, only after some long satisfying sleep, did they wake up. Nobody left his bed though, even the will to move was sapped out of them, so they justid there and exchanged quips and jokes all day long, when lunch was served, the hungry bunch did not even budge no matter how their stomachs grumble demanding to be filled, they just left the food there for Drogon to eat since Yunan did not even feel like extracting a monster corpse from his storage ring.


    They finally moved again when dinner was served, Debauchery started to make a n for how to deal with the cult they had been trying to dismantle recently, and the first order of business was to make sure the pope did not lose anyone among the captives, since there were so many spies that can get away with a moment of negligence. Leader teleported the pope to their location, and he arrived braiding the locks of a cute little girl no older than 3 years on hisp, who seemed more interested in the kane the old pope kept by his side than the sudden change of scenery or the strangers eyeing her with greed.


    "I can exin" were the first andst words the pope made before he was jumped by Leader and Lili and pummeled to the ground yelling at the jealous girls "it''s not what you think, this is a misunderstanding" and a few other excuses, meanwhile the cute little girl that came with the old pope was safe and sound in the hands of Fae and Balin who were very interested in the sticity of her cheeks as they pulled on them repeatedly while ying with her like the newest toy in their doll houses.


    The little girl shifted her interests from Balin''s beard to Fae''s ears and then to Reina''s tails and Lucian''s ears, she only remembered the old man who was braiding her hair when Bai started to finish what the old man did.


    The kindly old pope was rtively fine since the girls didn''t really want to hurt him but he still felt their wrath, although he was upset, he still had his kindly smile, well until he heard the genocide that Debauchery nned on his captives to eliminate risks, the old pope could only make his opinion known about that kind of inhumane idea, but did not refuse Debaucherypletely.

 Chapter 92: Discarding

    Chapter 92: Discarding


    The old kindly pope was sent on his way after he heard the ns of Debauchery. When he was returned back to the location he left from, his assistants did not bat an eyelid at the apparent abuse he suffered from, especially with the little girl who went with him, was already sleeping from exhaustion, with red cheeks and a smile on her face.


    One of the assistant nuns in the office took the little girl away and only one stayed inside with the old pope, he solemnly said to her "they want to kill them all", "shame, they would have been useful, age limit?" She answered the old man without much sympathy. "All older than four, the rest of the kids must be sent into different orphanages across the continent, very troublesome indeed". "Not much of a loss though, it would have taken decades to make them into the elites we require. The council is waiting for you to pitch their old talk again, maybe you should ''enlighten'' them a bit". The assistant nun left to pass on the extermination order as if she was ordering a meal, withplete emotional detachment from the horrifying order.


    The kindly old pope took a moment to cast a heal on himself and left his office through the back door into a chamber that had nothing but a table and chairs as old as the faces popting the room.The pope took his own seat and gestured to the old ones beside him to talk.


    "Markus what is the meaning of this, why are you leaving behind the legacy you swore to fulfill. You are allowing the next generation to die while you watch and use our own resources to destroy the foundations our forefathers built with their sweat and blood. You have gone too far this time". The old women on the opposite side of the table was almost frothing with rage.


    "You sound just like them old hag, your forefathers that, they were always blinded and idiotically followed the oaths they swore, what i swore on, i am making good on, only my way is something you can only hope to grasp when told about. I love your devotion to the cause but there are times when blind devotion is a hindrance that will slow down the whole system."


    Another old man spoke up. "Then why are you letting them dismantle the cult that took thousands of years to be built to its current glory", " WHAT GLORY?!" old pope markus mmed his fist on the table making every single person in the room shudder and close their mouths.


    "Do you call hiding in the shadows glory? Or maybe you think this church we use as a front is our glory? This cult we are in was never meant to be a cult, it was a bunch of elites seeking the empowerment of mankind, to elevate them from the weakness they were mired in, it is in the records that we swear by, but how did it turn into a cult? The bloody devoted fanatics kept outdoing each other and now look at it, the church that was built as a front is the most sessful in fulfilling the dreams of our ancestors than the bloody organisation they built."


    " I will let my daughter dismantle the very cult she was born to lead, because it no longer serves the same purpose our forefathers dreamed about, there is no need for a stuck up cult lurking in the shadows trying to cleanse a continent from something our forefathers never looked at with fear and hatred. If you want to be such fanatics then focus on the original goal and not on the shortcuts to take to reach it."


    The old hag had contempt dripping from her voice "Our ancestors sought for the domination of mankind on thisnd, how can we do that with other races fighting us for power on it, the way you are leading us is just a dead end, why not just end it all, we have enough firepower to do so". The old pope Markus was unfazed " do you have a way to kill everything on this but humans? Unless you have it, then shut up and listen"


    "The council always chooses the next council from the youngest generation and they choose the leader based on an interview with the council, that is why i sit here and you sit on thest chair, you are inflexible, unchanging, you listen to nothing that does not suit your own ideals, the only reason you sit on this council so that we could not forget the goal we were entrusted with the betterment of mankind and not the annihtion of every living being on this"


    "That is why i am letting my daughter kill the body that has decayed long ago, we have a power that only humans can harness, something that all other races can generate but only humans can harness and you still think of burning the world with mana bombs, not even the hearts, deities that are worshiped can use the power of faith, but we can, we have used that power for thousands of years, we live longer, cast magic and do everything the other races need Tartarus to do, why do we need to use such a fragile thing like mana when we have a power that can ovee all its shorings? Forget about world domination for a moment and think about the amount of power the humans can wield just by spreading faith and healing the injured"


    "This is why I sit on this chair, because i have the ability to change my path based on a point of view from an innocent child and still fulfill the oaths i took. Let the cancerous cult die. Let the church of light lead humans to ruling over the world through faith and innocence, as for the other races? They have never done harm to humans, only we mankind that hurt each other, remember that case from half a year ago? The nobles from 13 human countries including royalty have been working with goblins, the fucking goblins, to have fun and satisfy their perversion, in all of history, not even the beasts did that".


    "Hear me my brethren and sisters, we are old and failing, the power of faith is no longer enough for us to survive much longer, focus on our mission, let the church of light, love andpassion lead the humans to a better future where they no longer need to feel inferior because we started the apocalypse too many times, let the light cleanse the dirty past, for only innocence is the true path to cleanse the darkness".


    Pope Markus stood up and left the chamber leaving behind the council to bicker about what to do and how to do it, he felt tired today, he really hated Yunan and his friends for nting the seed of innocence in his brain, well the path was always the same, sometimes amp on the shoulder of a dark path is worth more than life itself.


    Author note: I apologize for the irregr chapterstely, due to some overpowering circumstances, but all will be in order soon. I will also take this opportunity to announce that I will reduce the chapter output from 18 to 14 per week including the bonus chapters starting from the 3rd of September 2018. This change is in order to save up some chapters for the future just in case of something happening. I hope you understand, thanks, and continue to enjoy this novel of mine

 Chapter 93: Tournament (1)

    Chapter 93: Tournament (1)


    Back in the eternal forest, and for the next six months, the Valyrians focused on clearing out level 3 nests as well as strengthen their grasp on the various techniques and knowledge they learned from Debauchery, so far, they have reached the epitome in sneaking and hiding, tracking and scouting, andstly appraising. ording to Debauchery they had reached what would be expected from level 5 adventurers.


    The Valyrians also started to gain the ability to control mana, at best creating a small blue bead and keep it up for a few minutes, as for creating geometric shapes and magical constructs, they were still too far from that. And they have started to specialise in different roles. Leol was leaning into leadership and utility, Lili was adopting more offensive roles, Reina took the passive and ranged role, while Yunan was still not leaning onto any role, he liked to roam and just do everything he could do.


    On the other hand, Bai and Lucian have been busy infiltrating the Supreme cult which have been very discretetely, sometimes even haltingmunications for prolonged periods of time, making the job a bit harder to do, even so they managed to pinpoint the central bases within 3 regions and find all their secrets and links to the highestmand, they even got a lead about a higher level personality, that was doing most of the contact between the central regional base and themand center.


    After spending a full year in the eternal forest, the valyrian looked like savages, and Debauchery had been degraded into pillow fights to get any amount of fun, thus it was decided it was time for a haircut, a hot spring and some clean cloths, as soon as Bai and Lucian came back to discuss their findings with Leader the whole group moved post hate to the fun awaiting them.


    The old barber still had his smile on his lips as he weed the party inside and toyed with then inside his shop to their heart''s content. They also heard about a tournament the guild has organised recently for all with stats of twenty or less, with quite the rich pool of prizes and even some rare books up for the first 4 ces, Dustan had a glint in his eyes that Yunan had not seen in a very long time, it meant it was time for bankrupting some bettingpanies.


    After leaving the barber shop for the city of Damascus to one of the most luxurious hot spring hotels in the continent of Burkan, under the leadership of reverend Dustan, the ritual of luck and fortune has been performed to great sess, followed by a convention about how to maximize the benefits gained during the tournament.


    Dustan, Balin and Bai made their ns about how much to bet on whom, while soaking in the bath, while the valyrian were deciding on how topete in the tournament because fighting each other was meaningless since they knew each other too well. They finally settled on rock paper scissors as a respectable means to settle their matches if they ever get matched with each other.


    After the first good night sleep in months, the kids left the hotel and went to register for the tournament with Lucian in tow. It did not go as smoothly as they expected at all. the reception was full of armed bulky men and women from all kinds of sizes with all kinds of weapons. When the naive voice of Reina was heard as she asked a guard where they should register for the tournament, the whole room blew up intoughter and ridicule at the naive kids and their guardian dog.


    Theughter did notst when Lili stomped on a poor guy who walked up to her trying to send her away but strangely ended up with her boot on his face, when his friends rushed over to help their downed buddy, it took only a few punches and all of them were on the ground faces first and noses broken and bleeding.


    The clerk behind the counter smelled blood on the water and hurried to invite the Valyrian to a private room toplete the registration process and the attributes check. The clerk was in disbelief as she wrote down the perfect all rounders score of 19, for each of the kids. Leol opted to pay the clerk a few gold coins to keep this a secret from those on the reception room. After leaving the guild branch the kids returned to the hotel and got themselves massage therapists and sone luxury skin and nail care, Debauchery was paying so they might as well enjoy.


    As for Drogon it was now big enough to stand shoulder and shoulder with a tibetan mastiff, almost big enough to ride, it was now hunting on its own, with a restriction of never using its fiery breath while hunting, as of now Drogon could take on a level 4 nest by himself, it was still too young to speak on its own without using telepathy, but it had been training hard under the guidance of Asterion, the heart of the beasts.


    This point of time was very peaceful for Debauchery, they had not been fighting in more than a year and their infiltrating business was showing its fruits slowly and steadily, making their job easier in the future toe, so for now, they choose to rx and enjoy the sweet taste of the carefree life of kings and rich men.


    Meanwhile the council of the church hase to a conclusion on how to separate from the cultpletely and limit their losses, they would split the cult into two factions, one for human supremacy and the other for human superiority. Those in human supremacy are to be left in the cult while those who believe in human superiority will be transferred to work in tandem with the legion of nuns and priests, protecting them and starting a new phase in the expansion of the church, introducing the power of fate to the masses.


    ---- quest update ----


    The quest for top 50 is still ongoing, vote with power stones and we will have a +10 chapters added into the bonus pool.


    The origin of the name quest is still avable, every origin found will grant +1 chapter to the bonus pool, so justment on thetest chapter about any ideas you have on the names i used, all names are in y, including cast, location, animals, tools and what not. Enjoy.

 Chapter 94: Tournament (2)

    Chapter 94: Tournament (2)


    The tournament began by the start of the new week, the branches of the guild opened a portal to an enormous arena with hundreds of fighting rings organized into tens in each cluster. The sheer amount of contestants was overwhelmingly huge as well as the number of people who came to watch the event.


    The Valyrians were put in different brackets to eliminate the possibility of cheating or boosting each other. The tournament started with a simple 3 minutes, one match elimination, effectively halving the the amount of contestants, this style of matching continued until there were only 10 thousand contestants left, it took all morning just to achieve that much.


    The 10 thousand participants left were separated into 16 brackets, each with 64 groups, with each group having 10 fighters and only the one with the most points can qualify to the next round from each group, and ending the matches for the first day.


    The second day, would contain the next round and pit the 64 winners from the groups will fight against each other in each bracket with 10 minutes single elimination matches, ending the day with only 16 contestants left.


    The third day was a king of th hill style matches for those who feel they can defeat one of the top 16. With 16 different rings, with one contestant on each, anyone who made it to the top 1000 or have a status with 3 attributes having 19 points in them, could challenge any of the top 16 and rece them of they win, at the end of the day, the 16 who were standing on their respective rings qualify for the finals.


    The were rules like only one challenge per person, and allowing the king of the hill to rest between each fight for 5 minutes, or neglect that depending on their current state. Although thest matches were trying for the Valyrians they all made it to the top 16 without injury.


    And as to be expected the thousand ferocious fighters swarmed to challenge the four of them like a cloud of mosquitoes, but that was it, if one only has one attribute with 20 points and fights against an all rounder with 19 points over all, it will be a close fight, but if those with only 3 attributes at 19 challenge an all rounder they had a better chance at winning. Well, that applies on those that are ordinary, those trained under Debauchery can fight and even snatch a win from someone who are more than 5 point higher than them, but the struggle would be fierce and desperate.


    The Valyrians had a very long day cut for them, and luck, made such a great contribution in their fights allowing them to end most fights easily. For example All Reina had to do was look as cute as she could and flip the charging attacker out of the ring making it look he tripped and had a ring out, some actually did trip and some just thought she was too cute to be harmed and gave up their matches. Lili on the other hand would just grasp who ever climbed up the ring into a choke hold, or painful joint lock, and her challenger thinned out greatly after the first 5 were out cold under her hands.


    Leol and Yunan had no pity or respite from their attackers who came at them with vengeance and fury, Leol would just use the dirtiest of hits on every attacker, not a single honest punch or kicks, every attack he issued was meant to torment the opponent, although the sheer number of those he had to deal with almost tired him out, he still yed his hands correctly and took his resting time while taking his time making his opponents feel wretched and crippled by the time the 10 minutes were over.


    Yunan''s ring was the most bizarre to behold, challengers would have injuries re up and wounds open, they would trip over thin air and slip over nothingness, some were in pain before reaching the ring, some were knocked out by other challengers, one particrly tenacious fighter had the worst luck out of all of them, when his number was called someone puked on him, as he was passing through the crowd, while trying to remove his contaminated shirt he dislocated a shoulder, a muscled giant that made Dustan look tiny happened to pass out from a badly healed injury to the head and basically crashed on the guy, he tripped on the first step to climb the ring and broke his nose, by the time he made it up to the ring the referee was counting down on the win by no show for Yunan.


    The man tried to take a stance, when the referee gave the start signal, he slipped and dislocated his good shoulder and was down on the ring looking up with tears welling in his eyes asking the heavens the same question everyone who challenged Yunan asked "why me?". The number that actually got to fight Yunan was not even a tenth of the contestants that came to challenge him, most were forfeits or no shows, those few who did fight him all had the same question in their heads: "how did i forget to use my techniques?".


    The real winners of those matches were not the kids but the trio of greed: Dustan, Balin and Bai. They simply emptied the coffers of the bettingpanies by only betting on the odd four while betting high amounts on specific details thatted for them fortunes uncountable. Eventually the bettingpanies had to stop the bets on those four due to the abnormal urrences happening around them especially Yunan who the trio had bet on win conditions like the challenger would trip and knock himself out, or someone would simply forfeits due to old wounds or things like that.


    Back at the hot spring hotel, Yunan and friends were looking at the curious case of three gentlemen in bliss with satisfied smiles draw on their faces, smiles the likes of which one can only have a few in each lifetime, the three meny down floating on the hot pool and watched the stars as if they had finally achieved the dream of their lives. ording to Leader, the Trio had bankrupted more than 50 agencies today by betting on the challenger fights, they were also banned in 10 of them because they went into the vaults and took their money because the manager said they did not want to pay.

 Chapter 95: Tournament (end)

    Chapter 95: Tournament (end)


    The fifth day of the tournament was a simple bracket were the winner in a set of 3 matches advances to the next round, then the quarter finals. the day ended with the Valyrians upying the four spots to the semifinals after a good struggle.


    Reina had to sacrifice the use of one of her arms during a grapple to bait her opponent into rxing and taking a precision strike into the back of the neck and falling unconscious. The Valyrians swarmed her ring after the fight was over to readjust the dislocated bones and refused to give her up for healing, why would they when Leader could literally grow Reina new arms of the need arises.


    As for her opponent, well, he felt to much murderous intent pointed at him as he walked his way from the ring and into the waiting room. how dare he be so savage to the delicate little girl who can only get healed by a specific healer, and that made the public feel like crippling him for it. They conveniently forgot this was a fighting tournament. As someone said before "cuteness is the only truth of the world, the only thing worth dying for"


    Leol met a magic user that targeted him with beginner spells, small things that would merely inconveniences the opponent but as the spells started stacking it got harder and harder to get to her, she cast things like slippery ground, ice cover, and mud marshes near her, if you get close, you would slipp on the ground, glide on the ice and get mired in the mud a few steps away from her, just for her to pelt you with her ice spear and fire ball till you get heavily injured or forfeit.


    Leol did not approach her since he could see changes to the ring around her, but he used his swords to attack and destroy the ring making fist sized stones while dodging whatever attacking spell was aimed at him, when he thought he had enough stones, he started throwing the rocks at the woman targeting her limbs and trying to get her to move into her own traps. The girl refused to budge and her shield could not take the force of Leol''s thrown stones. When Leol saw her get flustered and lose herposure, he ended the fight with a well aimed rock to the forehead.


    Lili had an epic fight with her opponent, started by using swords, then using daggers, then their bare fists, the guy had a good defense and the thickest skin, because no matter how much Lili tried to go for the pain pressure points, they had no effect. The best thing Lili was able to do was kite the guy around the ring until he lost his patience and charged at her giving her just the smallest of opportunities to try one of those wrestling moves Balin was so proud of and ended up throwing the guy outside the ring.


    As for Yunan, he met another lucky guy since he was mostly unaffected by the bad luck he incurred by attacking Yunan, mostly, his spells would miss by inches or be dyed just long enough for Yunan to dodge out of the way, he would make a small mistake costing him thebo he had been working hard to make, these little things drove the lucky guy to insanity. These were the things that happened to others who fought him, did his luck just ran out?


    Yunan did not miss the opportunity to trick the forlorn man by using his newly mastered mana maniption to cast a mana ball as he closed in with sword in one hand and spell in the other. His opponent thought it was a false charge and the spell was the real attack prompting him to cast a shield that was dyed just enough for Yunan to shoulder the man into the floor and point the sword at his eye.That was how the fifth day of the tournament ended.


    The sixth day was used for ssifying the top ten, the top 100 and the top 1000 contestants. There were many challenges and changes in the rankings along the day, and ended with some significant and epic fights in the top 100 category. As for Debauchery, they found new gambling sites and casinos who still had betting open on the kids and made enough profits they were booted out for winning too much.


    The seventh day was by far the most boring day in the whole tournament by far, how else would you expect it to be when the most important matches were solved by the best of 10 matches in rock paper scissors? Debauchery did not bet on those matches simply because there was no need to, they have been with the kids long enough to know, Leol was the smartest, too smart for rock paper scissors and would take forth ce, the second and third would depend on how badly Yunan''s opponent lost to him. If Reina lost by 6-0 she would win against Lili all year round, if Lili lost 6-0 she would lose to Reina within a thin margin of two points then there was no point in guessing since it came to luck at that point.


    As for Yunan there was no need to even think about it, he would win with the same hand 6 times in a row if he felt like being ruthless, thankfully he did not and ended his sets with something like 6-4 keeping the suspense for Debauchery to enjoy. The board of organizers had a fit at the odd and anticlimactic end to the tournament, so they approached the Valyrians to ask them to redo the matches with actual fighting, they ended up having a battle royale for the semi finals and finals, it was spectacr to watch, as the four youngsters used everything they learned across one and a half years under Debauchery to over power opponents they knew like the back of their hands.


    There were weapon swaps, weapon steals, grappling moves at weird angles, punches that hit the wrong person, body ms that broke off two people in the middle of trying to choke hold each other, they would attack on any opportunities, trying to help me out? Here have a punch as thank you. It was mayhem, beautiful mayhem that was more than anyone would expect from kids their age.


    The Valyrians disyed all kinds of skill, that most of the contestants never even saw before let alone understand. The battle came to an unexpected end when Leol tripped with Reina on his back while hounding Lili and ended up driving the three of them out of bounds.

 Chapter 96: Prizes and hunt

    Chapter 96: Prizes and hunt


    The ultimate Lucky ending after the ultimate battle royale cast a huge silence on the cheering crowd,ter on it turned into endlessughter, followed by pping and cheering for the great show the Valyrians had put on.


    The awarding ceremony was forgone by Yunan and the rest, they had taken a week long vacation and were now ready for their first trial on conquering a level 3 nest, thus the juniors choose to just ept the rewards rapidly before heading back to meet up with Debauchery and continue onwards with their training.


    The prizes were some level 5 items with decent enchantments; the kind that Balin would scrounge up in a few minutes because he is toozy to repair low level armament; and some decent books that the Valyrians deemed useful. Yunan as the first ce got himself a skill book called armament, it uses mana to create any weapon or armour of any shape the user wants, as long as the user has mana left, the armament repairs itself and with frequent use, the armament would use less mana for stronger arms. The armament does not leech mana actively if there is no damage done to it and it could be used as an extrayer of defense by coating the current armes the user has to add defence or offence depending on how it is used.


    Reina, Leol and Lili got themselves a spell called mend, its a healing type of spell that works over a period of time, it uses only a bit of mana from the user to stimte the healing of wounds and relies mostly on the energy of the recipient. As there was no one in third and fourth ces, those rewards were not given out.


    With receipts in their hands they went to the guild branch and added those books into the list the guild had to provide for them when they entered Tartarus. After that, they met up with Debauchery who were adamant on splurging the money they just hot on shopping, this time they decided not to do the lucky ritual on casedy luckbeled them as taking toorge of an advantage when they did not need to.


    The shopping spree was mostly for new clothes and refilling Balins stock on anything rted to forging, as for the kids they just enjoyed the various types of sweets and candy and did not buy anything, they already had level 10 gear and were nning on making Balin teach them forging as promised. And they would make their own gear from then on.


    That night the kids finally understood what it means to live like kings and why Debauchery always liked more money. Back in the hot spring hotel, Debauchery had hired a whole band of entertainers and servants, in a disy of how to spend the money correctly. There were dancers, actors doing a y, a puppet show, maids bringing in all kinds of delicacies, maids feeding them the delicacies, servants massaging their shoulder, servants massaging their feet, there was a singer, things that the kids didn''t even knew possible.


    The biggest lesson the kids learned that night was that money can make people do anything to get their hands on it, even Reina who was a royalty did not get treated like that in her own pce back at the holy sun inds.


    In the morning, Debauchery and the Valyrians returned to the eternal forest and started on conquering the level 3 nest they had chosen for the right pf passage. The nest was home to many quadrates, mostly in the shape of boars or bovine, or a mix of the two.


    Using the gueri tactics they had honed for a year the youngsters managed to reach the heart of the nest, it was what you expect a boars nest to be, shallow hole with leaves and under brush as padding, used for raising the babies, while most of the members of the herd stayed out in the open.


    It took 3 days and 2 nights of continued fighting before the nest was almost empty and only the boss and a handful of females were left behind, the females never left the nest even when the boss decided to hubt the little trouble makers itself but to its dismay the Valyrians had be quite good at hiding.


    After confirming that the females in the nest will not be part of the boss battle, it was time for the first level 4 fight for the Valyrians. The kids chose the safe strategy and went with 2 archers and a damage dealer and a shield, with ns on rotating the shield between them in case of a long fight. But they were a bit off the mark with that assumption.


    The boss, a mix of a bull and a hog, it had the head of a bull with pointed horns and tusks out of its mouth, it had the body of a bull with a boar''s hump and stumpy legs. It didn''t pay attention to Leol who tried his best to taunt it but it just kept watching Yunan even though it was getting hit by arrows continuously. When it''s back was almost to the archers it charged at Yunan like train, Yunan side stepped and the boss hit its head on a tree, knocking it down and stunning itself for a moment.


    Yunan took the chance to aim his short swords and sh at the back of its hind legs sessfully cutting of the tendons at the back of the knees, rendering the boss incapacitated, and only able to wave its head around unable to support its body weight on its two front legs only, and that was the end of the fight, with the boss having its legs underneath its body, the best it could do was rollover to prevent attacks revealing its soft belly for the arrows and bolting from Leol, Reina and Lili, who were now just using the boss for target practice. The boss diedter on from severe blood loss from all the attacks it sustained.


    While the three were target practicing on the boss, Yunan made his way into the nest and was able to kill of the females who were only huge in stature but cowered in the back of the nest and watched their sisters die under Yunan''s sword, until their turns came and they died without moving a muscle.


    Inside the nest were 5 piglets that looked like newborns, they would sell for a good sum of money. The corpses were Drogon to feed on and the piglets were taken by Dustan to be sold, it would make the kids feel bad if they fought hard for three days only to feed the bottomless pit they called a pet. As for the rest they headed to the lonely mountain to start their practice in the arts of forging. Lucian had taught the kids all they needed to know about the scouting and ranging in the outside world, all that is left is Tartarus, Bai had taught them how to hide and detect as well as make traps. After they learn smithing it was time to head into Tartarus for the first time.

 Chapter 97: Growth

    Chapter 97: Growth


    When Dustan rejoined Debauchery and the Valyrians under the lonely mountain, he found only Yunan was taking the smithing lessons seriously, as for the other three they choose to just watch from a safe distance, they made the excuse that Balin only promised to teach Yunan and they did not want to intrude.


    In reality, the kids were not so keen on learning the patience required to perform the trade, all except for Yunan who still had the old thought of learning everything he possibly could. As a result, the Valyrians were split up for the first time. Yunan was under the tutge of the master Dwarves led by Mina and Balin while Reina, Leol and Lili were taken out to the battlefield with Debauchery, who have decided to start working on the branches of the cult they had discovered in thest year or so.


    Debauchery left the science and technology department intact and merely used their resources to find more bases in the eternal forest region. They let the kids hunt around while they were cleansing whole bases after letting Bai read their minds one by one.


    Bai had be an expert in searching the memories of the cult members, since they were taught the same way and respond to the same triggers, he could now iste all the relevant memories and take them then move to the next person.


    It took almost 4 months to clean every base in the eternal forest mainly because there were so many of them and they hid very well in the dens forest. Around that time Bai was informed that a member of the highest order is making an appearance to request some technology from the science department.


    During that time, the growth of the Valyrians had stunted after reaching the 20th point in each attribute, they had failed to develop enough to hunt level 4 monsters while losing their edge against level 3 monsters thanks to Yunan being missing from the formation.


    Under the lonely mountain, Yunan was advancing both his smithing skills as well as fighting skills, under the tutge of the dwarfs he toiled besides the furnace until he made something of better quality than those fromst week, and then learn the martial arts the dwarves had created around carrying a shield into battle, including to dual wield hammers or axes while providing protection with the shield on one''s back.


    Mina was heaving praise on Yunan as if he was her own son. Thanks to the effect of the spirit heart, the mental acuity of Yunan was still as sharp as when he started, even after 4 months of focus and hard work, therefore he was able to learn theplicated methods of the dwarves as well as any dwarf, and had evident and fast advancement in his works, currently he is able to reliably create level 2 arms and armour, something that would be apuded in any apprentice.


    Drogon was having the time of its life under the lonely mountain, he would receive all kinds of meats and cores as repayment for spewing out mes for the dwarves to relearn dragon forging techniques that were left untouched for 800 years. It was also taught a size reducing techniques and some other skills that were recorded in the book called "the draconic encyclopedia".


    Among those skills some were about how to change the size and control the heat intensity of the mes depending on the material that will be forged. Drogon had his own dedicated dwarven masters for his tutge, since the draconic encyclopedia was written hand in hand with dragons and dwarves, it was easy to learn most of the skills in it, except for some that were species specific. Otherwise the Valyrians proved itself to be a talented young dragon.


    As for Debauchery, they had their hands ful with capturing the VIP that was visiting the science department, mainly because as soon as Debauchery ambushed them, they dispersed like flies in every direction, costing Debauchery a week of tracking to find everyst one of them. Unfortunately the VIP escaped the hunt of Debauchery. And the information contained in the memories of the escorts were depressingly low.


    The escorts only ever saw a masked man they called lord heir since they were kids, they were taught to obey all his orders and to never question him, they also were not aware of the location where he lived or where did hee from, they only knew that he would show up when he needed something from the cult departments and they were to escort and protect him with their own lives. There was also the knowledge about another lord heir who had his own escort team and that the two would meet up sometime in one of their sorties causing this bit of knowledge about another heir to exist.


    Soon after the area where they held the escort hostages was flooded with search teams of high level adventurers, targeting Debauchery and the escorts, one of these teams was led by Debauchery to the captives to see what their orders were, and as expected the orders were execution. Debauchery did not miss out on the chance to get enough information about a military department and the locations of the bases where the adventurers came from.


    One very disturbing thing was found from one of the highest leveled adventurers Debauchery killed, they found out thanks to him there was a base in the 25th level made by the cult and only those who were recognised as higher than level 25 can use that base to recuperate and forgo going back to the surface. Many of those adventurers are marked as dead or disappeared by the guild since some have not returned to the surface for decades.


    After finding these pieces of information, an urgency to handle the cult was nagging on the back of their minds, therefore they decidedly returned to the lonely mountain and started discussing the matter and the new information with all members present toe up with a solution to this tumor they keep finding it bigger than they expected.

 Chapter 98: Complaints

    Chapter 98: Comints


    Today was the first meeting Debauchery had in more than four months with everyone sitting in the same room at the same time. Leader nodded to Bai to start exining their current predicament.


    Bai stood up and started narrating the events and spection that was formed recently. "We have two pieces of very bad news, the cult has its own bases in Tartarus, they have ones in levels, 10, 20 and 25, those are the ones we know of, second, there are people in the cult referred to as heirs, they hold a very important role, we assume they are the next generation of leaders the cult has nurtured and they are so scared of leaks about these heirs they have out a whole section of the eternal forest under search to get to who ever tried to attack the heir and even terminated the escorts that grew up with the heir."


    "We also know about a military department that is responsible for all the military action in the cult, we only know they have only ever done small scale clean up after the masters of the cult, but recently they are makingmunication with the science department and are looking for military grade technology, especially from the old era, indicating that they are on the move, or something is pushing them to act, it should not be us since they have ignored us no matter how many bases we destroy. We assume there is conflict within the decision makers and the recent movement of the military department is thanks to that. Therefore we have decided it is time to get back inside of Tartarus, if their troops are still inside the bases we can deal a crippling blow to the cult and dy a good deal of time"


    "We have notified the guild about how the adventurers of the cult hid inside Tartarus and how they are being smuggled outside while being considered dead or disappeared. As for the how long, we are going to raid the bases on the 20th and 25th levels before we return to the surface, as for the kids, you can follow us inside when you are 14 as in around 8 months from now, you have freedom to use that time as you wish."


    "We expect that you would at least reach peak level two or level 3 as soon as possible, we will stay here for one more month to guide you youngsters on anything you need to learn, if all goes well, we will be there on your first day in Tartarus." Bai sat down after making his report and n heard. Leader had an apologetic look on her face as she looked at the perplexed faces of the Valyrians.


    "We were supposed to train you kids until you reach 50 attributes points but we have been rather stuck in this mire with the cult, although we are not sure what will happen or how fast it will be, but we will do our best, so let''s hope for luck and we can meet sooner thanter" Leader dismissed the meeting, telling the youngsters they had a free day to do whatever they wished to, before an intense session of training for the next month to boost the kids as best as possible.


    The Valyrians took the opportunity to catch up with each other after the long separation, they choose the baths because it was their first day off in a while, they had missed the feeling of being able to rx and enjoy beingzy.


    The first order of business is to check everyone''s status andpare their harvests during the previous months and there it was, gasps and sharp air intakes sounded as one. " 2 points in 4 months? Did you guys go away toze about?" Asked Yunan in an aggrieved voice "are you a monster?" We fought day in and day out with level 3 monsters like there was no tomorrow" replied a hurt Lili.


    "What do you mean? I worked very hard for my 8 points, smithing at least two items per day and fight a horde of dwarven masters for the rest of the day, when they are not too frustrated by my good work, i get to sleep 6 hours, the spirit heart had very little to do with this". Continued Yunan in self defense.


    "And you think it''s easy fighting level 3 monsters? I can not say we would win against your dwarven horde but there must be something with the smithing lessons that boosted you up" Reina felt like she wasted herst few months.


    "Yeah, doing dual training and having the spirit heart inbination with your endless luck, is the only thing I see getting you to 30 points this fast" said Lili apanied by grunts and nods of acknowledgement. There was a temporary silence followed by heartyughter from all the four, no matter what happened to them during the time they separated, it was just adding to their banks of experience.


    When theughing voiced quieted down, Yunan made a sad statement. "The heart is dying, i think we only have 10 months left, we tried feeding it the mana bomb and another pure mana construct, but it did not even leech mana from them, i will need you to spend this time with me, we can get those 50 points if we add a bit of harshness to the regime, at least you can get thest ten points from it passively if you stay around me for the next year"


    "10? Are you trying to get a head start on us?" Growled Lili. " I think it''s time to see if your dwarven horde is as helish as level 3 monsters" said Leol, Reina also nodded her head "how bad could they get?". Yunan reyed deliberately" I have been fighting against level 5 dwarves ever since you left, sometimes even defending is not possible, and they swarm, how can level 3 monsterpare to that?" he took a moment to let that sink, "they said only by reaching level 5bat wise will I be able to make level 5 items and improve my skills enough to use the drops from level and higher"


    Soon theughter returned to the baths and the chat topics changed fromints about Training toints about the teachers,

 Chapter 99: Break down

    Chapter 99: Break down


    After the sole day of rxation, the training began again, this time, Debauchery went all out, they only had a month to train with the kids and that was too short to lead to any notable progress. Thus Debauchery startedbat practice at level 5 and let the kids adapt to it.


    The training focused on building up the attributes of the kids instead of any other aspects, taking advantage of thest energies of the spirit heart, and it worked marvelously. At the end of the month, Reina, Leol, and Lili all had gained 8 points in each attribute, while Yunan got himself 10, most likely Because Yunan struggled less and was already used to such hellish training that he was able to get more benefits than the other kids.


    As for Debauchery, Leader decided to tell Markus the pope about thetest movement of the cult and their bases in the dungeon, as well as heading to hunt those first.


    Upon return to the council, Markus called for a meeting, for the first time since he took over regency over the supreme cult a few centuries ago. What he found disturbing was that some members of the council took their time in joining the meeting. And so Markus started it without them. There were 3 who missed the first meeting called by the head of the council.


    During the council Markus listened to the reports about the changes he ordered. The power of faith was now widely introduced in the cathedrals and smaller churches, the number of nuns and priests training in the power of faith had grown by a factor of 15, prioritizing the sisters in the orphanages and those who work in hospitals and were in contact with people before introducing the new power.


    The Training of the knights that are protecting the smaller churches has been increased from level 3 to level 10, during this period members of the church''s legion were sent to provide protection while the old knights were sent back into the dungeon, again prioritizing those who are already in service to teach them holy magic.


    The cult has been split into two factions, only ten percent of the members are those who care about growing humanity instead of destroying the races, those have been added into the legion after memory checks and are now under training, the results are satisfactory.


    It was also found that the science department is not affiliated with either side, but are more inclined to work on their own discoveries instead of any political affiliation, they were left alone to work as they please, since they are not a threat to the church.


    As for the faction that is focusing on eradication of other races and intolerance, they have been left to their own devices, and they are making ratherrger movements than they should be doing. As for the church itself, there have been recruitment and processing of civilians who will be trained in the holy power of faith.


    The results from introducing the holy power of faith to the masses is beyond expectations, the masses have more faith and are generating bigger and bigger amounts of faith to be used by the church, the faith in the light has reached unprecedented levels and the masses are more inclined to be believers in the light.


    The council also have created centers for care for those victims of the monsters and the aristocracy, and there are many who came forward to testify against certain lords anddies, after confirmation of the allegations the church has denounced those lords anddies and offered protection from them, although the guild has not moved against the church or disyed any displeasure, the aristocracy are trying to push the guild into such action, it is believed that the extremist faction is behind those.


    At this point the threete members have arrived at the council room, they took their seats and listened to the rest of the reports.


    The legion as a faction only loyal to the head the council has been suffered infiltration and there is a major leak in the information, the leak was found to be under the employment of an heir, who have used despicable means to corrupt some sisters and enved them to his will, said heir have been very careful and did not show his face or figure during contact with the corrupted sisters.


    That drew a hint of a smile on the old hag''s face, something Markus did not miss. He then made his own report to the council.


    "An heir had tried to contact the science department for the creation of mana weapons, and bombs, during his visit to make the demand, he was ambushed by the guild, and his escorts have divulge that information, in a bout of stupidity, the heir sent senior agents from the military department up to level 25 to terminate his former escorts and cost us around 15 senior agents, some of them had been searched and from their memories, the guild knows about our reserve members and their bases inside the dungeon, the smuggling routes we used to get agents in and out of the dungeon, as well as half of the remaining agents that are working in the guild."


    "The leader of the guild had contacted me to ask for help from my legion to break my own bases, and kill my own men, now that even the guild is hunting for the cult we are done, this here is the point of separation, either join the church and be loyal or be destroyed with the cult, i was willing to hold back my legion from entering the conflict, but if you think that corrupting my daughter''s is something to smile about, then face my wrath, i have drawn away all the members of legion from the bases of the cult, and provided some of my daughters to help scan memories and kill anyone who refuses to be scanned before entering or leaving the dungeon"


    The ugly faces on the threeteers exined all there is to exin, they had left their heirs to do as they wish, and that has now drowned the cult in a hunt from the guild, not only were they exposed, the source of their strength was now cornered inside the dungeon and they could not even send messages to them. Not to mention that now even the legion of the head of the council was helping the guild because their own heirs acted out of ce.


    It could be salvaged if Debauchery was the only suppliers of information about the cult to the guild, but now that they had a more direct resource, they can just choke them, by denying them the ability to get inside the dungeon, and killing of everyone in the Dungeon affiliated with the cult they will effectively lose the fighting power they had spent centuries to build.


    It was over, their only escape now was to preside over the cult personally, and hide while doing damages to everyone who was against them, and now that the council has called for separation, the there beingte has already made it clear which camp they belonged to

 Chapter 100: Completed

    Chapter 100: Completed


    It is to be noted that the council was forbidden from producing heirs and teaching them about the way of the cult, those who the council referred to as heirs, were the possible substitutes for the council in case of an ident, these heirs were to be adopted like the case of Leader Mary, they are chosen based on their age when the council member who adopted them dies, the heirs were to be sent to experience the world so as to never be imprinted by the biases of the council.


    The first council was wise enough to see that the meaning of ensuring the superiority of humans changed by each generation, and that is why even though the cult grew so extremist, they have never done anything that would be noticed in their history, one might assume that the cult was biding its time and waiting, but that is wrong, the council has never seen fit to use the power of the cult since its inception, even the creation of the legion after the council took over the church was to form an army that is loyal to the head of the council, someone the previous council selects as the most suitable for leadership.


    The legion was not meant to be a force to keep the church safe but rather a force to keep the humanity and innocence and the good of mankind, and to limit the power of the wicked on the masses.


    Although the council always had that one extremist, it was meant to keep the council focused on the mission of the betterment of humans, and the faade known as the church was the perfect cover. However with the extremism spreading in the cult, the council also was infiltrated by these extremist who spared no effort on trying to prepare for a war the humans could never win.


    Markus pope was not the first leader who was corrupted by the idea of innocence and preserving it, that is what drove most leaders to create things like the legion and expand the role of the church while keeping the cult dormant. However, as the seed of corruption never dies but only spreads further and further, gnawing at the good inside, the council had also its own share of corruption. Thus was born the idea of grooming heirs to be council members and immersing them in the biases of the cult and their predecessor.


    Those heirs were epted in the council to keep them under leash, and prevent them from going too far, causing a race war were humans would exterminate each other because of an oath sworn eons ago. Nheless, those heirs still raised their own heirs in the same way, turning the job of the council from focusing fully on their mission on the betterment of mankind, to focus on keeping these entitled heirs from destroying the human race, and the world with it for whatever they thought was the way to human supremacy.


    The idea of splitting these two factions was mentioned too many times on the council, but it was never passed because the end result was harmful to mankind, and the church of light who was working so hard would be then branded as liars, and most importantly it will negate the work that has been done to assure the survival of mankind.


    But now that the council has split into two factions, those who worked with the church are now leading the hunt for those who worked with the cult. It really was like the cult was to be a weapon that you disy to make your enemies think a few times before starting any aggression, however it was now, the same tool that was used to break those, who were supposed to be protected by it, from the inside.


    The old hag and her twopanions were trying to leave when they were handled by the assistants of Markus to keep them from contacting their heirs and starting something outrageous. However that was a very bad decision, as the council were to soon find out, take away the queen from a wasp nest and they all be queens.


    Somewhere in Tartarus, three men were sitting behind a table with masks and badges that marked them as the heirs of the council of the supreme cult, they sat there looking at each other discussing a pieces of paper that was on the table, it read "mana bomb productionplete". One could hear the glee of sess in their voices, as well as the sinister edge to their hidden ns, and how close to their goals they were, as if they could touch it.


    Back at the council room, pope Markus and his fellows were showing sadness at the current situation, they were not given a choice when they joined the council, some did not even know how big it was of a mission, not until they were in their first council meeting, although they never liked how the other three bragged about how they should hold the first seats on the council because they were raised for it, but still they never thought they would be the generation to break the council that has stood united for eons.


    Markus was the first to break the silence, he gestured to his assistant "send word to Martin, the church is independent, the cult has been cut off, the council is broken, set up the scanners and kill them all, if Maryes by send her here". The assistant made some kind of magic circle and mumbled to herself, afterwards she nodded indicating that the message has been sent.


    The guild always had a connection to the council, just in case the council decided to do something that could not be regretted afterwards.


    Unde the lonely mountain, Bai had received the information about the creation of the mana bomb, which prompted him and Debauchery to head for the science department and wait for who ever came to get the bomb, and they did not have to wait for very long, a messenger of the heirs hase to pick it up and the scientists who made it, unaware he was taking with him Bai as one of the involved in the project.

 Chapter 101: A date

    Chapter 101: A date


    With Bai off to meet the heirs, Debauchery had dyed their trip to the dungeon and stayed longer under the lonely mountain to train with their students, after all, Bai estimates it will take a few weeks before he gets his hands on an heir and read his memory.


    The Valyrians on the other hand were trying to go outside the lonely mountain and have some fresh air and open space, both are in high demand under the mountain.


    Since Debauchery had nothing to do they agreed to escort the kids to Damascus for a tour and some free time, although they felt like it was not the best time for going out, they figured no one would target them. There was no one dumb enough to poke the nose of the lion.


    The tour started with an open air ssy restaurant, everyone ate their fill and drank and had some good quality time, and for once they did not cause the usual feeding frenzy they were so used to. By sunset, all the adults were too drunk to think and the Valyrians got stuck with dealing with them, the best they could do was to book a hotel and let the adults sleep peacefully, the kids joined the snoring chorus soon. It''s a wonder how one goes from wide awake to dreamnd in a blink of an eye, especially after a monumental amount of stress for a long time.


    Yunan was the only one wide awake, he was sitting on a balcony looking at the entangled sleeping bodies, if it was not for everyone being unique, you wouldn''t know which body parts belonged to whom. Under the full moon the memories of tale resurfaced in Yunans mind, he smiled and took out from his ring a very old book, it glistened under the moonlight.


    The ink sparkled turning the words into a living painting. the painting depicted a most beautiful woman and a cute little goblin holding her hand as they walked besides ake silver from the moonlight and surrounded by flower petals that flew gently on the breeze.


    The beautiful picture faded away as Yunan closed the book, besides him was sitting a female he did not notice when she arrived. Yunan calmly looked at the woman who had a nostalgic smile on her face, there were tears threatening to leave her eyes and sully her serene look. Yunan simply smiled and turned his head away from the woman as he passed her the book. "He would have wanted you to have it, he put a magical seal on it, only those who were closer to you can open it"


    The woman took the book with such a gentle touch it almost floated on her fingers, she hid the book somewhere with a look of mncholy, "what happened to him?" She asked. "Took his own tribe outside of Tartarus and kept the book as an heirloom for them, i have killed his descendants while training, i have earned so much thanks to him, i was even named your friend thanks to him. ording to my personal appraisers they said a few dozen thousands of years had passed since then"


    The woman stayed silent for a moment but when she was about to say something, Yunan stood up, took her hand and jumped from the balcony into the garden behind the hotel, theynded among the fragrance of flowers. "Let''s take a walk" Yunan kept hold of the hand and guided the woman into the outskirts of Damascus to a hill beside a stream, the hill was grassy on one side but filled with silver moon flowers that danced under the moonlight light.


    Yunan made his way into the middle of the moon flower field and put two recliner chairs side by side and helped thedy to sit on one of them and he sat on the other, he then produced a bottle of some sweet wine that did not make one drunk or lose their faculties. Something he got from the dwarves.


    Both sat there for hours bathing by the moonlighting, they talked about the story Yunan was writing for himself, theyughed at the antiques of Debauchery, they discussed the cult and the prophecies around them. They both had fun chatting with each other, until it was midnight.


    Thedy said with a regretful tone " if you don''t go now, you might miss your friends, you might never see them again" she looked at Yunan from her reclining position, with a deep glint in her eyes. "They will wait for me, I am lucky that way" Yunan''s reply made thedyugh so hard she was swinging her feet in the air.


    "Today you are the luckiest man in the world, are you happy?" There was an indescribable smile on thedy''s face, so enchanting and enving. " I am very satisfied with my luck tonight, but you need to wait a few years for me to be worthy of being your beloved ".


    "outrageous im. Many have made that promise but i have never met the same man twice in my lifetime" thedy responded with her brilliant smile almost outshining the moonlight.


    Yunan stood up from his chair and came face to face with thedy, their eyes locked and they breaths tickled each other, so close they were. "does my eyes feel like they are lying to you?" Yunan asked thedy who only blinked at his boldness but did nothing to stop him. "Even if you truly mean it, how can you find me?" Thedy asked.


    Yunan nted a small kiss on thedy''s lips, a peck, an innocent promise of an innocent child " I am lucky that way" he whispered to her, he than sat up and helped thedy to her feet and started leading her in a dance to the ambient noise of crickets and other animals calls that drifted towards them. "My teacher once told me that one dances to the music in their hearts, I never understood it before today, only i think i have crickets singing in my heart"


    With augh thedy followed for what any onlookers would categorize as two lunatics stamping on the most beautiful canopy under the moonlight. It was until dawn did they stop from their childish games, and all kinds of things one would never expects from either a 13 year old teen or a young beautiful woman.

 Chapter 102: Taken

    Chapter 102: Taken


    It was nearing dawn when Yunan and Fortuna stopped their ying and headed back to the hotel where they left Debauchery, holding hands and wide smiles on boths their faces.


    On the way Fortuna made some small talk with Yunan. " How do you know there is someone waiting for you?", Yunan answered as id it was a matter of fact "those useless adults I stay around are never that drunk unless almost bored to death and I have only seen them that bored once after spending almost a year doing nothing but watch us closely, so them getting this drunk is just wrong, the only option is interference"


    "You don''t have to go back, if you want you can follow me, there will never be danger to you again", Fortuna dangled the irresistible offer to test Yunan but he just rejected her, a bit too fast too " sorry about that honey, but , since i was in the same room as them I can not let them be taken without me, I am lucky to have them with me as much as they are to have me, so I can only apologise and promise to find you again, however, if you feel bored and want to y, its more fun with all of them around"


    When Yunan and Fortuna stopped walking under the balcony, she kissed Yunan''s forehead and a silver light imprinted itself on his forehead from her lips, a wisp of that silver light dissolved into the metallic dragon hanging on Yunan''s neck, covering the bead of the spirit heart. Fortuna then hugged Yunan and left him some words "you and the little one are the same, feed him the bead before it dies. Come find me when you are strong enough to steal me, i will be waiting"


    Herst words were whispered softly in the most attractive and mesmerising voice Yunan ever heard, not even the yful tone of Leader could prepare him for it. After realising Fortuna had already left, Yunan became certain he was an adult from then onwards.


    After standing in the same spot for a moment a message sounded in his mind, it woke up Yunan who jumped back up and was happy to see the jumbled mass of flesh was still breathing, he made himselffortable by hugging Reina''s tails and went to sleep, knowing full well he will wake upter on under some kind of threat, but he still could let his guard down, there was nothing dangerous in whatever was going to happen next.


    The next time Yunan woke up he was in a dark room sharing a bed with Reina and Lili. a bit of searching showed Leol was sleeping on the ground safe and sound. Drogon was still looking metallic around the spirit heart, both hanging seamlessly around his neck.


    Yunan helped Leol into the bed and went back to sleep while holding the two girls tightly. Hisst thought was ''hopefully they won''t scream when they wake up''. When he woke up next time, both girls were shivering andtching to him as best they could. Lili was hugging his arm, he had already lost feeling in it while Reina had literally wrapped herself on any part of him she could find.


    Reina had her arms around Yunan''s other arm, her legs locked themselves around his waist and her tails were criss crossed around his leg, while Leol was pretending to be still sleeping. There was a man in a scary mask and a robe that hid his shape and size, Yunan did not spare the man another look, but cared for his friends first, he entangled himself from them and brought them closer to his chest were they huddled like scared kittens.


    "You will suffer if you have done anything to them, mister kidnapper, i promise your death will be slow and agonizing, and you will beg for the sweet release of death." Yunan was not making a threat he was stating a fact, and that made the man watching them shiver visibly even in his shapeless robe, he felt like there was something sharp pointed at his neck, his mind was telling him he was the one who had the upper hand, but his instinct was ringing all the sirens of danger he had cultivated in his life.


    "No need to be aggressive little friend, we only brought you here to motivate some people that fear nothing, but you kids are their weakness, i was only scaring the little feisty girls a little bit, not that we would act on such things" the soft speech of the man told Yunan all he needed to know, the man was a self preserving coward and he brought them here to make Debauchery act on something, probably killing the hearts, but who ever they were, they made a very bad mistake.


    "Mind maniption does not work on me" Yunan made the man take a step back "go tell your friends we are ready to meet Debauchery and make sure Bai is there because i need to punch him" with that he gestured with his hands to send the man away.


    The man almost stumbled his way out of the door and did not even close it, Yunan applied a very minor heal, the first spell he learned under the constant tutge of the dwarves. The spell was recorded in their books as a training spell for the children newly introduced to mana, the healing circle was very simple to create with the level of mana sensitivity provided by the spirit heart.


    The reason why Yunan was not affected by the sleeping spell cast on Debauchery, or the mind maniption the man cast on him, was the ck Fate, it fed on Yunan''s mana and stored it to defend against such attacks that may threaten his life. The reason ck Fate never acted when Yunan was training or during the dangerous hunts they performed, because Yunan was not in immediate danger, unlike in thest two cases. As the ck Fate has been absorbing mana for years, it helped Yunan get a sense of mana and also upgraded the waymunication was possible, it now had the ability to project sound or imagery into the minds of those who ept it.

 Chapter 103: Meeting the heirs

    Chapter 103: Meeting the heirs


    The healing spell did not operate by how much mana you put in it but how long you can sustain it. It was one of those spells introduced to the kids to teach them mana conservation in the old era. As to why would dwarves had those kind of books? Its because dwarves appreciated knowledge of all kinds, perhaps they were the only race with a libraryplete enough to paint a picture of the old era.


    The healing spell soon took away the shivering and recovered both girls into a better state, however the mental torment would require a stronger spell, for now the girls could function a lot better than they were a few minutes ago. With the girls calming down and Leol wide awake, they looked with a very envious gaze at Yunan.


    The masked man returned around an hourter, Yunan knew it was the same because he flinched when he saw the girls look much better, he seemed to want to say something but stopped and reconsidered a few time finally saying in a much firmer voice than earlier "please friends,e this way, i will lead you to meet Debauchery, Bai is waiting with them as well, if you would, we are short on time"


    The Valyrians followed after the man silently, although Yunan said nothing, the rm sirens in the masked man''s mind were signaling an amount of danger that should not be conceivable, even death did not push the sirens in his head that badly. The man had a danger sense skill, it can be cultivated to be more urate, and sirens was how the skill manifested in his mind, and since he had cultivated the skill to an extremely high degree, the skill could foretell even a needle prick, that sensitivity, helped him a lot.


    Lately however there were two odd urrences, one was with Debauchery, he never sensed danger from them, no matter how he tortured them, Which was odd, and the never ending danger rted to the young man who threatened him was worse than when he was facing death, it must be something wrong with him.


    It didn''t take long before the man led the Valyrians to a torture chamber, with so many tools and only six residents, Bai was sitting on a spiked chair being choked by a man in the same mask and clothes as the one who led Yunan to this chamber, there was another who was sensually touching a naked Fae who did not even bother about him and was chatting with her friends who were on different torture tools.


    Dustan was being pressed on a bed of needles, Balin was being stretched and quartered, Lucian was hanging with whip marks on his body, Leader was standing in an iron maiden that had its face open. While fae was tied to what might be called a **** bed.


    When Yunan and friends came in the room, salutations came along with them from Debauchery, who did seem to be rather enjoying this round of torture, if Yunan guessed correctly, they felt like this torture was a break away from routines. The three men in the masks grouped up and were whispering to each other.


    Yunan walked to Bai and gave him a few punches "why did you have to use me? I was having a datest night with my future wife and i had toe back early to get kidnapped instead of introducing you guys to her, you will regret it". Yunan then walked around and checked on Debauchery, they were pretty fine considering the fact they were being tortured.


    "Who was she, did you lose your virginity to her?", "Was she pretty? Prettier than me", "what about her figure, was she your type?", "When did you have the time to get a date when we were all together", "oh stop lying who would go on a date with you". Yunan silently ordered the ck Fate to transmit the changes in his status to the minds of everyone. The screen that appeared on everyone''s minds was something that made them frown, but Yunan covered it by saying "who else can love me? Thedy from the goblin book".


    The screen that Yunan transmitted read as follows " Title : beloved of Fortuna >> suiter of Fortuna. Luck : extremely good >> godly. New skill : lucky cover "when activated, only those who are currently seeing the user can keep looking at him, otherwise the user and those in the sphere of influence when activated can not be focused on by any form of recognition or reconnaissance" ( no one will notice the user walk by them, locked doors are unlocked and all surveince is neglected, can be broken through deliberate physical contact, otherwise everyone will just avoid standing in your path).


    "BAI YOU SON OF A BITCH" howled Balin, as if he had missed the chance to add a few thousand years to his life span. "Congrattions, she seems very nice", "you two are suitable for each other", " make sure to invite us to the wedding" and other suchments were directed at Yunan while the three men looked like idiots watching scientists discuss thetest theory, they understood nothing.


    Yunan waved with his hands to calm down the joyous noise, this was a torture chamber, not the best ce for a festive moods. "Who are they and what do they want?" Yunan asked Leader, since the others might answer ambiguously. "The heirs of the supreme cult, they want us to go free their predecessors from dad and bring them the rings of the hearts. Or they would kill you". "Hah, as if they could" sniggered Dustan.


    "What are you waiting for, the prophecy was very urate, kill the four, and be done with it, i need to go find my wife and i already lost a day". Debauchery then just simply left their torture stations and Leader said to the heirs "keep them in a good shape otherwise you will die miserably" with that they teleported away.


    Yunan looked at the dumbfounded heirs and said "what did you expect? I feel wronged being kidnapped by you, anyway nice to meet you, well let''s start with the torture shall we? No need to wait for Debauchery toe back"

 Chapter 104: End

    Chapter 104: End


    The heirs were still trying to understand what Yunan was talking about when Drogon started growing in size until it reached the size of a basketball, it then coiled around Yunan and spat a fireball that turned the iron maiden to ash.


    "if you want to live please proceed to a torture device of your choosing, otherwise I don''t mind telling my cute little dragon here to roast you slowly enough that you will like the smell of your own flesh before you die". The stunned heirs tried to cast spells but Drogon broke the mana constructs with his fireballs before the spells could activate burning their hands along with it.


    The heirs were in agonizing pain trying to put out dragon fire, futility itself, well no matter what they tried the fire stuck to their hands slowly roasting them as promised moments ago, Yunan ordered Drogon to extinguish the fire so as to gain the attention of the heirs, the three men had found a barrel of water used for waterboarding to soothe the burns on their hands while screeching insults and threats at the Valyrians.


    Just as the three were about to start another round of spells, Debauchery had returned with 4 people in tow, Dustan sniffed the air and said "already started cooking? I thought you would wait for us, shame". "Why would I?" Answered Yunan, "I already promised the mind maniption guy to die a slow agonizing death, there was no need to waste time".


    As Yunan was talking with Dustan the three brought by Debauchery went to see to their heirs, and heal them, while Lili strode with fury to pope Markus and kicked his crotch with all her power " this is for being in a cult" as the old man dropped to the floor in pain the girl kept kicking him while saying things like "this is for not letting me know" or "this is for getting me kidnapped", "this is for getting sis tortured". She did not stop until Leader took her away from there.


    "That should be his second nutcracker, right?" Leol asked Dustan as he inched closer for protection. "Third" replied Dustan "Leader gave him two for good measure". Reina was being molested by Fae while she went on an on how she missed the girl and how she was scared for her, as for Bai and Lucian they had the fires of revenge spewing out of their eyes as they looked at the heirs and the elders with a look that was nothing more then pure white rage.


    Balin broke the reunion of the cult masters who were trying their best to teleport out of the room unsessfully. "Stop trying you idiots, the room is under lock down, only we can teleport or send messages from here, now time for torture, i need to work my skills every now and then". Yunan walked closer to Balin and pointed at the mind maniption guy, "that one is mine, he dies by my hands" however Leader stopped him by putting her hands on his shoulder "you will go to train under the mountain, we will do the torture and the killing, you just had your first date so don''t ruin the memory with this pieces of shit".


    "Bai and Fae will take you there, then move on to burn everything this cult has so we need Drogon, as for them, there is no need to feel bad about them, after all, they will never survive until the weekend". Leader looked at Bai who reluctantly shed behind the heirs and grabbed two heads at a time, each took a second to scan, and he was back behind leader momentster. "So much money and riches, don''t kill them before they transfer everything to you, and please don''t break them before ie back"


    Since Bai now had most of the information needed to burn every single base there was, and loot everything they had, he did not look as angry as before, so he rounded up the kids and urged Fae to teleport them to their destination and be done with this fast enough. Yunan looked with gratitude at Leader while both Leol and Reina took the chance to slog pope Markus a good punch in the face for the trouble, and soon they were back under the mountain, the kids went straight to Yunan''s bedroom and huddled together, they whispered to each other before falling asleep for most of the day, and did not wake up until a maid brought breakfast for them and notified the that the masters are waiting for them to start their training.


    The kids''ughter made the maid feel ufortable, Yunan then told her that they would stay in bed for a day or two, they will inform the masters when they were ready for training.


    The cult was positively unrooted, there were many innocent men and women and children who died in this time, their only sin was being born in a cult. The fact did not escape Debauchery, although the old pope advocated for leniency and rehabilitation, Debauchery went for the kill nheless, because if one person failed the rehabilitation, they will rebuild the cult and the next time, it would not be as controble as it was this time.


    As for the 6 heirs, well they had to deal with the ugliest side of Debauchery for a long week, they were broken in both body and spirit by the time they died. As for pope Markus he exined everything to Debauchery in detail the goal of the cult and how it was derailed, and how the church was going to be the new face of the organisation. After hearing the exnation, Debauchery donated the immovable property of the heirs and kept the movable assets.


    After the matter of the cult was over, Debauchery picked the kids from under the mountain and took them to one of their newest gained remote retreats, they drilled the kids in that ce until each and every one of them, reach peak level 3 with 50 points in each attribute and they were all able to sustain the same healing spell Yunan learned for 6 hours. There were two months left before the death of the spirit heart, and the kids were now 14 year olds, soon to be adults.

 Chapter 105: Making history

    Chapter 105: Making history


    In the past 8 months Yunan spent all his fortune on feeding Drogon better monster cores and carcasses, currently ording to Balin, Drogon can basically clear the way for the Valyrians all the way to the 34th floor without much trouble, maybe the 35th if it eats all the monsters it kills.


    Among the loot Debauchery had gotten from the supreme cult, there were many mana bombs and mana clusters, as well as enough materials to arm a whole kingdom. And Balin had volunteered to create some sets of armament for the Valyrians to fight with in the dungeon, if Yunan was willing to bless Balin''s furnace, which Yunan was not averse to.


    Thest week of training was cancelled, and instead it was changed to family visits, especially for the case of Reina and Leol who have not been home for 4 years, while Fae sent Lili, Reina and Leol to their homes, Yunan stayed to help Balin with the forging of the armaments. Balin had nned for special items with some heavy enchantments for example magic resistance, strike resistance, mana and stamina regen, passive healing, speed and uracy, and many more. Balin had nned each piece of the armaments to have different enchantments, and add a stacking effect when all the set was equipped at the same time.


    The sets were full body armor, and weapons, that can be hidden inside an essory, once one injects their mana inside the essory it would equip itself on the user, making the time needed to put the armor on non existent. The set is also mana sensitive, so unless the user injects his mana in it, it would not activate. the armour can be programmed to self equip upon the user enteringbat mode.


    It was a very ambitious project that have never been done before, and a personal dream of Balin''s, it took years to perfect the magical construct, and even longer to calcte the total amount of mana needed for a sessful build. Unfortunately Balin could only make one set like that, so he chose Yunan to be its user, theck of materials made Balin grit his teeth in frustration.


    As the inheritor of such an armor Yunan asked for something that was equally obscene as a self equipping armor, he wanted one that can grow with him, he did not need to tell Balin more than that before he saw stars shining in his eyes. There was something in that brightness that told Yunan he had just handed Balin the missing piece of a veryplicated puzzle. Balin started thinking and by the time Fae returned he was hanging on her dress begging her to perform a very strange spell.


    It has been proven that Debauchery had a terrifying ability tomunicate, n and execute, with very little outward signs, well, that is the after effects of a miracle like spell that Fae cast long ago on Debauchery, the spell is called "mind link", the user can link the minds of those who ept the users judgement and trust them unconditionally, even a bit of doubt causes the spell to fail.


    The "mind link" can literally link the minds of a group and connect them mentally, allowing one to think with the brains of a groupe, it also exposes all the ideas and memories in your mind to others, hence the absolute trust condition. That is what Balin was asking for, the ability to use thebines wisdom points that Debauchery has to calcte the viability of the growth type armament. The only after effect of t spell is that for the rest of their lives, the targets of the spell are mentally connected, even though not as strongly as when the spell is active, mostly exchange ideas and feelings. Balin went a step further and included all the treasury under the lonely mountain into his calction. Items that are so precious there was no one good enough to use them. Especially since the death of the dragons.


    It took a full night before Balin saw fit to break the spell, he then sat by a desk and started drawing until the morning, and without stop he asked Fae to take them to meet with the heart of the mountain. Without saying much, Balin let Mina look at the drawings he made and the same stars Balin had, sparkled in her eyes. After sending everyone one away, only Mina and Debauchery were in the office and Balin spoke more than a single sentence for the first time in two days.


    "I''m gonna need the heart forge, the treasury, and every mana source under the mountain even those dragon me canisters, i am even taking out the stuff we got from the 70th floors, but this will be the greatest feat of smithing since Hephaestus forged life into items, making this will make every dwarf in the rest of history curse me for it, but i am making it if you give me the chance, and maybe in the future, there will be enough materials to do it again, and another dwarf will have the chance to make something better, but for now i want to make it"


    Mina only nodded and stood from behind her desk and walked to a wall, pressed a pressure tile on it and a door swung open, she walked in followed by Debauchery, the path was getting hotter with each step, until it reached an open cave glowing red thanks to red veins iid within the stone, and had ake of sma contained by a magical force field, yet the heat that escaped from it could be used for cooking. Near theke was a huge furnace that dwarfed the one Balin used to forge the spirit heart and beside it were hills of materials that made the smith in Yunan go wide eyed and eager to touch.


    However Yunan himself was focused on something else, he pulled Fae and whispered to her " I knew you guys were too strong for level 20, I even thought you were near level 40 since you could recognise level 60 enchantments, but I just heard Balin say you got materials from level 70, is that true?". Fae pushed her chest out and put on a smug smile and said " we failed only at level 79st time we tried, worship me as your goddess and I will take you there on a tour".


    Yunan just looked away towards Mina and Balin who had been making their own small hill of treasures taken from storage rings and the hills in the room. A monumental moment in history was about to be made and fussing about now strong his teachers were took a back seat.

 Chapter 106: Lets grow together

    Chapter 106: Let''s grow together


    While watching the glowingke of sma; instead of keeping an eye on the items or the master dwarves; Yunan could feel the Valyrian dragon, Drogon almost restless to enter theke, which drew Yunan''s attention to it.


    An idea popped into Yunan''s head, so he ordered the dragon to grow in size and sit on his shoulder, then he fed the bead of the dying spirit heart to it. Drogon was so excited to eat the spirit heart that it swallowed it in one gulp and with the permission of Mina, Drogon dove into the smake and swam inside it while its own scales started glowing and bing more distinct.


    Although Balin was still busy working on piling up treasures, Mina was watching Drogon with fascinating, she even poked, Balin to take a look, but after a simple nce he just muttered the famous praise they had for Yunan "lucky bastard".


    By the time Balin and Mina were done, Drogon had came out of the smake looking like it had just powered up into a higher resolution version of itself, it looked more defined in both colour and features. Mina was curiously checking the changes in Drogon while the ck Fate was scanning it, the results were nothing but surprising.


    "Name : Drogon. Race : Valyrian (evolved).


    Attributes : Strength >> 5000, Constitution >> 5000, Dexterity >> 5000, wisdom >> 5000.


    New skills : Enhancer (allows the dragon to help those near it to grow at a faster rate the weaker they are inparison). Lucky cover (goes unnoticed unless it initiated contact). Note : one lucky dragon.


    Yunan decided to keep the results of the scan a secret to himself, even if Mina recognised the evolution, she would not know about the new skills, so there was no need to share information that might cause Drogon to be an assistance tool in Tartarus.


    Before the start of the forging, The lucky ritual was performed and Yunan was told to bless the small hill of items that were to be used by spraying them with his mana and imbuing the mana with whatever luck he could spare, of course Yunan only thought about the items melding together and epting the role of sacrifice to birth something that exceeded the history of mortals. Yunan was also told to push his mana into Drogon while it used its breath in tandem with the sma in the great furnace.


    With a sessful ritual and blessings, Balin skipped most of the preparation steps for the different materials by plunging the whole hill of items into the great furnace and flooding in the sma. Weirdly enough, with the help of Drogon''s breath the sma did not melt the items but instead made a cocoon around them, purifying the impurities and allowing only the best and strongest parts to be used. Soon after a smoldering coal ck bolder was ejected from the furnace, the cocoon started to glow white and whatever was left inside was turned into a ball of homogeneous liquid.


    "That is the benefit of having a luck ritual before you do anything, you guarantee perfect results, you can feel the lucky aura doing its job" Balin was telling his master about the benefits of the ritual she chuckled at before, while using the spells he devised for the armour set. The items were taking the shape of a full body te armor, the helmet had a dragons face, while the rest of the parts had scales and spikes in them, those spikes could be used as weapons for both offence and defence.


    Beside the armor there were 2 short swords, 2 curved long daggers, a mace, and a crossbow, as the set was getting more shapely, each weapon had its holster built into the armour, the daggers crossed horizontally at the lower back, the short swords crossed vertically along the back and poked out of the shoulder tes, the mace and the crossbow hung on the right and the left respectively,with both handles hanging on the belt.


    With the armour fully in shape, Balin introduced a host of enchantments, before throwing ten mana clusters in the furnace as the items started absorbing the enchantments, they also absorbed the mana from the mana clusters when all the mana clusters were depleting, Balin added thest piece he nned on, a 50 meter radius sphere of a spirit stone, a vein that was almost half the age of the itself. The armour set did not Syphon the spiritual energy like Balin expected but it absorbed the whole vein into itself.


    The armour set then cooled down and all the magic circles and enchantments became invisible to the naked eye, after that a medallion shaped like a thumb sized dragon, appeared on the chest te of the armour, before the armour disappeared and only the medallion remained. Instead of flying to Balin the medallion flew towards Yunan and rested itself in his hand. When Yunan injected his mana into it, after a nod from Balin, a message popped up in his head "let us grow together."


    Yunan and Debauchery left the heart forge silently, it was time for master Balin to exin things about the medallion and no one would take the first words from himself, but Minagged behind for a few moments.


    Minater joined Debauchery in sitting in a circle and Balin started to talk, "This medallion is almost sentient, sadly i can not appraise it, only the boy can, however it will take him years to reach that level, so i can only say that the prime goals were reached perfectly, as for the enchantments, i can not say anything. This armour will grow by feeding on materials and monster cores, i tried to make it level 5 so that he can use it immediately, but i do not know the results, we can only specte, therefore, i am going to make some level 20 armour sets for the rest of the kids, and we can send lucky boy here to his mama, that is all"


    As everyone stood up and Fae marched to Yunan to teleport him Mina stretched her hands and a very simple ne attached itself to the medallion and around Yunan''s neck making Yunan almost ram his fist into his throat from the pull by the ne. Fae then sent him directly to sister Theresa''s room.

 Chapter 107: Status

    Chapter 107: Status


    Yunan had a few cuddly days with his mother, he told her about his adventures and the things he learned, about his date with Fortuna and his new overpowered armor. Although Yunan did not have the required appraisal skill, the ck Fate had no problems with appraising the medallion and the armor inside it.


    The armor was something on a different level, it had self repair, a storage space, camouge and invisibility, the helmet could provide, dark sight and heat vision as well as life detection, there were buffs to all attributes, all kinds of resistances to decay, weather, harmful substances to the user and more. The armor could also change its size depending on the user, it had constant healing and restoration effects for mana and stamina, it even had damage reduction effect on lower quality weapons.Yunan had no idea if those enhancements were made by Balin or were the amplified attributes of the materials used in its forging, either way, Yunan was extremely happy with it.


    The good time with mother did notst long as Debauchery dropped by the orphanage with the Reina, Lili and Leol who had heavy and guilty looks whenever they looked at Yunan. Debauchery made sure the orphanage was lively and festive that evening, before leaving with the youngsters and heading to the entrance of Tartarus.


    There was a marvelous city located there named Dungeon city, for the sake of simplicity, the group made their way to the guild headquarters to register themselves as active adventurers especially since the Valyrians were a subsidiary of Debauchery until today and have umted many points thanks to the contributions of Debauchery. They also imed the rights to the books they have reserved all those years ago thanks to the chest Yunan sold to the guild.


    After going through the checkpoint and answering the standard questions, Debauchery and the Valyrians entered the dungeon one after the other. As Yunan passed by the entrance and stepped down the stairway he felt his sensitivity to mana has skyrocketed, and felt like there was a lock on his body that was removed, and finally he felt a mark on his body, mind and soul, and in the back of his mind he knew he could call upon his status at any time.


    Fae was too excited to stop herself from asking the Valyrians to project their status and show the fruits of the hard work Debauchery had put in each of them. Leol went first his status looked rather dull, it read as follows. "Name : Leol. Title : none. Strength : 50, Constitution : 50, Dextery : 50, Wisdom : 50. Skills : sword mastery: basic, dagger mastery: basic, shield mastery: basic, archery: basic, mana maniption: basic. Magic: lesser heal"


    Lili had a bit of a difference but not much, her status read as follows. "Name : Lili. Title : none. Strength : 50, Constitution : 50, Dextery : 50, Wisdom : 50. Skills : sword mastery: advanced, dagger mastery: basic, shield mastery: basic, archery: basic, mana maniption: basic. Aggression. Magic: lesser heal."


    Reina had a bit of uniqueness to her status, it read as follows. "Name : Reina. Title : nine tailed fox. Strength : 50, Constitution : 50, Dextery : 50, Wisdom : 50. Skills : sword mastery: basic, dagger mastery: basic, shield mastery: basic, archery: advanced, mana maniption: basic. Comforting. Magic lesser heal". Yunan however had the most surprising status among his peers, it was very impressive one considering he almost had the same training as his friends. Yunan''s status read as follows.


    "Name : Yunan. Title : wise prowler. Strength : 50, Constitution : 50, Dextery : 50, Wisdom : 50. Skills : sword mastery: expert, dagger mastery: expert, shield mastery: expert, archery: expert, unarmed: expert, mana maniption: expert. Dwarven forging: level 5 (trainable), appraisal: level 15(trainable), ranging: level 10 (trainable), dual wielding, technician, thinker, mastermind, lucky cover. Magic : lesser heal. Pets : Drogon (Valyrian), Strength: 5000, Constitution : 5000, Dextery : 5000, Wisdom : 5000. Skill : luck bringer, enhancer, lucky cover, shape shifting, taunting cry, intimidating roar. Magic : draconic breath, me control, mana syphoning."


    After looking at Yunan''s status Debauchery sent deathly res at the other three, who did not put their hearts into learning, ording to Yunan''s status anyway. The difference between a basic level skill and an expert level skill was enormous, especially when it happens between two people who had the same training, Yunan had even more skills that proved he actually tried hard to learn, as proven by the 6 individual skills that each member of Debauchery taught the kids.


    Only Yunan had the ranging skill taught by Lucian, the appraisal from Dustan, the unarmed from Balin, thinker from Leader, mastermind from Bai and finally the highest progress in mana maniption taught by Fae, indicating that the others did not try to push themselves, and the fact they reach the current status was due to the pressure from Debauchery and the effects of the spirit heart, Yunan on the other hand had relied on his own efforts to reach his status, as evident by the extra skills he had.


    Although Debauchery were angry and disappointed with their students, they still led the way to the first floor base. It was a vige in the middle of the floor with goblins and kobolds roaming around it, Yunan allowed Drogon to go gorge himself on the monsters in the surrounding, he gave it a storage ring to store the drops and the corpses it did not eat to sell in the base.


    Inside the guild''s book vault, both Debauchery and the Valyrians had enough books to im to keep them busy for an afternoon, enough time for Drogon to eat its fill, and so the poor librarian kept shuttling like mad to bring the more than 300 books the group owes the guild. Yunan did not waste a single moment as he started reading the books he acquired. They could be divided into 3 categories: healing, utility, battle. For example healing had a passive skill called regeneration that speeds up natural healing, there were others like target healing and area of effect healing. Utility had things like an all stats buff, toxic flushing, hardened skin, dark sight and so on. As for battle, there was taunting, baiting, intimidating, master levelbat. All Yunan needed to do now was to integrate the almost 50 skills and spells in hisbat style.

 Chapter 108: Goodbye

    Chapter 108: Goodbye


    A final lesson outside the gate of the first floor base was scheduled to help the Valyrians digest the new skills and spells they have just learned from reading all those books. Reading books from Tartarus is not very hard and does it take long, one only has to understand the first few letters or up to the first page, for the book to disintegrate and imprint itself in the memory of the user.


    The lesson was not as intense as it usually was, but instead it was 1 on 1 where each youngster gets to practice one skill with a member of Debauchery, Yunan finished first because he had more passive skills than active ones, a choice apuded by Debauchery who were extremely happy the 4 years they spent with this kid were not wasted.


    Drogon returned around the time Debauchery were about to have thest dinner as students and teachers, although Yunan said that he and Debauchery were contracted for 5 years, Leader just gave him a "shut up, i know my contracts" look. After that Yunan stayed quiet, and instead looked through the items Drogon brought back with it. There were a few books that were written in dragon tongue, something that Drogon did not learn because there were no other dragons known to the world. Thankfully, ording to Balin, there was at least one book aboutnguage and all Drogon had to do was open all the books until he finds it, that was the way Tartarus worked, a dragon that does not know dragonnguage will get it as the first drop.


    While Drogon was sifting through the books it got and started learning them, the Valyrians were now pestering Yunan about howe Drogon can now use a storage ring and read books, Yunan showed them the status of Drogon and highlighted the part of it having 5000 wisdom, using a storage ring with that much wisdom should be easier than with 50 wisdom.


    After dinner, Debauchery and their students assembled for the first time with such a status, and Leader dered that the students were finally free to do as they wish and are no longer bound to Debauchery. Afterwards came the hardest part for the meeting on Yunan.


    "I will wait for you on the twentieth floor" Yunan looked at the fidgeting friends he had spent 4 years with, they should have known better than to stutter at a moment like this. "I know that you each have an organisation that were waiting for your training to end, there is no need to feel embarrassed or guilty, this is how life works so just be straight forward like always, just make sure you never forget about me that is all".


    "Of course we''ll never forget about you" said Reina sentimentally "we will meet again and have fun together like always, i''ll even hop in bath and let you oggle me all you want, next time we meet" she gave Yunan a big hug and let him go with a tearful smile. Leol only shook hands with Yunan saying " if you ever get bored before the twentieth floor,e find us, it''ll be easier to find us than to find you".


    Lili was the most sentimental at the that moment, something Yunan did not expect from her, she was already crying as she hugged him " i promise i will meet you in the twentieth floor, you have to be strong and capable next time we meet, and if you ever need anythinge find me, i will never forget you or what you did for me". She said between sobs and hups.


    Yunan was affected by the emotional Lili and had tears streaming down his face, he could not find the words to console her and said after some silence "stay pure, i want to have the exclusive right to corrupt you, even your dad has to take second ce for that", that made herugh and feel much better. Momentster the three paid their respects to Debauchery and returned to the base to meet up with their respective guides or teams that their organisation had waiting for them.


    After the three left, leader hugged Yunan to her chest and told him " I still own you for a year, you can''t leave yet, i still want to y with you". The rest of Debauchery came by andforted the young man withments like "It was never meant to be", "they did not deserve you" ,"let auntyfort you too". The standard way Debauchery did everything basically.


    Once the tears were dry and the atmosphere was much better, Leader made a pledge for Yunan "every time you reach a new base we will give you two weeks of training in the exclusive skills we promised to teach you in return for letting us stay besides the spirit heart, don''t think we taught you everything, we could not teach something like that to all of you, and thankfully we did not, it would have been okay if they stayed with you, but it was not meant to be, hence you are to send a message through the guild every time you reach a new base. There are bases in every fifth floor up to the 60th floor, so if you y your cards right there are at least 7 bases to look forward to, however since we own you for a year, every tenth floor will you 2 extra weeks of training."


    "Of course we can just drop by whenever we miss you ande for you to cuddle up, other than that, if we meet by luck we can give you a lesson or two" said Fae who have suddenly changed all her views on the cute Reina to Yunan, Bai however was a bit regretful about having to leave his first student behind alone so he took out his pocket watch and passed it to Yunan "We trained you to be independent and be able to survive on your own, I hope that this can lead you to safety, hopefully the next time you build a party they will stick with you longer".


    Afterwards Debauchery turned their backs to Yunan and headed away from the base on their way down Tartarus, however before they disappeared from his vision he heard something beside his ear "don''t die on us, kiddo, we have great expectations for you".

 Chapter 109: First night

    Chapter 109: First night


    Being all alone for the first time in years, Yunan stood still with only Drogon on his shoulder, and watched the lighting fade away. it was night time in Tartarus and monsters were about to get very dangerous and numerous, a good start to try out the differences between the monsters outside and the monsters in here.


    Yunan injected mana into the medallion on his chest, it transformed into a belt buckle on a ck and Scarlet armor, once Yunan was fully d in the armor, and the enchantments took effect, Yunan felt like he was wearing a dragon instead of an armor, it was time to start growing. So he activated his taunting skill, a roar that sounded very much like Drogon''s when he unleashed it, and every monster within 5 kilometers radius was drawn to Yunan''s location.


    The skill Yunan used was a simple and versatile skill, called "taunt" it could be applied over any vocal activity, like talking, screaming, roaring and evenughing, however the skill had a radius that is as far as the voice reaches, for example if there is a group baring your way, whispering the taunt to them would make the onlookers think they attacked without reason, or if one is trying to attract as much attention as possible, one can make a roaring voice and cast taunt along with it. Thus with the amplification of the armor, Yunan''s voice reached the 5 kilometers.


    After the draconic roaring taunt, Yunan felt more like a dragon, than man, so he decided to name the armor set "Dragonification". He activated his dark sight skill, then activated the heat vision and life detection from the helmet, Yunan was surprised he could even see behind him, a perfect 360 vision was a bit overwhelming at first it took Yunan a few seconds to get used to it, by the time the first goblins and kobolds found Yunan, he had both short swords out and ready.


    Yunan took his first step towards the nearest monster only to find he crossed a bigger distance than expected, he was already behind the goblin. Not only speed, but all his attributes were enhanced by an order of magnitude, he checked with ck Fate, and found the total of enhancement was +100% to all attributes. Yunan now confirmed that his lucky mana had more than just perfectly fused the materials that built Dragonification, it also drawn out their potential and the effects the items had to its maximum.


    It took all night for Yunan to get used to his new found powers, there were so many other things that the armor did, it syphoned mana from the dead bodies of the monsters and injected it into both ck Fate and the pocket watch, and storing the rest, it also activated the effect of the watch giving Yunan a radar screen in his mind detailing the number and location of all monsters with in the range of one km and their battle Strength as well. The armor also added something to the heat vision after it absorbed enough mana, there was a prediction based on the movement of the monsters, giving Yunan something to use his unused wisdom on studying, prediction.


    Although being able to predict were a strike is going was something Yunan learned early, his insights were shallow at best, so this new vision gave him the chance to learn to predict on a higher level, something that could save his life if he was attacked by surprise. Thanks to heat vision and dark sightbination, Yunan could see the muscles firing under the skin while seeing the signs outside of the skin and clothes, helping him progress further.


    Around midnight, Yunan had killed every monster in the surrounding 5 kilometers, and was moving forward while looking at the loot in his armor''s storage. He found two books that he would have never thought about buying, they were titled spitting mes, and automated looting. The first is self exnatory, spitting mes is literally a fire breathing spell, and automated looting would allow the user to collect nearby loot and corpses by simply marking a storage container and giving it mana, as long as the storage had mana and space it would pick loot, one could have up to 5 dedicated containers, if the user trains the spell to its maximum potential.


    Yunan learned both immediately, he then put all the cores and corpses in Drogon''s storage ring and fed the rest of the clothes and weapons to the armor, Drogon was very happy to snack on those corpses, even if their mana was depleted, their cores had enough mana to keep them tasty. He also used the armor''s storage as the default container, that was his choice because he never saw exactly how big the container was, it had taken thousands of corpses and items, without much problem, so he decided to test how big it can be.


    Yunan spent all the night and until dawn hunting all the monsters he could, to get used to his spells and armor, as well as push his own limits far enough, surprisingly he did not feel tired or need rest, but he got hungry very fast, probably due to the effects of Dragonification, it seemed to use up his body''s natural resources to keep it in the best form, Yunan knew this would onlyst as long as he ate enough nutrition, and he also had enough rest after each hunt, otherwise the toll on his body would be too great, also he needs to get used to such fast consumption and refilling of energy, before being able to fully ignore it when he puts down the armor.


    At dawn Yunan returned to the base on the first level after taking off his armor and switching it with something more suitable for his level of power. Drogon was sleeping on the medallion looking like a decorative piece. At the gate he was asked by the guards about if he heard or saw the monster that was roaring all over the first floor, Yunan just shook his head and said that he did not even meet a single monster all night, just blood patches to indicate battle. He was not going to tell the guards he almost wiped out half the monster poption of the first floor. He went straight to a hotel and rented a room to rest in and slept until noon.

 Chapter 110: Honey

    Chapter 110: Honey


    After waking up and eating a very hearty meal, Yunan sold all the leftover corpses Drogon had in its ring and bought a lot of snacks and highly nutritious meals, to prepare for the next sortie.


    Yunan had the stats of a peak level 4 thanks to Dragonification armor, and he thought about reaching the 5th floor today, but then he chose not to and decided he would gradually fight his way down, and since there was not much of pressure on him to advance he chose to map out the first floor while he was here, and by looking in every nook and cranny he might get lucky and find something nice.


    Yunan chose to start the map from the stairway to the surface, hug the rightmost wall and navigate through the maze like floor, although there were maps, Yunan thought it would be a good pass time while he was on the lower floors where advancing took longer, and building up a habit of knowing where you are is never bad. And so started the journey that took a week of time.


    Yunan found some challenge rooms with monsters of level 3 and 4 in them, some had a level 4 boss, and some only had puzzles to solve. Yunan was drawing his path, and making marks every branching path. He also got some good loot for the armor to feed on. One of the luckiest rooms he found was a trap room with level 3 boars that kept spawning from the walls of the room, he could only exit the room after 10 hours of fighting, and got himself a resupply of high energy food that canst him months.


    On the third day, Yunan came up to a room that was empty, however he saw a golden liquid creeping out from a gash in the wall, after checking with his pocket watch, Yunan confirmed there was a hive of some sort behind the gash where countless fist sized level 1 monsters lived. As soon as Yunan got too close to the gash in the wall, the room was flooded with bee-like monsters with shiny pincers and threatening needles that were spraying some kind of spore in the air.


    Yunan got his first status warning, a voice in his mind said "attention, paralyzing spores detected, please make sure to use appropriate measures". Yunan did not think too much and started firing his crossbow at the bee monsters and killing as many of them as he could without moving too much. But the numbers kept increasing as he killed more and more of them. By the time Yunan started to feel numb in his fingers and feet 3 hourster the bees had stoppeding out to kill him and instead a new type starteding out, they had a hollow tube instead of pincers for mouths, and had a very transparent sack instead of the needle.


    Yunan stood still and waited for the flush toxin spell he cast to work and relieve some of the numbness while watching the bees work. The bees would stab that tube like mouth into the bodies of the other bees and move to the next one, Yunan suddenly realised that automated looting did not pick the bodies of the bees and there was no loot dropped from killing them either. Yunan knew something was wrong but he kept watching as the bees returned to suck a golden liquid from the bodies they injected before and fill up their sacks to almost bursting. The bees then flew back to the gash and returned momentster.


    Yunan did not bother the worker bees and walked to the gash and looked through, he found a bigke of what he assumed to be honey, slowly dripping from a cone like hive in the ceiling. There was a man sized bee swimming in the pool and now and then would extractrvae that would be transported to the hive by worker bees. Yunan told the ck Fate to scan the fist sized bees and came with nothing, but when he scanned the man sized bee he got an answer.


    "Queen bee, level 5, found in all levels of the dungeon, it spawns soldiers and workers to collect the dead bodies of monsters that are left on the floor at night time, corpses are then melted from the inside and the resulting solution is then transported to the hive to nurture thervae and create honey that is extremely nutritious and has healing and cleansing effect on all the toxins in the floor it is found in, the Queen bee is a pacifist, it offers its honey, as payment for life if too many of her soldiers die".


    Yunan had a very wide smile on his face, he made sure to remember the life signs of the Queen bee and her workers to get free healing and food in every level, additionally he can sell whatever he has left on each floor before heading to the next, he figured very few knew where the bees came from or why do they exist in every floor and even if they knew about them being the cleaning crew, they would not follow them to their hives.


    Yunan looked around the room and outside it, for an hour before finally finding a small window he could crawl through to the honeyke. Once he arrived the Queen bee respectfully bowed its head and then continued swimming, yunan noticed the honeyke was submerging eggs of different sizes, and nurturing them, the Queen was pulling out the hatchedrvae and sending them to the hive.


    Yunan put a finger in the honey and then into his mouth, it tasted sweet and sour, with a heat spreading through his body Yunan felt like he could break the world, so he did the next logical step, submerging an empty storage ring and stocking on as much honey as possible. He kept drawing until there was only a foot of honey before exposing the eggs, the Queen bee was now ring daggers at Yunan as if he was about to cross a line, so he stopped filling the ring and left the ce immediately. Fighting a pacifist is always a bad idea.

 Chapter 111: Second floor

    Chapter 111: Second floor


    The honey Yunan took was a great boon to him, itpletelypensated for the nutrients lost while wearing the Dragonification armor, but what struck Yunan most was the speed he was getting used to the difference in consumption and it only took just two days to make most of the difort from wearing the armor and fighting had disappeared.


    On the sixth day Yunan found a group of goblins gathering sap from a weirdrge flower, Yunan did not disturb them, and waited to see what they will do with it, he was surprised to see that the goblins applied the sap to their weapons and darts before collecting a few jars of the sap, and leaving, it seemed that is how they got their poisonous darts and weapons, although Yunan did clean up the group of goblins, he still took some of the sap with him to study.


    ording to ck Fate, therge flower was called putrid maw, it had a very potent poison nds that would create a mixture that can randomly inflict a status effect on those whoes into contact with it, the flower would digest rotten corpses in its vicinity, and use that to grow and develop the poison, it exists in every floor and the potency of the poison depends on the level of monsters it digests.


    During this week Yunan found an understanding of the dungeon he could not find in a book. The dungeon was self sufficient, there was always something edible in every floor, there are healing items as well as poisonous nts and venomous monsters. There was a cleaning crew, and there was repoption rooms, there were reward rooms, challenge rooms and even trap rooms, however the sess of each challenge and trap rewards one with enough gains to repay the effort.


    The dungeon did not discriminate between monster or adventurer, there was something for everyone, and as the humans could grow so did monsters, it just was more noticeable in adventurers, the delicate bnce of Tartarus is in itself a marvel of engineering and management, something that took a lot of time to n and execute.


    After the seventh day when Yunanpleted the map of the first floor, denoting the rooms and the putrid maw flower location, he chose to omit the nest of the Queen bee and merely noted a cluster of bees in the room, he returned to base and sold the level 3 boars and the map to the guild and headed towards the entrance to the second floor after a good and a hot bath.


    The second floor was almost the same as the first with a bit more kobolds than goblins, and the asional level 3 monsters. Yunan did the same thing he did with the first floor, map the entire floor before pushing forward. Yunan did not have much trouble staying awake for a whole week with his Dragonification armor on, however he found that if he never left a challenge room or a trap room it would not reset, at least in the 6 hours Yunan slept soundly in there. With sleep and food taken care of, Yunan only needed to return to the base on the first floor once during his two week stay in the second floor, he did that mainly to sell the corpses that Drogon did not feel like eating and were clogging up the storage space.


    During the first week Yunan came upon a challenge room that would reset half an hour after it is cleared, it spawned bosses up to level 5 which Yunan found very helpful to training, however things escted after that since Yunan did not leave the room and rested inside waiting for the next boss by taking naps, he noticed that the bosses were getting stronger and then when he beat an especially challenging level 5 ant that was bigger than Dustan, the next boss to appear were 2 weak bulls, then the cycle started again, stronger pairs into threes and the threes turned into fours. It was then Yunan hit a snag and could not kill the 4 weak boss bulls before the next wave of bosses spawned, so Yunan used his trump card, spitting fire assisted with the armor and roasted the bosses a few secondster.


    Yunan made his way to the chest in the room before the next boss wave appeared, and found a golden book, the book was heavy enough to be made of solid gold. The title of the book was "mastering the heavenly smithing". Yunan opened the book and started reading it, the book was written by Hephaestus himself, it was a simplified version of the art he practiced, after Yunan read thest page the book disappeared and the status sounded in Yunan''s mind "be advised, the skill dwarven forging level 5 has been integrated into the skill heavenly smithing, the skill heavenly smithing is now level 5."


    Yunan did not know if he shouldugh or cry, he imagined the state his bones would be like after Balin was done with him when he sees the new skill. However, Yunan felt his forging level was more than 3 times higher than before, if he was correct, heavenly smithing incorporated all kinds of forging techniques from all the races, to create it. That was not all, Yunan found the existence of endless challenge rooms, as long as one does not open the chest, they continue to pose a challenge for the ones inside the room until they open the chest getting a reward equivalent to how many waves were survived.


    However if the challengers are greedy they can end up like Yunan, in a fight they can not win or time to rest, thus dying out of greed. Therefore Yunan choose to be safe and leave the room to one of the ordinary safer ones, and rest quietly for 6 hours before continuing his journey, mapping the floor and collect resources, deciding to never challenge the same room twice, pressure meant growth and knowing what to expect took too much away from the challenge. He also decided thest day on the second floor would be a magnificent battle to prove he have actually conquered the floor sessfully.

 Chapter 112: Heatless inferno

    Chapter 112: Heatless inferno


    Yunan in full armor found the most open spot in the second floor and applied three spells on himself: first a general buff that gives him 10% stats up, second was voice maniption to make his voice reach up to twice the range, third prative voice, to make his voice spread throughout the maze like floor structure unhindered.


    Yunan then drank two cups of the honey making him feel about to explode from the excess energy, he then made a taunt with the loudest roar he could, his voice reach a total of 15 kilometers and covered 90% of the floor, every goblin, kobold and boar in the floor was drawn to Yunan except for those in the challenge rooms.


    Bracing for the impact, Yunan had the two daggers out for maximum precision instead of the short swords, and started killing anything that came into his reach, creating a safe location in the middle of the sea of monsters. Yunan''s roar did not draw just monsters, but humans also arrived to find a rare monster in the second floor, but they were unable to believe their eyes as they saw the man in the middle of the swarm of monsters, making killing blow after killing blow with each move of his body.


    Yunan did not stick to only using his daggers, but also used his elbows, knees and feet to deal damage, however theck of corpses around Yunan made them think he was too weak to kill anything and they decided to help the brave guy and ask him to join them. However as soon as they drew their des, Drogon flew towards them and stopped them.


    "Please do lot interfere, my master is in the middle of training," the group watched with bated breath as the dragon flew from Yunans shoulder and started expanding as it came closer, then instead of attacking it politely asked them to stay away. However what they saw was that the monsters kept flooding in and there were no corpses on the ground beneath the armored man.


    "What if he can not hold" a girl in the team asked Drogon, for the moment she thought it was a magical familiar conjured by magic, hence she did not question it ability to speak. Drogon however shrank his size and threw two boars before the team "how about some roasted boar while we watch, he canst for 10 hours so let''s take our time eating, you can have the cores inside, i just want the meat"


    The team watched the dragon with Weird looks "this is your master we are talking about, he is about to be swallowed whole, why don''t you go help him" said the girl. "I said he canst 10 hours, and that is not taking any spells or item, into consideration, if you really want to help let him go at it for a minimum of 5 hours, afterwards I will personally kill anything left alive after that, so here take these corpses and roast some boars for me".


    The team tried ignoring Drogon, but every time they tried to interfere they would be pushed back by a gust of wind from its wings, leaving the team no choice but to sit and wait. in the meantime time Drogon persuaded the girl to cook for him creating an odd scene that those who arrivedter and were blocked by Drogon joined, by the end of the 5th hour the monster horde was reduced to a fraction of its number, even the monstersing from far away had stopped trickling, and the horde was gone minutester with no corpses left, only blood to indicate the great battle that took ce.


    "Drogon, what are you doing? We need to go sell our loot, before moving on" Yunan walked towards the gathering of thirty or so people who came to find the cause of the disturbance, and ended up being dragged into a barbecue. Drogon did not even move from his location on the shoulder of the girl as he beckoned Yunan toe closer, we''re having a barbecue, this thing is awesome, howe you never learned cooking, eating only roast and honey is not healthy, can we take this girl with us?, she is a master cook and can teach you"


    Yunan took a seat besides the girl carrying Drogon, with as much as a word to the people who only now understood that the dragon was not a familiar nor was his master hurt or exhausted, from a 5 hours long fight, and there were no corpses, meaning the man had enough time to stow away the corpses he killed while killing his way through a freaking horde. Yunan noticed the look on the men and women who were around him, he took a piece of meat from Drogon and chewed on it " i hope Drogon was not a bother" he said to the girl beside him "if there is anything I canpensate with monster corpses and cores".


    " Oh no, no bother at all, i find it cute" said the girl then she asked a question that popped in her head "how was your training, was there any improvement, your familiar said that you were in the middle of something like that". Yunan responded while chewing and admiring the taste "yeah, my mastery of daggers and unarmed rose up by 20%, and i got about 2 points in attributes, and this guy is not my familiar, he is not even my follower, he keeps calling me master even though he is like 100 times stronger than me."


    Weapons were drawn out and pointed at Yunan and the girl beside him, although her teammates tried to stand up for her, 5 against 30 was unreasonable "hand over the dragon and that armor, and you can live" the threatening words were used with a threatening voice, but Yunan did not even flinch " he continued chewing in his meat as he asked Drogon "when was thest time you ate human flesh, Drogon" the Dragon answered promptly "not since Fae and Bai took me for a spin, can i have some?", "Sure just don''t harm anyone who did not point their weapons at us", "check this move out, its called heatless inferno" after than Drogon spewed mes from his maw, the mes expanded like a cloud, what was curious was that those who did not n to harm Yunan, the girl or her teammates, were safe and felt like they were inside a cloud shaped like rolling mes, while the aggressors were burned to ashes leaving behind only their items.

 Chapter 113: Gorilla

    Chapter 113: Gori


    The barbecue did notst too long after that, since the fact that there was a murderous dragon who, for all intents and purposes did what it wanted, and the guy the dragon called master who, although a nice guy, he did not seem to have any appreciation for life or mercy for that matter.


    Yunan had split the loot from the now dead aggressors into two parts, one was taken by Drogon and the other was practically forced on the group that survived by mere chance. Anyway after those guys and girl left the spot heading to the third floor, Yunan made his way back to the first floor base and sold whatever he did not need and bought some higher level corpses and cores for Drogon before renting a room and sleeping for a full 20 hours out ofziness.


    Yunan then made his way down to the third floor and mapped it, in a week and a half, taking the time to do at least one taunt per day, which heter substituted with trap rooms. Yunan thought that fighting in a trap room would yield better results and he was mostly right, Yunan could now expertly integrate all of his active spells intobat and basically solve problems better with the extra solutions he got from spells. Other than the armor leveling up from 5 to 6 there were no other events worth mentioning.


    Yunan had just finished selling the map from level 3 when he got a message from Debauchery saying they will be back in the first floor base within a month and Yunan had to have with him a drop item from the fifth floor boss, if he wanted some training, and they were asking what took him so long to reach level 5. Yunan only responded with "see you then" and headed back to the third floor for the final battle, it took 7 hours to finish the horde this time, but it was due to the sheer number of monsters.


    After Yunan entered the fourth floor, he sped up the mapping and fought almost all the time. he was barely level 4 after a month and a half in the first three floors and that was thanks to him pushing himself and Drogon being an enhancer. Thanks to the constant fighting and the pressure Yunan put on himself for two week, he reached peak level 4 with 100 points in each attribute, that made him a peak level 6 with the help of the Dragonification armor, making the perpetual fighting much easier to handle. Thest fight of the floor took 11 hours, pushing Yunan into desperation to end it.


    The fifth floor was filled with level 5 bosses from all the previous floors, namely goblins, kobolds, boars and wolves. The bosses roamed close to each other and any fight drew more and more as time went on so Yunan started mapping and stealthed his way around the floor, it was basically one giant za with a few rooms here and there, and stone pir scattered in the emptynd.


    One and a half weekster Yunan was in the middle of the floor were a level 6 giant gori that was 5 meter tall was sitting down.


    The gori was sitting in what could be best described as a centre of a target. A circle within a circle within another circle. Outside that circle was 4 level 5 bosses, 1 from each floor, after that there were around 100 bosses, Yunan was now looking at the formation with excitement, he could really push himself in this fight. So he started by fighting the 100 bosses outside that circle, even though there were many bosses in the vicinity, they did not intrude on the other circles.


    With the help of the armor Yunan did not feel too much pressure and the fight was over within an hour, the second circle was no threat because Yunan just used fire spitting to finish them without much trouble. With only the gori left, Yunan drank his honey and ate some meals he had kept in his ring.


    The fight was an eye opening experience, for the first time Yunan saw a monster use magic. The roar of the gori made Yunan feel dizzy and nauseous, the chest drumming made him feel weak and spent, the gori could coat its fists with fire on the right fist and lighting on the left fist, it could also attack faster the more damage it took. It was a nightmare for Yunan who lost double stats thanks to his armor when hit by the debuffs from the gori.


    Let me exin before you rage on how he lost double stats, my math is solid, let''s say that Yunan didn''t have his armor on, he would lose 15 points per attribute from both debuffs, if Yunan had his armor on, that would trante to a total of 30 points per attribute, numerically, Yunan has around 100 points per attribute and with the armor its 200 because the armor has a +100% buff, after the debuffs he would have 85 points per attribute and after adding the armor it be 170. Therefore Yunan who is used to fighting with his armor on, feels he lost double the stats unlike any other person would feel.


    The gori was a peak level 6 monster while Yunan dropped from a peak level 6 to early level 6 in a matter of moments, although Yunan had his buff spell, he chose not to use it to gain more points from the fight by being at a disadvantage. The gori took all the chances it could to damage Yunan, punches and kicks were thrown, body ms and earth shaking fist pounds. Worst of all, Yunan who was trying to end the fight without injuring the gori, failed miserably as the gori dealt damage to itself simply by attacking, as time continued to tick by the gori was only getting faster and stronger.


    In the end Yunan went for the kill by disabling its mobility through cutting tendons in the hips and shoulders effectively rendering the gori able to only roar and try to either bite or headbut him. While it was down Yunan took the chance to get close and stab his sword into the back of its neck, killing it immediately, afterwards he used a healing spell for the first time since he came to the dungeon. The spell mend was not meant to heal immediately like most healing spells it was an overtime healing spell. From the dead gori Yunan found 3 different cores in its heart, one was the ordinary core as for the other two, one was crackling with lightning and the other was warm to the touch, elemental cores.

 Chapter 114: Hugs

    Chapter 114: Hugs


    The meeting with Debauchery went as to be expected, Fae asked for the special cores, before even returning the greetings, when she got them however, she stuck to Yunan like glue, keeping him in her embrace as long as she could.


    When leader wanted to see his status, Yunan looked at Balin with a ting of fear in his eyes, however when Balin saw the new smithing skill, hetched on Fae''s dress and cried like a child who got his candy stolen. However as soon as he regained hisposure he asked where Yunan got it, and Yunan told them about him mapping the floors and finding about the honey and the special challenge rooms.


    Dustan had gold coins shining in his eyes when he heard about the honey, but it was beaten out of him by Lucian and Bai who were both enjoying a cup full of honey in each hand. Yunan also got to know about the final rule about Tartarus, there is a guild base in every 10th floor, after the tenth floor one can not go back to the floors above it. For example when Yunan reaches level ten, when he goes up the stairs to reach level 9 he finds himself in level 1, the twentieth, would lead to the 10th, so on and so forth.


    Then came the training, since Debauchery only had two weeks of time to spare Yunan, they told him to forget about mapping and fight in the dungeon by day to reach the lowest floor possible, while the battle training with Debauchery would be at level 10. Effectively pushing the already tired Yunan as far as they could.


    During the two weeks of time Yunan reached level 9 and was about to fight for entry to level 10, but Leader stopped him from going forward with it, they told Yunan its was time to map out the floors he had conquered one by one, find out about all the types of rooms and sell the information to the guild. Since all Yunan needed to stay healthy was a bit of money, they told Yunan to feed everything thing except the maps to the armor making sure it had enough materials to grow.


    If the armor could project the effects of the materials, there was a chance it could learn special attributes from the monster corpses and items, the first sacrifice was Bai''s pocket watch, although Yunan was reluctant to experiment with it, due to sentiment, he finally was convinced by Debauchery and fed the pocket watch to the Dragonification armor, the result were as Balin spected, the armor now permanently projected a circle with the everything within 1 kilometer radius, even in medallion form.


    After the two weeks ended, Yunan took his time patrolling the floors above level 10 feeding as many corpses as possible to the armor, but there was no gain since most of monsters did not have the ability to use magic in the first 10 floors only bosses from the 6th floor and up to the 9th had magic cores but they were too few to make any difference in the Dragonification armor.


    It was only after 2 months that Yunan felt like it was time to move on to level 10, so after a long rest in of the challenge rooms, he emptied the chest that only had a staff with a measly 1% extra to magical spells cast using it, so it was immediately tossed in the storage to be devoured. Upon exiting the room Yunan bumped into a familiar figure who only recognised him thanks to Drogon napping on his shoulder.


    The soft "Yunan?" With a trembling voice gave Yunan a nostalgic feeling, it has been more than half a year since Yunan had seen the girl so he took off his armor just in time to receive a bear hug from her. Reina was with some dedicated members who guided those from the sun inds and helped them grow in the first 10 levels. Although thepany Reina had were mainly females, there were two male shield bearers. The hug did notst long however, as there were some who pointed their weapons at Yunan ordering him to unhand her holiness or suffer. A bad move, but neither Yunan or Reina were bothered enough to punish them for it.


    Reina who was riding on Yunan''s back for maximum skinship, keptining about how they keep treating her like a princess and never y with her, or hug her like she was used to with the Valyrians, even the bath time became lonely, and the girls only came in to help clean her up, and then left her alone to soak. Yunan had an idea for her " i can kidnap you to the tenth floor and we can have a bath together like before" he told her. That got him murderous gazes but since Reina was onboard with the idea she agreed immediately.


    She was on her way to challenge the 9th boss and try to get to the 10th level, so they had the same objective, therefore Yunan proposed a team up with her. Her teammates tried to persuade her not to trust this vulgar stranger, who kept as much skin contact with her just because they knew each other before, however neither Yunan nor Reina had paid any attention to them since they met outside of the challenge room.


    Before entering the boss room Yunan put Reina down and strode inside the room with Reina holding hands, while leaving Drogon at the door to keep Reina''s group from interfering with the fight. The boss of the 9th floor was had the upper half of a gori fused with lower body of a spider, it had 8 feet and 4 arms, in each arm it had an axe that was imbued with an element, basically fire, ice, wind, and lighting, all attack focused, but the lower half could produce webs that can be used to either trap an opponent or be weaved like an armor to resist attacks.


    Reina took out her staff and said to Yunan " i am a damsel in distress, you must keep the monster away from me", Yunan only activated his medallion before looking at Reina "what do i get for saving you, princess?", He asked as he pulled out his two short swords. Reina answered coquettishly like an actual princess "anything you desire". Yunan then cast his taunt at the gori by answering loudly " i am motivated!"

 Chapter 115: Bullying a boss

    Chapter 115: Bullying a boss


    How to bully a gori arachnid? Well that is a very tall order but not something impossible, first you have to attack before it does, out speed it and generally be such a nuisance that both halves have to forget how to cooperate. And that is what Yunan and Reina did but in a more round about way, as the taunt kicked in Yunan used his buff and a dizzying spell on the gori, the spell is not meant to affect the opposition much, more like slow their thought process, very discreet and effective.


    Reina also cast a buff on Yunan and then cast a mirror image to buzz around the gori-spider hybrid and distract it from Yunan. With the dizzying spell and two Yunans dodging around it, the gori-spider started to show signs of slowing down, just a bit, nothing remarkable, but it was enough for Yunan to get close and dismember the front two legs it used to hold and weave its thread.


    With the spider thread having lost its versatility and became only projectiles, Yunan had much more freedom to scorch the already woven threads and make the fight with the gori into a head on sh. Reina kept throwing illusion magic at the boss, stunning it and make hallucinations to effect the monsters sanity. As the monster started attacking and stabbing its spear like spider legs into the ground, Yunan climbed to its back and started breaking the chitin on back to creat a wound, then he poured a vial of putrid maw poison inside the bleeding wound, and then burnt the wound location to cauterise it preventing the poison from flowing out.


    Seeing Yunan riding the boss, Reina started to use fire type spells to attack the upper body of the boss and keep it from turning on Yunan, at the same time making the hallucinations distract the gori and lead it into a wild chase. Yunan gave Reina the thumbs up and then started attacking the joints connecting the spider half and its legs, which annoyed the gori to the point it swung its axes at Yunan breaking its own feet in the process, it was surely losing its mind, unable to focus and only wished to get rid of the nuisances that came for its life.


    Once all the 8 limbs were either broken or detached, the second faze started. With the boss now immobile and basically having to crawl to move, Yunan told Reina to use her hard hitting spells to attack while he just used spitting mes from behind the boss. The boss was literally being cooked alive, Reina had cast a fire field spell under it while Yunan was using the armor assisted spitting mes. The chitin ting did protect the boss from external damage but it did not protect its organs from heat, especially something that was draconic in nature.


    It is worth mentioning that the spitting mes spell when cast in conjunction with the Dragonification armor, does not act like any other case, where the user has to keep their mouths open to sustain the spell. With the armor it was instead casted from the mouth of the helmet, giving the caster free use of their mouths, and Yunan had to only keep supplying mana, and never worry about using his mouth.


    The boss died from cooked brain a few minutester, but Yunan did not stop grilling the corpse until it smelled heavenly, after that he shared the well cooked innards with Reina who did not mind eating even though herpanions were begging her not too. The brain gave both Yunan and Reina 5 points of wisdom upon consumption, the heart gave them 7 points in strength and dexterity, the liver and spleen added 4 points to constitution, the kidneys added 3 points to constitution and sucking the spinal cord from the vertebrae gave them 2 more points in wisdom.


    Yunan finally knew why Drogon would eat those parts first whenever it ate corpses higher than level 10. from here on out, there are edible parts in each floor boss that can be eaten to empower the adventurers faster, Yunan even spected that the higher level monsters were basically just extra points waiting to be harvested, but he also understood that there was a catch, the points does notst as long as the meat is good, probably within an hour of death one cannot extract the points from the monsters.


    When it came to looting after Reina and Yunan ate the vital organs, Yunan asked for the left over corpse and Reina could have whatever was in the chest, and she agreed readily, the chest was always worth more than the boss, at least to most adventurers. In the chest there was a staff and a golden book. The golden book looked old and blurry and did not open no matter what Reina tried so she just threw it at Yunan, chalking it to his stupidly good luck, however she demanded payment for the book, and Yunan gave her a cup of honey, first she did not think much of it, but after she drank the honey and was almost fully restored to top shape, she did not ask for more.


    Yunan gave her a 1 liter bottle for old times sake and then made the armor feed on the boos and all its items, the axes seemed to have elemental magic imbued in them so the armor gained a bit of those attributes but only minute amounts, the armor also upgraded the mace Yunan had to have sharp edges instead of being totally blunt, and the string on the crossbow was augmented as well. Finally Yunan had a proper bow made from chitin and spider silk on his back, ready for use.


    When everything was cleaned up, Debauchery style Yunan picked Reina in a princess carry, and with Drogon by their side, they took the downward spiral staircase leading to the 10th floor, they arrived in the middle of a big vige, almost a city, Following the signs, Yunan took Reina to the nearest lodging zone and rented a luxury cabin with a huge bath, and the best beds one can ask for. They nned toze about for a while and enjoy each otherspany for as long as they could.

 Chapter 116: The naked bathing club

    Chapter 116: The naked bathing club


    Inside the rented cabin was strangely quiet for an inhabited one, only the sound of running water could be heard inside the bath, where both Yunan and Reina hugged each other enjoying the addictive feeling of bodily warmth, both were silently enjoying each others presence.


    Yunan out of habit started cleaning and grooming Reina who left herself to him like she always did, the scene was serene and beautiful, unlike what would anyone expect from two naked adults in the same ce, there was neither awkwardness nor tension in the atmosphere, something many would never have the chance to experience.


    After the bath, Yunan and Reina had some good sleep huddled together, Reina was not tired but she was sprouting a new tail on the base of her spine, Yunan noticed it first because he heard a moan of pain from Reina and when he looked at her body, to find the problem, he saw the new tail sprouting, so dripped honey into Reina''s mouth and applied some on the tail itself, reducing the pained look on Reina to one of mild difort.


    It must have been the qualitative increase in Reina''s stats after eating the gori something that should have been taken slowly was elerated by chance, leading to this incident.


    Yunan left after Reina woke up to get some food and left a message in the guild for Leol, Lili and Debauchery : " The naked bathing club is assembling at luxury cabin number 5, level 10 luxury housing area, get here as soon as possible". He then returned to the housing area and rented the cabin for a full year, Yunan knew it might take even longer to reach level, but that is the longest period he could rent the cabin at once, and there was no harm in having a ce to rest now and then.


    After that he took Reina out for a good meal, during the meal they had an idle chat like they were used to. "What did you do this morning?" Asked Reina, " I sent messages to the others, Debauchery will be here soon too, so hopefully I was too slow and the others are already level 10" answered Yunan.


    "They should be, organisation tend to take the new recruits into the lower floors and let them struggle to keep up with their team to force them to gain attribute points faster, I did not like it so my organisation let me y it my own way, why did you take this long?".


    "I was mapping out the floors and doing all the rooms, discovering all I possibly could, I thought it would be more fun that way, since I was nning on going so anyway. Other than the lonely feeling now and then, it''s not too bad once I return to the base and get to feel the bustling life adventurers lead, what will you do now that you made it to level 10?"


    "I should go meet my organisation but I don''t feel like it, not right now anyway, so I''ll stay here and rx for a few more days, what will you do?". Yunan thought for a moment "probably just map out the floor and train with Debauchery for the next two weeks, maybe take some time to collect upgrade my skills, i feel i have been advancing too fast for my own good".


    "Why not wait until you reach level 20 and then work on those skills? Everyone does that, the faster you advance the more time you have, or so they think". " I think the farther i advance the longer and harder it is for my skills to catch up to my level, soni want to waste a bit of time to keep my stats and skills in sync and not have to deal with the waiting in level 20, maybe it would take longer time, but if you think about it, after level 20 taking time to catch up my skills with my level is the biggest waste of time". The duo continued chatting about this and that during the meal.


    After having their meal Yunan and Reina returned back to their cabin only to find Leol sitting by the doorstep with two girls,each hugging an arm, and he was between them feeling depressed. Behind him stood a woman that had more muscles than Dustan, she was standing straight in full armor and helmet under her arm.


    As soon as the girls saw Yunan and Reinaing they lunged at them with murderous intent, but were miserably tackled face first into the walkway, the muscled woman made a step forward and blocked the way. "Are you members of the naked bathing club?". Yunan and Reina simply walked around her as if she did not look half as threatening. "Founding members in fact" answered Yunan as received a very bitter sweet hug from Leol.


    The muscled woman was about to say something when a flying dagger flew past her and into Yunan''s shoulder. "Hold it" came a shout from behind them. Five nuns surrounding a young maiden with the one leading them having 4 other flying daggers in her hand. Yunan did not even bother to check on his shoulder, he simply opened the door and sent Reina and Leol inside " get inside and make some tea, i''ll deal with this". Yunan teleported the maiden who was behind the nuns to his side and gave her a kiss on her cheek " no worries none will die today". That earned him another flying dagger.


    After the three walked inside and greeted each other Yunan closed the door behind them and shrugged off the daggers in his shoulders, his flesh healed visibly, he took a swig of honey, and turned towards the 8 people who were now a push away from killing him miserably. "This is a member only club, unless you have been invited, personally by at least one member, please don''t bother us, now then, if there is nothing else don''t clog up the walkway, other members are expected" Yunan made his speech and stood there waiting for the reaction.

 Chapter 117: Bullying the puppies

    Chapter 117: Bullying the puppies


    On the walkway to luxury cabin number 5 in the 10th level luxury housing area, an 8 vs 1 standoff was in progress. The situation was not very friendly with 7 out of the 8 drawing their weapons and preparing for battle, but the atmosphere was broken by Debauchery who just made their way to the door, gave hugs to Yunan and were about to enter the house when Yunan asked "I thought you had a phobia of nuns", a shudder ran through the spines of Debauchery. Lucian answered for the rest " not these cute ones, the ones sent by the pope are the menace".


    The nuns went stiff at the answer, these people used the name of the pope as if he was their neighbor, not even an ounce of reverence in their voices, and by the sound of it they survived an assault from the elites of the legion, they were not to be trifled with.


    The muscled woman talked first "is he safe?" there was no hint of concern in her voice but Yunan still answered " i cannot promise you anything about what will happen inside, not even the gods dare predict that, but he will get out sound of body and mind, and much more cheerful than when he went in". "Can i go inside?" She was not asking for permission, more like fishing for a response, "all none members must strip naked before entering, and are not allowed to have clothes as long as more than 2 members of the club are present".


    That was not a rule, after all the club was just something Yunan made up to stir nostalgia into his friends, this rule was just him being mean to the nuns for attacking him twice. "But those walked in fully clothed, it''s not fair" Said one of the girls who were haunting Leol. "They are members, they only need to be naked if there if bathing scheduled, otherwise how can we distinguish between members and visitors, if you are invited however that is another thing"


    The muscled woman started to remove her armor then and there, Yunan was impressed by her work ethics, so he told her to finish undressing inside, however inside she found everyone looking through a irvoyance spell, and betting on the oue there was a pile of papers under a sign that read "YUNAN", Leol, waved to the woman telling her to only take off the armor and rx wherever, and asked if she wanted to join the betting.


    Next up were the girls that came with Leol, Yunan t out rejected them, and told them to go away when they started to get undressed with red faces and embarrassed expressions. "Don''t even bother with stripping" Yunan said "You can just go away, there is no need for you here, unless you feel like you can offer your bodies for our pleasure then keep stripping, otherwise just leave, your presence is a waste of time". That put another pile of papers under Yunan''s sign.


    Even though the girls stayed still like statues mid removing cloths Yunan already moved his gaze at the nuns and smiled "convince me" he said. The nuns stuttered trying to say something, eventually one of them said "we need to keep thedy pure, no matter what you want us to do, just keep thedy pure and safe". Although the nun did not move or even try to do anything, Yunan''s smile turned into an evil grin "well well, that is interesting, but not convincing enough".


    The nuns did not know what to say after that, they looked at each other lost, they could not attack someone who did not care about taking two flying daggers to his shoulders and just shrugged them off, as if they were nothing, furthermore theirdy was already inside and they could not teleport inside to get her or break the door to get inside, they had to negotiate with someone who had the upper hand and a grudge.


    From behind the nuns another nun walked out as if from thin air and went towards Yunan with a smile on her face, " you reek of them" she said to Yunan. He recognised her as one of the nuns that were with pope markus all the time, he nodded at her "it''s fun, what else can i do to entertain my guests". The nun stopped before Yunan and leaned in closer studying his face. "Its not manly to bully defenseless pups like them, why not try to bully me?" Yunan cupped the nuns face and flicked her forehead, " you know she is as safe as she can be with me, as for her purity, we have defiled her long ago, so there is no need for concern, tell the old man she became one of the moment he sent her to have fun with us".


    Yunan then turned around and walked to the door "send someone who does not fuss too much, and one that does not get surprised easily, you know how things are with us" he then took out the golden book from his ring and passed it to her "ask him if i can learn this, after all he already has monopoly, this one can be taken out so don''t feel shy about letting him read it". After Yunan entered the cabin, the pope assistant told one of the nuns to go inside and told the rest to go home, she however made her way to the surface world to meet the pope and deliver the message.


    As soon as the nun entered the cabin, not knowing what to do, she saw Yunan getting thrashed by everyone in the room including a dragon and the muscled woman, there was no malice in the violent scene before her, and he just took the beating with a nostalgic look in his eyes, she could tell, this was not the first time something like this happened and will not be thest, it ended rather quickly, with everyoneughing at some joke she missed.


    What happened next was unexpected for the nun, as she thought that there would nude bathing as suggested by the letter, but there was only food, drink and a very weird game of chess that was more a game of thrones than a chess tournament, she felt her expectations shatter before her eyes as everyone else was having such a good time as if the stand off earlier did not happen, inside this cabin, the wes only room for fun.

 Chapter 118: APOTHEOSIS

    Chapter 118: APOTHEOSIS


    On the surface, pope markus, guild master Martin and their closest aides were examining a golden book, something from inside Tartarus, something that was able to leave Tartarus unlike any other book, or chest.


    The book was titled "APOTHEOSIS" and its main theme, the power of faith was something that was recently introduced by the church as a source of a new type of magic, holy magic, although this book was not a skill or a spell, it can be read by anyone.


    The guild master thought it was the same thing like the book found by Debauchery, locked by certain conditions and upon fulfillment the book can be read by anyone, however since the book was already unlocked they could not sense the conditions that were fulfilled the moment it was opened.


    They could only specte the true meaning behind the contents of the book, there was something else that puzzled them. If one tried to copy the book, the copy would either vanish or the writing would disappear, and anyone not in the presence of the book forgets its title and content as if they had never seen them before, not even feeling the familiarity that is left when memory magic removes something.


    After a long week of study and spection, the book was deemed as worthless to any but the one who opened it, and since the power of faith was something the church was teaching, the pope decided to allow Yunan to learn from the book, simply because no one else could and he was curious about what the child could learn.


    The assistant nun returned to the dungeon with the book and arrived at the door to cabin 5, there were many waiting outside it for some reason but none could open the door. The nun walked to the door and found Yunan had given her permission to enter the cabin when he flicked her forehead, so she just twisted the handle and walked in mming the door shut into the faces of the two girls that were frozen mid strippingst time she was here.


    Inside the cabin were the aftermath of some epic party she thought, as she weaved between the overturned furniture, weird pieces of armor, traces of blood and the clothes everywhere. She didn''t know where the residents were until she read a note posted on a door saying " please enter the bath naked, i have a bet to win". The nun took off her habit and untied her hair, pulled her robes to knee hight and took of her shoes before pushing the door open to find Debauchery, the Valyrians, the nun and the muscled woman all inside the pool making it cramped, and were ying some sort of game.


    As soon as she entered Yunan pointed at a pile on the corner of the bathroom and said "it''s all waterproof, put something on and get in, although no one would mind you hopping in nude, there is no reason to force it on you", he then put his attention back to the game at hand. The nun did not even bother to respond and only put the book beside Yunan and said "learn it, it''s not like we can stop you, take care and keep my baby girl safe, i don''t want grandchildren while i still live, ande see me sometimes, your newest sister needs a mother figure". She did not need to specify what part was for whom, after that she left the cabin.


    Dustan had the book in his hand before most were able to understand the message was not for the same person, he tried to appraise it but to no avail, he could not get a thing beyond golden book, so he passed to Balin, who then passed it to Bai, then to Lucian, the results were the same, nothing more than a golden book.


    Reina asked the question others either did not dare to ask or did not care. "What Is the book about?". "Its title is something strange "APOTHEOSIS" it talks about something simr to faith but not as holy nor as pure" answered Yunan, who wanted to exin more before hearing an "oh-oh, this is bad, very very bad!" From Fae. That was the second time in 5 years that the Valyrians head Debauchery call something bad, and that first one was world ending so they all perked their ears to listen for an exnation.


    However Fae kept quiet, soon after Leol took his muscled guardian with him and left the pool, following after him were Reina and Lili and the newly corrupted nun. "We don''t want to know if it''s that bad, but keep in mind to tell us if you need us" with those words all non rted had left the bath.


    "Is Apophis that bad, the book he wrote is kind of reasonable?" Yunan started the conversation. "It" said Fae with pure disgust "It is the cmity that was born by chaos, the serpent that will devour the world, we alfar know of it, for it is our nemesis, born among us as mortal and then took all the things we alfar shunned and made them its own, long before the great corruption by mana, it ascended to immortality, it heralds chaos and treachery, nothing thates from it is good and pure"


    Fae fell silent as she studied the book, she closed it before passing it back to Yunan while fighting the urge to obliterate the book before it left her hands. Yunan responded calmly "this book is the path to godhood, not just simple ascension, i read the book only once and i can tell, Apophis was misunderstood, there is power in feeling, all beings have them, faith is the purest of them, clean and holy, no matter how twisted the belief, the faith remains pure"


    "The same can be said for all emotions, they are pure, each in its own way, some are negative and some are positive, some are negative, and the negative emotions dominate the world, however, ording to the book, these negative emotions have the same power as the positive ones. So using the most abundant resources for generating power is a pragmatic choice. As for chaos, it is the mother of order, for only in chaos can you find order, if there was no chaos, order itself bes inexistent"


    "I don''t know what Apophis did or will do, but Tartarus deemed it necessary for me to read this book, there is nothing inside that would lead someone to a path or skills, no this is the truth about the power of chaos and emotions, it''s an exnation, the first step into learningw, no matter what, this book is not evil nor is it good, it all depends on the reader" Yunan sighed and put the book away w is the next step in strength, and you taught me that my strength is mine alone, i make of it whatever i want, and i chose to use my power ording to my own will, be ut good, bad or ugly, i reserve that choice"

 Chapter 119: Refreshing tea

    Chapter 119: Refreshing tea


    Smiles, all Yunan could see after he finished his speech was smiles all over Debauchery, there was a sense of gratificationing from them, the most radiant smile was drawn on Leader''s lips.


    "You learned very well, better than we thought we taught you, however there is a lesson you have yet to experience, power corrupts, it seeds arrogance and dishonesty into your soul, it doesn''t matter how you resist it, it''s not going away, there are two ways to deal with this corruption, you either let it consume you or you lock it down somewhere that it can not escape."


    "I understand" Yunan knew that feeling, he has just experienced it a mere week ago when he dealt with the escorts of his guests, the feeling was good, empowering and fulfilling. No wonder many fall prey to it, Yunan thought to himself, however Yunan had a deterrent nted in him, if he was going to be arrogant in the dungeon, he was going to die sooner orter, this ce was made for the weak to be stronger, the moment you be strong, you can not advance in this ce anymore.


    Yunan had to guard against a new thing now, adding to an already long list of things he should be careful about, however that was not something Yunan was fearful about, his life was more precious than his ego, his reputation or his own image, to live happily for another day was worth more than all of those put together.


    Since the test was passed with flying colours Debauchery left the bath with Yunan sandwiched between two happy little girls, while the males were looking like they were getting tired of him getting all the skinship whenever they meet. Outside, the rest were cleaning up the aftermath of the party thatsted all week long. It was time to leave, and make their way to the 20th floor, however there was this cabin for them to rx in as long as they were still around.


    After the cleaning was over, everyone sat down and were having refreshing tea, "so what was the very very bad thing?" Asked Leol, "Just a chaos demon serpent, that will devour the world, nothing much", Yunan answered as if he was talking about the morning weather," so that book was how to raise a world devourer?" Asked Lili. "Not really, more like an introduction to bing a god, with emphasis on evil because it''s easier"


    To the muscled woman and the newly corrupted nun this was not a conversation you hear while having a refreshing tea, but they have seen some things that were worse than this so they kept quiet, however the next part of the conversation was thest drop.


    "What is with you and the ascended anyway? First you datedy luck and woo her, and now some ancient demon sent you his origin story, i am seeing a theme here, next are you going to get into the pants of a love goddess or something?" Reina was too frank as always. " A man needs romance in his life, and like all men a harem is the ultimate romantic dream to realise" responded Yunan. "I can leave a spot open for you in case you feel like joining on the fun".


    "Are you mad?" Screamed the two women as they could no longer hold it in, Yunan simply answered "not that i know of, but i am a bit lucky, why are you calling me mad anyway, did i do something crazy?". "Yes you did, you are dealing first hand with an ascended, 2 of them, you don''t make deals with the ascended, even toddlers know that, is it worth your soul to go on a date?"


    Leol face palmed "he actually went on a date withdy luck and his title is suiter of Fortuna, there is no deals involved, he is just lucky, as for the book, they got it killing a floor boss, again no deals were made, just stupidly good luck" seeing the disbelief on the girls he took a coin and asked to call it, the nun called heads and muscles called tails, "Yunan will get this coin if itnds on the side". The two women looked at him as if looking at a madman, no coin wouldnd on its side and stay still after.


    Debauchery made their wagers on the oue, the match will be decided by three flips of three different coins, and so the first coin rested sideways on a gash that was scratched yesterday in the party, the second coin leaned on a cup and the third one lodged itself between the cushions of the couch half of it showing up. The two women were stunned, they tried 20 more times before they finally understood that this guy was lucky, and he was not even involved.


    "This guy can blindfold himself, walk through a mind field and trip on a treasure trove in the middle of it, and every time he gets lucky, something that would short-circuit your brains will happen, the guild master fears him, the pope likes him, he took a goddess to a date, hatched a dragon, and entered the dungeon at level 3 while sharing his luck with 9 others, it''s not something that you should think about, or your brain will literally be fried" Dustan made it easier toprehend for the two women.


    "Alright time for you to leave,e back on weekends only, and make sure you are not followed by a dozen caretakers every time youe by, now go away i have training to do" Yunan started sending his guests away, fun was over and it was time for hard work.


    Outside the cabin, Leol was surrounded by a contingent of girls who were pushing each other to get to him, turning his mood sour as they clung to him for dear life. Reina had two older gentleman waiting for her, they nothree at Yunan in thankfulness, they were both Kitsune and were probably aware of who Yunan was. Lili had no one waiting for her, the only escort was probably an invisible assistant who Yunan waved at as she came closer to Lili.

 Chapter 120: Resting

    Chapter 120: Resting


    The training with Debauchery in the following 4 weeks focused on getting Yunan to spam all his spells and techniques, until he ran out of mana, rest for a bit then repeat the process, Debauchery did not have much left to teach Yunan, so they decided to focus on his abilities as well as his natural mana and stamina regeneration, and the easiest step, is to spend every drop of it, rest half the time needed to be fully restored and repeat into an endless cycle.


    Another thing that was to be trained, was dual casting, usually one needs to be at level 20 to duel cast, but that is how thezy ones worked, anyone who was capable of using mana is capable of multi-casting it just required enough focus and flexible mental acuity. And Debauchery thought teaching Yunan the basics would help him further down the line with dealing with multiple enemies that are smarter than the current ones he is facing.


    The spells in focus were icicle and fireball, Yunan was expected to cast those while keeping his grip on his weapons, something that is very challenging in and of itself, but Yunan still managed to cast both while attacking with some uracy, but not enough to satisfy Debauchery.


    After the month ended Debauchery left for the surface world for some business or the other, and Yunan was left alone to fight his way to the 20th floor. As to be expected from a hard worker he kept the cycle of near exhaustion at all times, even sleep time was reduced to keep his body in constant state of regeneration.


    however that didn''tst for a month before Yunan almost copsed in the 13 floor while fighting ogres and imps, the stacking debuffs of the imps have brought out most of the stress he kept suppressed with the Queen bee honey and sheer will. So after a particrly nasty fight Yunan decided to return to the 10th floor, and headed straight for a hospital, because his wounds were not healing as well as they should even after the debuffs wore off.


    ording to the doctor, Yunan''s body was over saturated with stress and healing magic and is building an immunity to healing magic, he needed to stay in bed for a week and allow his body to digest all the magic and release the umted stress, and Yunan must watch his stress levels and magic saturation, and take at least one day every week to simply rest, otherwise before Yunan''s constitution could repair his body he would exhaust his life span.


    The doctor also told Yunan he was too lucky that he did not copse earlier, as some who had umted such high amounts of stress inparison to their constitution would just drop dead most of the time, without having the time to notice slow healing or loss in wisdom, he also told Yunan that he would pay premium price for whatever nutrition Yunan used because that was what saved him.


    Yunan did as he was told and went to rest, however he passed by the guild and left a note for his friends. "nanny required" was what the note said, he also sold the useless stuff that the armor have refused to eat, apparently, the armor has a digestion limit to certain items before level up, meaning that if you feed the armor the same thing it would not grow and instead start rejecting the item making it better to umte different resources while feeding the armor.


    Back in the cabin Yunan filled a hot pool and poured honey in a ratio of 1 to 9, he then told Drogon to keep heating the bath as he slept inside it, he propped his head and rxed himself in the viscous bath, and slept soundly for the first time in a month.


    When Yunan woke up, he found Reina pulling him out of a very dirty bath water, it was not the burnt honey, because the smell did not change, only the dirty, grey and ck color was what changed, looking closely it looked like Yunan has shed his skin and changed his blood. Yunan still had open wounds when he got into the bath, and his skin was felt dry and itchy, however the wounds were fully healed without scarring, and the ufortable feeling was gone.


    "How long did you sleep in there?" Reina reprimanded Yunan as she helped him up and into the bedroom, although Yunan was rested, he had very bad control over his body, he still felt tired and groggy. "The day i sent the note, how long ago was that?" Yunan answered as they bothy down on the bed. "Two days, are you getting stupid or something? Stop trying to get killed, I still need a harem to ept me when get older".


    Yunan slept soon after drinking a mouthful of honey, it was a pleasant sleep, with warm and soft dreams, when he woke up, the first thing he did was call out to Reina, only to be answered by two cat eared girls with maid outfits, who had been hired by Reina to serve him until his body fully recovered, Yunan simply let them do their job and stayed in bed for longer.


    The girls were very eager to serve, bringing all sorts of delicacies during meals and providing endless muscles therapy as hey on bed, even in sleep they would warm his bed and make sure he slept asfortable as possible. Although that did earn him a few punches from Lili who barged into the bedroomte at night because she thought he was badly injured when she read the note, however when she found him sleeping infort, she was angry at her wasted worry.


    However she did send away the cat girls and reced them herself, ording to her, only they had the right to sleep with each other sofortably, and if he wanted to y with girls he should never do it home, and he should find a ce where she could never find otherwise he was going to get beaten up alot, Yunan only smiled and nodded his head as he immersed himself in the supple feeling and warmth she gave off as she embraced him.

 Chapter 121: Found cheating

    Chapter 121: Found cheating


    Yunan got better with each day of rest, although he was able to move on the fourth day, the morning after Lili showed up, he stayed in bed and enjoyed being pampered with love from his friends for the rest of the week. Since he was not meant to do anything, not even think, he was getting bored very fast.


    Thankfully with the good care he was exposed to, and the amount of honey forced down his throat, Yunan was back to full operations by the weeks end, so he decided to leave the dungeon and take the two girls to a date, as for Leol he had already been drowned in women the moment he joined his organisation, so Yunan told him to enjoy the situation as long as itsted.


    The date was considered a sess by the girls, since they spent the day shopping and eating and most if the evening dancing to a band of famous musicians, who yed for only the three of them, by midnight, Yunan took the two girls to the same valley he took Fortuna, it was still as beautiful and mesmerising under the dim moonlight.


    The three of themy on the grassy ground surrounded by moon flowers, holding hands and grinning at each other from time to time. Soon after the three fell asleep, after all a long day full of smiles makes it harder for one to resist sleep.


    Yunan woke up to a gentle touch on his forehead, so he opened his eyes, he was still in the same ce, still holding hands with Reina and Lili, but his head was on a soft pillow with dreamy eyes peering into his own "you have some courage to cheat on me in the same ce you dered you would steal my heart" she said to him, Yunan only smiled and asked her in return "jealous?".


    Fortuna nodded her head with a pout on her lips as the breeze toyed with her hair, just the right way to make he look even more enchanting. After a moment of thought "technically I have been cheating on you, but they are my best friends, we have been with each other for so long and have nothing to hide from each other, although I still have not kissed them, only some nude baths and sleeping together, nothing that can be truly called cheating".


    Fortuna had a smile on her face when she heard him truthfully confess, "why did you bring them here then?" Although the gentle voice was soft and soothing, jealousy was still hiding there. " I wanted you to meet them, they are good girls and took care of me when i needed it recently soi took them out to have some fun". Fortuna pinched Yunans cheeks "what took you so long toe back?" Yunan just closed his eyes and did not answer.


    Both of them knew that he needed so much more growth just to be worthy of her "every other full moon, meet me here again, i will try harder to woo you then" said Yunan with closed eyes, he could feel the blood rush as Fortuna''s heart fluttered to his words, so she only answered in a quiet whisper, "bring a bed next time, i can''t have mypetition have you all to themselves". She leaned forward and kissed him just like he did back then.


    Yunan was left frozen before he returned the kiss, sloppily, evidently he was still as inexperienced as he was after all those months passed. Fortuna liked his honesty, he was truly working hard to reach her, even forgetting to enjoy the pleasures most adventurers sought to relieve stress, he was a good boy, her good boy and she was not willing to let others have him, she would only keep him to herself.


    Before Fortuna left she whispered in Yunan''s ear as if afraid anyone would hear her, "get some experience flirting, you are a man now, you should start working on your skills to build the ultimate harem, hurry up before i decide i am fed up with you, afterall i am fickle that way".


    Yunan had nothing to say to that he simply smiled and nodded, she gently put his head back on the grass and stood up and vanished soon after, Yunan got back to sleep after checking his surroundings, there was not a fourth soul in the surrounding valley. It was getting cold in the valley so he took out a bed roll and a nket, put the girls inside and joined them, it was warm and cozy under the nket, Lili and Reina both woke up as he moved them so they got intimately closer and slept soundly in Yunan''s arms.


    Back in the dungeon, Yunan sent the girls back to their organizations and went for the the guild, he ordered asked if he could order a custom built bedroom, with thick and safe walls, air conditioning and exquisite furniture. He was brought to the crafting department where he gave them the specifics of his super luxurious room, using the rarest materials the guild had from the 70th floors, although it cost him a lot, it only emptied half his bank ount.


    ording to the banker, the guild had pumped Yunan''s ount full of gold recently after the value of the chest was determined to be much higher than the previous price, and that he was was offered a permanent 50% discount because the guild did not have enough money to cover the difference. So Yunan sent a message to the guild headquarters to a "superstitious advisor" saying "stop ovepensating me, the deal was already met with the books, i''ll keep your gifts but please don''t be so nice to me anymore". That old advisor had tears in his eyed as he read the letter, the bastard just took away his chance to umte some luck.


    Back at full health and ready to head out, Yunan consulted The ck Fate about his status. It was so much better this time.


    "Name : Yunan the wise prowler. Title : suiter of Fortuna.


    Skills : plenty


    Attributes : Strength 950, constitution 950, dexterity 950, wisdom 1000.


    Armor : Dragonification level 16, 7 weapons, new form: level 20.


    Note: good growth for a lone wolf, keep working hard."


    Yunan stepped down the stairway into the 11th floor and started the grind nning to only leave when his date with Fortuna came around.

 Chapter 122: The imp and the old man

    Chapter 122: The imp and the old man


    While mapping the 13th floor as a form of resting frombat, Yunan came upon a curious scene, there was a group of ogres, 2 meters tall, that were carrying corpses of both humans and monsters while following a soldier bee, so he decided to follow the group and watch closer.


    After following them, he found the monsters were paying tribute to a Queen bee in exchange for a drinking from a wax cup that an imp was filling from a vat, moan from pleasure then leave the room letting the next one in line to enter. Yunan queued up with the monsters, strangely, they did not attack no matter how much growling noises they made, Yunan did not even flinch as he waited for his turn.


    When his turn came the imp spoke to Yunan using themonnguage of Burkan. The imp had a very crafty and intelligent look in his eyes that were deeper than the other imps in the floor. "Human" it said "how much would you like to trade". Yunan simply gave him a ring with over 50 thousand corpses in it and an empty one, to put the honey in, the imp did not understand what Yunan was trying to trade.


    "Focus on the ring and look inside it with your own consciousness, or use mana if you find it easier, then tell me how much can i get for what is inside" the imp did as Yunan told him under the curious gaze of the Queen bee. There was a stunned expression on the imp, it then turned into pure fury and rage, "murderer" it cried as it lunged at Yunan and tried to stab him with its knife. Yunan simply grabbed the iing imp by the neck and left him hanging.


    "So your kind can kill mine without repercussions" Yunan pointed at the human corpses. " you kill, we kill, every one is a murderer, if that is a problem with you" he turned to the queen " we can fight for some honey instead of trading for it" Yunan then looked back at the struggling imp. " maybe i should sell you while i am at it, a talking monster like you can fetch a nice price".


    Yunan fixed the imp with a murderous gaze and gave it the time to think, the soldier bees were surrounding the Queen bee and ready to act in a split second, the ogres and imps from the outside were getting ready to attack too, however a voice came from the back of the room that tookmand of the situation, it had an overbearing aura. "For the bearer of ck Fate, you are quite cruel,however, it is curious that you have an armor such as this in the current age, even a dragon by your side"


    Yunan flung the imp at the older gentleman who caught it midair with a magical arm " i would be happy if sir can inspect my armor, but i must say I only came to buy some honey, only to find myself called a murderer and be attacked" Yunan pointed at the two rings in the hands of the imp "although i do not mind a fight, i think doing things in civil way is not too bad, i just hate headaches and this is shaping to be one".


    The older gentleman took the rings from the imp and took a look inside " you were too greedy my boy, a few cups should be more than enough to feed you for a week". Yunan shook his head at the man " i have a problem with this armor, it makes me consume so much food so fast, i need more before I can digest it all, so i usually need to empty such a ring weekly, the empty one that is, i drink that honey as if it was water".


    "Curious indeed" the man was now petting a much more docile imp as he stepped closer to Yunan " may i look at your armor? I might be of use to make it better". Yunan told Drogon through telepathy to grow and intimidate the monsters in the room just in case a fight would break out while he was without armor. Yunan then recalled the Dragonification armor into its medallion form and passed it to the old gentleman.


    "Hmm, draconic nature, dragon forged, 7 weapons, digestion and growth, semi-conscious, and so many enchantments! no contradiction or rejection between enchantments, mana core, spirit core, decent materials, decent craftsmanship, i could swear this thing has the touch of Mina, keep it fed and let it absorb as much mana as it can, and maybe it will evolve if you are lucky"


    Yunan smiled at the man " Mina was there when this armor was born, i call it Dragonification, because it feels like i am wearing a dragon" Yunan took back the armor from the old man and put it on, and recalling Drogon to his old ce hanging on the medallion. "So what is your overall review of this armor?" Yunan asked the man who seemed to be shifting interest to Drogon.


    "I think your were lucky to even have it be fully created, no, you would have been blessed by Fortuna herself to make such armor with such craftsmanship and materials, you need at least materials that are 3 grades higher to even think about making an attempt and about 5 grades higher to guarantee it would be somewhatplete". "We were lucky, that is without question"


    The old gentleman passed Yunan his rings back, one was full of honey while the other empty " 50 thousand cups of honey for 50 thousand corpses, let''s meet again Young man, make sure to pay my respects tody Fortuna when you meet her, if you work hard on my smithing then i might even teach you something beyond it" the old man then waved at Yunan and left the room, soon after, the Queen bee retreated to her hidden hive, and the monsters scattered as if this room had never seen such a meeting.

 Chapter 123: In a hurry

    Chapter 123: In a hurry


    Yunan was having troubles reaching the 1000 points before entering the 14th floor, even after using low grade armor and only manifesting the weapons from the Dragonification armor.


    And so after he finished mapping the 13th floor and defeating the boss, an ogre with an imp on its shoulder, Yunan got to the 14th floor and started with the mapping, the monsters in this floor were fighting by overwhelming numbers in addition to the good power each had individually.


    The monsters were jackals, foxes and dire wolves. The foxes could spit out fireballs, the jackals could howl wind des and the dire wolves could freeze the ground around them, and there were so many of them, the floor looked like it had an infestation of monsters. Another annoying thing about this floor was that all the walls in the floor could birth new monsters, not only birthing rooms had that capability.


    This particr floor required the first instance of multiple groups joining hands and the deployment of army strategies, of course not all the parties that came here would need to join an army to survive, some were like Yunan and had enough power and could make their way in this floor easily.


    As soon as Yunan got down to the floor he was weed by a group of 9 monsters, he dispatched them quickly but the sound of battle had drawn in the next wave and the 9 became 36, this kind of pressure was something Yunan looking forward to, he used his spells and the strategy he developed against the hordes his taunt used to summon to clear the path he wanted to take.


    Yunan never stayed still but kept moving endlessly forward, taking notes here and there to make the map of the floor, well until another group of meddling adventurers who thought about making him pay for saving his life after his party died, Yunan did not even care about their calling and telling him to fight his way to them.


    After the party made of over 60 people caught up with him, they surrounded him and kept fighting off the monsters, and switching tired adventurers, to keep the party alive. The leader approached Yunan in a rxed manner with a smile on his face, on the other hand the frown on Yunans face was hidden by the armor.


    "That was close there, we almost did not reach you in time. We are a rescue party that gets paid for saving stragglers like you, who have lost their party, and for a fee we can take you back to the 10th floor safe and sound without a scratch on you". Hearing this Yunan sat on the floor and said to the leader in a tired voice "how long till the next full moon?, i have been fighting here for almost a month, I don''t need your saving, i walked in here alone and i only lost sense of time recently" he then raised his voice "500 gold for the one who tells me when the next full moon is"


    The leader was now boiling with rage "we are here to negotiate on saving you, not the bloody full moon, if you don''t want to die pay up" however a young lykan female who was resting from the fight did not smell human blood on Yunan, she thought it was strange so she came close gesturing to her leader to slow down. She sniffed around Yunan for a bit before lifting her palm up and saying " the full moon is within 2 days, pay up" Yunan stood up in a hurry, and paid her with a pouch full of gold, he did not even count how much was inside, and just jumped out of the encircling, activated spitting fire and then ran towards the entrance to the upper floors.


    "He did not need it" said the lykan as she threw the pouch full of gold to her leader "this is more than enoughpensation for telling someone the date" soon after the party made their way back to the 10th floor, at least they got some corpses and cores as constion from the trip. Yunan had been fighting inside for 3 weeks without much trouble, he had a designated challenge room to sleep in whenever he was tired, and didn''t have much umted stress to return to take a good rest.


    However he nned on leaving at least one week before the next date with Fortuna to learn the flirting arts as instructed, But he was a bitte in that regard. So before he even cleaned himself up, he found the most luxurious, and reputable brothel in the city and walked inside, wearing rags that stank from sweat and faded from overuse. He walked to the reception desk and asked to meet the manager, and momentster he saw a plump,ely, well dressed woman arrive at the desk, she brought with her a wind of pheromones.


    Before the manager could say anything, Yunan said to her " I need the ten best girls you have, the only criteria is they are experts at flirting, i want them in my cabin within an hour, i will pay 10 times the price if you can do that, i need them until the full moon.", The manager chuckled to herself at the eager young man but said in a serious voice, we have a dress code in this ce, also we do not take customers outside the establishment, and 4 days is too long, the maximum you can spend with our girls is three days, why don''t youe back after taking a bath and changing, into not rags"


    "Alright then, sorry to disturb you, i will be backter" Yunan made his way back with relief in his heart, the lykan hadpensated for the time it would take the party to take him back, so he still had a bit of leeway, hence he made his way to the guild to pick up the most luxurious item the craftsmanship department of the guild had made, he was fairly impressed by the amount of work and detail they made into the bedroom.


    The final product was a miniature house, it was 100 square meters rectangle, with a 5 meter high ceiling, the ceiling had been decorated with crystal fireflies, they emitted a faint light that was not as strong as a candle but spread further, the crystals were part of a ss climbing vine that covered the ceiling, the room was separated into three sections, a fully furnished kitchen open to a living room with a library and arge 5 person sofa, a bedroom with a king sized bed and a wardrobe in the middle and arge bathroom with a big self heating pool and massive supply of water that is hidden in a storage tank.

 Chapter 124: Preparations

    Chapter 124: Preparations


    Yunan was extremely satisfied with the amount of details and luxury that was put in this portable house he intended to only be a room, there was a guarantee that nothing below level 60 can even scratch it, and even if Yunan was keen on it, there was no possibility to make anything better than this with the current resources of the guild.


    Aplimentary gift was left in the library of the living room, probably arranged for by the superstitious old man. Nheless Yunan was thankful for the three skill books and decided to pray for the luck of the old man. The skill books were cooking mastery, a therapeutic massage, and a technique that allows one to cloak an item with elemental magic.


    After Yunan left the guild he passed by the market and bought tons of fresh ingredients to practice cooking with, if he got the skill and a kitchen why not cook when he could. Once he was back at the cabin he made a simple stew, with vegetables and a collection of monster meats to sample, after all the roasting and honey he kept eatingtely, anything was an improvement.


    Half an hourter Yunan was taking off his rags and getting ready to take a quick bath while waiting for the stew to get ready, but he was surprised to hear a knock on the door, so he went to open. As soon as the door swung open the cabin was flooded with girls who pushed Yunan away and made their way inside.


    Looking at the girls hopping and skipping around in the cabin with excited voices and muffled giggles, and then at the one taking the tail, he simply closed the door behind them and kept taking off his clothes " i thought you said you do not take customers outside of the brothel, how came you followed me, don''t answer that, keep an eye on the stew i am going to take a bath, someone told me i stink, feel free to treat the ce like home, don''t answer the door, otherwise do as you please".


    The manager followed Yunan after making hand signals to the girls and stood aside as she watched Yunan clean up. "Where are your friends? It seems too quiet for a ce in need of my ten best flirting girls". "All are for me, i need to learn flirting and all kinds of techniques to make my date happy, must be done before the full moon". The manager could not believe her ears, she stood there and watched with a ck jaw before snapping out of it "seriously?"


    Seeing that Yunan didn''t make a move to contradict her, she startedughing loudly, it was not a situation that she would encounter at all, some would pay for one on one courses, and do it with red faces and stutter the words out, most would just pay to be serviced for a few nights picking up all they could learn or just buy pleasure ves after they get frustrated with the whole thing.


    "Alright" she said " just exin to me your reasoning and we can shave the price from ten times to only 5 times, deal?", Yunan dried his body with a towel and put on some light garments, a short and a shirt, and strode out of the bath towards the kitchen while saying " she told me to, my date told me to be better at flirting, there is no other reason, i thought there would be different techniques and methods one can use for flirting, so I decided to hire the best at it and see what I could learn"


    They arrived to find the girls had made a feast based on that stew he started and were setting up the table for chow time, that marked them as adventurers, because tender girls do not eat at anytime, However adventurers would eat whenever there was a chance.


    As to be expected from girls in the escorting industry, the food had the same delicate touch the girls had on them whatever they did, Yunan thought it was either a special trait or a trainable quality, either way, thesedies were worth the money. Growing up around Debauchery was a sure way to get in touch with almost all things, except intimacy, that was the only thing Debauchery took all the steps to keep a private matter.


    And so when the girls were told that Yunan was the only one they needed to service, there were all kinds of reactions, one of the awestruck ones asked Yunan what he learned about flirting, and other than touching lips to kiss he was clueless, his excuse to avoid the wave of ridicule that came his way was "I spent thest five years training in all kinds of things, i barely had enough time to notice the girls beside me grow into women".


    As the time they spent with Yunan grew longer, the girls got more and more rxed, it was not something they would do with other customers no matter what, and it took one meal for them to be fully rxed around Yunan, to the point of throwing jabs at his shorings and oddly frank personality, at least they are having fun, thought the manager.


    After the meal and for the next three days, the girls made sure Yunan was date ready, teaching him every cheesy pick up line and clichpliment they knew of, they worked on his dressing, looks and skills, where to look and when it was appropriate to touch, what gifts to buy and what to talk about. All in all, they made a man out of Yunan the boy.


    When they finally left, they made Yunan vow he would tell them how the date went, ande by for some fun whenever he was free from abusing himself in the dungeon. After sending the girls off Yunan filled the bath with water and honey and rxed there for a few hours before leaving the dungeon towards Damascus city where he bought everything he needed for a romantic dinner with Fortuna before heading to the valley full of moon flowers and setting up his mobile home in the spot where they first danced.

 Chapter 125: Date night

    Chapter 125: Date night


    Fortuna is a fickle woman, her mood changed as fast as the wind, and shr was most fickle when it came to love affairs. She had many suitors but no lover, even when she was mortal, she would cast away a man for anything that bothered her about him. Except this kid who was the first to take control from her.


    Usually most of her suitors and favoured would do anything they could to take all they could from a single meeting, almost announcing the bad things about themselves, things that they hid from her with all their might. However the one that made her meet him thrice already was totally different, he did not mind showing his silly and idiotic side, he was direct about his intentions and most iprehensibly he told her he was cheating on her.


    She has been watching him for a long time, she new about his life more than he knew about it, yet she found herself dragged into dancing to crickets and frog noises, she was kissed a most romantic kiss, without the kid even knowing what he did. When she met him a second time, he was paying back a debt, of gratitude, although he was in her embrace, he never let go of the girls beside him, and that made her jealous.


    It didn''t matter before how many women her suitors had or what they did, because they acted the most innocent when with her, thus she knew that after a single meeting, it was over, however this kid made her jealous by telling her the truth, even with her, he kept his grasp on the ones that mattered to him, something she never seen in men before, because they either sacrifice everything for love or just drown in their lust and sacrifice everything including love.


    Yunan told her to meet him, almost like an order, he did not say anything about intimacy between them even when she brought it up, and she did not know why, all she knew was that she wanted to be held like those girls, held so tightly no distractions can break their rtionship. And now she was looking at him fidgeting before what looked like a house, trying to will the moon to rise so he could see her.


    She had a smile on her face, wondering if he had learnt about flirting like she told him to, and if he would lie about who taught him. she did not wait for the moon to rise, but walked to the one who made her meet him every two months, so that she would not be bored of him, a lie she told, yet he never questioned it and gave her exactly what she wanted.


    When she released her lucky cloak, she was standing in front of him, smiling like a silly child, he however wasted no time in wrapping his arms around her waist and embracing her tightly, kissed her forehead and then led her into the portable house. There wasfort in their silence, she thought any words he could say would just ruin the moment, but as he led her to the living room and helped her sit on the sofa, he told her "It always feel like a dream when meeting you, I know it''s the cheesiest line but I do feel like i am dreaming, having you all to myself is a bit beyond myprehension".


    Fortuna had the sudden urge to kiss this boy, there were no lies in his eyes, no lust, only happiness, she heard herself say "then show me what dreams you have about me". She watched as the boy turned beet read and stutter his response "b-but th-that would ruin the p-ns i made for ou-our d-d-date". ''How adorable!'' she thought as she put her hand on his chest feeling the frantic beating of his heart.


    After taking a breath the boy said with a very serious tone "we can do both, as long as you promise to stay here longer than just one night" his smile was the most childish one she saw in her lifetime when he saw her nod at the notion. She still could enjoy the smile on his face as he carried her princess style into his bedroom, and threw her on the bed, helped her off her clothes, but instead of doing anything further, he picked her up again with that smile and took her to a misty bathroom and eased her into the hot pool with him, he made her lean against his chest, head on his shoulder, and his hands on her hips.


    " I always wanted to share a moment like this with you" he said as he looked in her eyes, she could not help but blush at the notion that he chose to get her naked for a bath instead of flirting, the man was either an idiot or a simpleton, either way he was an adorable one.


    The bath was fragrant and refreshing, she did not know what kind of herbs were mixed in, but it made her feel both rxed and rejuvenated, she looked up to him and he was closing his eyes, enjoying being close to her, as their bodies rxed with each other, they could both feel the tension dissipate from each other''s bodies as they huddled closer and closer. She made a vow to herself, ''if this is what he dreams about me, then i need to teach him how wet dreams worked''.


    An hour or soter, Yunan led Fortuna out of the bath and helped dry her, she could not help but smile at the gulping noise he made when he touched her chest, however he did not go beyond drying her up and dressing her in a veryfortable satin robe, and then put a fluffed cotton robe on himself, his moves were steady and practiced, it showed he did not have nude bath with hisdy friends just for fun. He then led her to the kitchen where she sat on a bar of sorts.


    Yunan opened a cab full of wines but took out some grape juice instead, he poured her a ss, and exined himself "I don''t like being drunk, so I do not drink at all, but i would say we can drinkter on, when all the things i need you to be sober for are done with, is that okey?", She took the ss from him and took a sip "what is it exactly that you think it''s alright to do to me while drunk? I must say, you are really a bad influence on my chastity". Bothughed at the joke.


    Fortuna watched with interest as Yunan started preparing for dinner with a painfully obvious newly learned cooking skill, as they chatted about Yunan''s life since thest time they saw each other.

 Chapter 126: Day after

    Chapter 126: Day after


    Fortuna was having a good time acting the older, more experienced woman for Yunan, something she never thought she would do, she gave him advice on managing his training and keeping a good healthy living style, she also made sure to y around with his feelings for Reina and Lili, however, she only got herself jealous of their own kind of intimacy, one that was free from all that gued adults.


    After dinner, Yunan cleared the table and returned to ce his head in Fortuna''sp and said in very apologetic voice " i am sorry i did not learn flirting properly, even with 10 girls teaching me, I tried to, really, but i can never find it in myself to use sweet words to make you feelfortable with me, therefore I will be making youfortable with me the best way I know, skinship" he them buried his face in herp from embarrassment.


    Fortuna put her fingers through his hair and gently rubbed his head "idiot" she whispered " i only wanted to tease, and you went and cheated on me with 10 other women, i need to punish you" however she just stayed like that and waited for the boy to recover himself. Yet again she had lost control of the situation when Yunan picked himself up, he told her with a beet red face " could you please undress for me?", "no" she replied, Yunan took a moment then said "then i will undress you myself".


    Although she did not resist the careful fingers that opened the knot holding the robe in ce she still asked " why do you think you can undress me when i said no to you the first time?", Yunan did not pull the robe apart but still looked at Fortuna straight in the eyes " you told me to show you what do i dream about you, i dream about touching you, about lusting after after you, especially after i was taught flirting, i can not keep that fantasy out of my mind"


    Fortuna felt her face burning, her hands were shivering with an excitement she had not felt in years, she slowly removed the robes from yer shoulder, and exposing her exquisite body underneath, although Yunan had seen it before, he still felt hot and bothered, she could see it in his face and bodynguage, this was lust unlike the pure scene in the bathroom, this was a man projecting his desire for the woman who was before him.


    She stood up and let the robe fall to the ground, she leaned onto Yunan and kissed him then she whispered e to the bed, you can look and touch as much as you want there" she went ahead of him swaying her body in the most attractive cat walk she could perform, after she opened the door to the bedroom and sat on the king sized bed, she heard a tumbling and hurried footsteps charging towards her. She giggled to herself, wondering if she could ever find a good enough reason to dump him.


    The night passed amidst passion and gentleness, under the moonlit valley, stood a lone character, watching a portable home, with a piercing gaze, even the moonlight was attracted to the character, the moon flowers swayed to please them and the grass bent to be their soft carpet, the figure stood there for a while before melting away into the night


    The morning came with the tweets of birds and happy sunshine drowning the valley and bringing with it life to the dormant ce, inside the portable house, the two love birds were leaning against each other under a nket with satisfied looks on their faces, neither of them wanted to leave the bed that felt like a sanctuary for them, they were both pretending to be sleeping waiting for the other to wake up, well until hunger stirred both of them through angry stomach noises.


    Chuckling to each other, the pair took off to the kitchen in a race to find something to eat, Yunan was a step behind and watched how Fortuna made a breakfast full of love and tenderness for him, his silly smile still as infectious as ever, however there was still a glint of lust as he watched her sway and move solely for him to look upon, he could now understand why whenever Debauchery were talking about adult themed topics, the men alwaysined how one can never be prepared for a "naked apron".


    The breakfast went without a hitch with the couple using every drop of will to keep in control until they filled their bellies, being interrupted that way was a very embarrassing thing. Fortuna was happy ying the older woman pampering her young lover and Yunan was feeling that all the pampering he had before was nothingpared to these moments here, so he took in as much of this feeling as he possibly could. After breakfast, they let loose their control again and again, wherever they exchanged a look or a touch.


    By the middle of the afternoon both were floating in the bath, holding hands and whispering sweet nothings to each other, Yunan had the bold idea to lock Fortuna in the portable house and keep her with him every night for the rest of eternity, but he was pinched and bitten for trying to turn her into a doll in his ce, the mock anger and the repentance scene was the perfect poster for lovers quarrelling.


    In the end both of them decided to at least go out for some shopping and dining, to make this official, Lady luck herself has be a sugar mommy for a simpleton, the conversation that led to such conclusion was started by, "be my partner" and ended with " i am giving you this work of art body to enjoy, freely, so use it and don''t pester me about being in a rtionship, idiot".


    Yunan did not find anything pleasing to buy for Fortuna as a gift, and ended up buying some precious materials and making the gift himself, it was a level 15 bracelet, it looked like a vine of moon flowers, climbing Fortuna''s wrist and wrapping around it, Fortuna had stars in her eyes as she watched the bracelet Yunan made for her, they ended up breaking the furniture of a hotel room, soon after.


    They spent their time having fun, eating, drinking and shopping afterwards until midnight, it was time to split up, neither of them wanted to separate, but life needed to progress, and their date was only two months away, so they went their separate ways without kissing goodbye. When he arrived at dungeon city, he bought a watch making manual, and so many watched, ranging from big to small, and fed them to his armor, making it add a time and a calendar to his peripheral vision in the helmet, there was no way he would miss his next date.

 Chapter 127: Weakling

    Chapter 127: Weakling


    Back in the 14th floor, Yunan was getting hindered by the amount ofbat he had to do while trying to map out the floor, being slowed to such an extent made Yunan think of ways to just forget about the interruption from the monsters, and the solution he found was to change the attack of spitting mes from a cone in front of him into a maelstrom that can deal damage to any monsters thate into reach.


    The new attack had a major downside, there was a lot of wasted mana, however, that also freed Yunan to pursue a new venue of training, handless casting, if one could cast multiple spells with only two hands then it stood to reason that one did not need hands to cast spells, and with Yunan having very few spells that need more than three word incantations, his ability to try and build the magical construct by ejecting mana through a certain body part was the hardest problem he faced.


    It took a month to finish the mapping and getting to thest boss of the 14th floor. The boss was a 3 headed big dog forck of better description, it was a Canidae (the gic family that has canines in it, like dogs and wolfs and foxes) with the heads of a wolf, a fox and a jackal, it gave the feeling of something you want to sleep while hugging it, but the amounts of magic that spread from its heads was not to be trifled with.


    The fight was not as easy as one can assume, for the boss could split off a body for each head when needed, and then absorb them again to recreate the 3 headed boss. Yunan did was having his work cut out for him as he dodged more than he could deal damage or counter attack. The boss had impable coordination and could spawn extra legs to attack with when it found a ce where it could pressure Yunan.


    And so Yunan decided to focus on the most troublesome head and kill it before going for the rest, the wind element head, it had the ability to increase the speed of all three bodies as well as send gusts of wind to dy or push Yunan into an attack, keeping him busy. Yunan went for the simplest strategy, get eaten, he threw himself into the maw of the jackal and discharged 20% of his mana as lighting literally frying the monster from the inside out.


    It did not end there, the next target was the direwolf, Yunan chose to coat himself in spitting mes and jumped on its back and clung to the back of its neck, promoting the fox to use its mes trying to burn Yunan and only sessfully deal damage to its own body. Yunan also took the chance to hack at its spine and try to find a location to sever its spine and disable it for a little bit. Thanks to the cloak of spitting mes, Yunan was safe from both magical attacks, since fire and ice cancel each other out, and draconic mes outssed fox mes, there was no need to guard and simply focus on the objective.


    Being burnt and stabbed repeatedly, the direwolf started to slow down, its regeneration was not as good as it was and the overall performance started to suffer as well, it ended with Yunan severing its spinal cord and letting it try to heal while ity paralyzed. The fox head was the easiest part by far, all Yunan had to do was grab hold of it and start dealing critical damage while ignoring its fire attacks.


    The fight ended after an hour of struggle, Yunan fed the boss to the armor and sat down to rest and heal himself, his mana was dangerously low and his physical body was battered bloody, an the armour had chinks and scratches on it. As Yunan opened the chest behind the boos he found a blue book called "traceless casting" it had the outrageous convenience of using the mana core as a type of storage for all the spell constructs.


    Basically the book offered the ability to create the magical construct to any spell the user has learned, only once and never again, it also omitted the chants and incantations, but the amounts of mana required to cast the spells rose up aspensation, the mastery of this skill would reduce the cast time for mastered spells, this gave Yunan another push to practice his spells.


    After learning the new skill and resting well enough, Yunan headed to the 15 floor and the first sight that weed him was a group of beauties fighting against two raging minotaurs, they were not struggling but there was an old man barking orders from a safe distance, probably their trainer, or group leader either way Yunan had a bad feeling about him, so he shed by the minotaurs and with one swing of his sword both were decapitated.


    It was easy to do this if Yunan choose to rely on his armor more, after all with the 100% buff to all attributes active, he was already able to fight on par with Level 19 monsters, him struggling was Yunan only calling the power of his own body ignoring the buff, but that extra power was still there to use at anytime.


    After the headsnded the old man rushed towards the corpses and took out his swords as if threatening Yunan to leave them alone, Yunan simply kept walking forward leaving behind 2 pristine bodies worth a lot of money, he could hear the old man scolding the girls for being too slow and not killing as fast as Yunan. That man was a type of weakling who majored in wisdom, not that he had any smarts to speak of. Debauchery called them battle vers, they buy some ves and train them inbat, then enter the dungeon with them and let them fight for him. Debauchery had a rule for those types when they made trouble for them, capture or kill the battle ves and leave the weakling to fend for himself, most of these weaklings only umted attribute points by eating monsters from the dungeon.

 Chapter 128: Mapping and mark

    Chapter 128: Mapping and mark


    Minotaurs are two legged monsters with a bull''s head, a humans upper body, and bovine hooves and lower body. Although they have tough muscles and hard hides, they can make some of the most delicious meats inside Tartarus thanks to them being omnivores.


    These few days Yunan felt like he was in heaven, the numbers of minotaurs were not as excessive as thest floor, and they gave enough struggle to justify killing them without depending on the buffs and power ups Yunan had. In addition, the mapping of the floor was going just fine. It was an actualbyrinth with many rooms, and a veryplicated pathway, that even with his notes Yunan felt a headache trying to remember where he was.


    One of the first rooms Yunan found was a boss challenge room, and after 12 hours of constant fighting, Yunan decided to retire after being unable to handle the 37th wave of minotaur bosses and needing Drogon to clean up the 38th wave. Inside the chest he found two sets of books, two had the name of topographic mapping, the other two were named topographic survey, they were all rted to mapping, so Yunan fed two to the armor and two he learned himself.


    The new skill frombining the two books was a passive skill, it would scan 100 meter radius around Yunan and indicate they out of the floor. Upon entry the floor would look like a dark ce with only one light post, only a small part of it is illuminated, but as Yunan kept exploring more and more bes visible on the map until its fully illuminated.


    Yunan took a few hours of rest, he found recently that all rooms would take 6 hours to reset after opening the chest, something he really appreciated in the 14th floor very much. However upon exiting the room he found himself face to face with the old man and his battle ves, they pointed their weapons at him and surrounded him to prevent fleeing.


    "Take my ve mark or die, you are a strong stud and i will breed you with the best mares, it''s a good life, otherwise die". Yunan felt strange, he had never killed humans before, and the first one to threaten his life face to face was a weakling, however he was distracted from his thoughts by Drogon slithering up his body to his shoulder and asking with a loud and clear voice, "can i eat him, he has so much mana linked to him, i bet he has marked thousands of battle ves"


    "What are you trying to eat? His filthy, no matter how much mana he has, not even Debauchery kills his kind, if you are that hungry, i can go buy some high level fresh monsters for you" Yunan did not even feel danger let alone fear, so he used his newest skill "traceless casting" and cast dizzying spell on all the battle ves, he cast fear and paralysis on them, and finally he used spell break while talking with Drogon. The old man watched with disbelief as he never met someone who refused his orders, but soon he regained hisposure and ordered an attack, but not one ve moved.


    They were frozen by fear and paralysis, and the spell break could temporarily scramble the effects of the ve mark, making them unable to feel thepelling power that came for the master mark. The old man looked around him and started peeing himself, Yunan was already behind him with a dagger ready to slit his throat, and his ves were not responding, and even the pain thates from rejecting orders was not present, he was cut off, and he knew death was waiting for him.


    Yunan had a bit of time to threaten the man so he used his other dagger and pierced his shoulder, the man was screaming in pain, adding to the effect of the fear spell and buying some extra time. "Unless you hand over your master mark, i will slowly slice and dice you, piece after piece, i will cut of all 5 of your limbs and feed them to you, then i will feed you your own internal organs, before i make you eat your own brain, and i will make it as painful as possible, i will not let you die, but you will live like vegetable for the rest of your life, until your parents think you are not worth the effort, maybe they will feed you to your own dogs like you did to the all those ves"


    The man was weeping, soiling himself, drowning in sweat and shivering in fear, that is why they were called weaklings, any amount of threat and they will break, push them a bit harder and they will give you everything, just to stop the pain. And so when Yunan nudged him the old man passed him a locket that was filled with runes and magical constructs.


    The master mark was the cruelest and crudest method to enve someone. It was possible to buy ve, and have them willingly serve you, some are tortured into obedience and some were marked, funny enough, the marked ves would turn on their master of given the chance, while those tortured ves were more loyal, as for the willing ves, they were the ones who would pay with their lives if there was a need.


    The master mark worked by branding the recipient with an authority spell and a pain spell, the authority would make them feel obliged to follow orders but nothing more, they could resist it if the order was too big, for example, kill for me and die for me, are not equal to the mind, the pain spell would make the ve feel unbearable pain upon rejecting orders, thus conditioning the ves into obedience. Most branded ves would eventually be killed when the effects of the mark starts to fade after 5 years, and the ves can disobey without much pain, and those are the ones to kill their masters.


    Yunan knew that there was something that public did not know, the master mark was linked to the mana core of the master, and unless he severs the link, there can never be a new master for the mark, therefore Yunan made him break the link and then fed the mark to his armor, effectively breaking the ve and master bonds it had linked to it, at that moment all the ves the old man had knew they were free. Some killed his family, and did to them what has been done to them, some piged and some just left, but not one of them stayed.


    Yunan made the armor empty the mana core of the old man and looked as the effects of his spells were disappearing and the battle ves were waking up, there was relief and gratitude on their faces, they all bowed to Yunan as an expression of gratitude, and he nodded back to them, then pointed at the man wailing on the ground, and all of them answered at once "death".

 Chapter 129: Discussing futures

    Chapter 129: Discussing futures


    The dozen newly freed ves tortured their former master with vengeful ire and fury, although Yunan did not participate, he did not shy away or leave them behind, when it was done and over with, the girls had no spirit left in them, and just stood there, with bottled up emotions they forgot how to release.


    Yunan told the girls to follow him back to the tenth floor, although they were dispirited and lost, they still fought their way to the 10th floor, they also had chosen life and Yunan liked that. They drew attention to themselves when they arrived at the base, and many who knew their owner, either came to im them and ended up almost losing their lives or came by to ask what happened, and were only answered by "dead".


    Yunan made his way to the guild and left a massage for Lili e home, i''ve found some cute girls we can have fun with", the message was meant for the pope''s assistant, because she shadowed Lili at all times, and she could take care of the girls for him. However he found Reina and Lili ying dress up in the cabin, of course before he could say anything, he was beaten halfway to death by Balin and Dustan who came by to check on him, and his progress.


    After telling the girls to go clean up and prepare food for themselves he discussed with Balin and the pope''s assistant who rmended to wait for Leader to arrive, as booty teacher for Yunan and future pope candidate, she would be better at judging the situation anding up with a solution, because joining the legion was not always a good deal, even if they are taken care of and healed.


    When Lili and Reina heard the story from the girls they had tears streaming down their faces, they hugged each of the girls with enough warmth and tenderness the dozen girls let their emotions finally burst and cried themselves to sleep, for the next week, while waiting for Debauchery to arrive, Yunan was ordered to care for the girls and was warned not to take advantage of their fragile hearts.


    Yunan did his best to nurse the dozen guests back to health and cheerfulness, heplied with all demands he could, and sure enough the girls had lost most of the mncholy in their hearts. Yunan made sure to talk to the girls about his ns for them, and what else he thought they might be interested in, and took note of their own ideas about the proposed subject. All was going well and smoothly for the girls, they were grateful for the effort Yunan was doing for them, calling it unprecedented kindness and generosity.


    How poorly were these girls treated to think someone saying please and thank you, offering food and support, was someone to be treasured and worshipped like a god. However no matter what, Yunan thought it was the minimum he could do to help an innocent drowning in such a quagmire.


    When Debauchery arrived, so came Lili, Reina and Leol who was now locking arms with muscles and smiling while the other two girls were fuming behind him, and ring at Yunan for being mean to themst time. Along with them came the brothel manager and her girls because they were here to rx and get the scoop on how did their trainee do on this date, Debauchery were more concerned about the group of prostitutes than about the ex-ves they came her to discuss their future.


    The cabin was full of happy noises and all manner of strange discussion between the most unlikely people, you could find a prostitutes telling a nun how to make a guy lose his mind with just a nce and a smile, and beside them hear an orc introducing the best and easiest acts of "discipline" to a group of prostitutes who have taken books and were writing down the wisdom of a man who knew how to inflict pain and turn it into pleasure.


    Why are they not discussing the former ves? Well there was no food ready, and no one would like to talk about big life changing subjects on an empty stomach, so the feast was ordered from nearby restaurants, because one could not possibly satisfy such a variety crowd. On the other hand, the current talk was opening a gateway to the former ves, to look forward to and possibly make a choice that would suit them better.


    During dinner, Yunan told the assembly about his encounter with Hephaestus, and the general outline of his date with Fortuna, probably to keep the prostitutes from trying to kill him for making them teach him how to seduce a goddess, as for Balin he was on another in of existence after he heard what Hephaestus said about the armor he created, but he left that ce soon after and started joking about how Yunan should start a harem of goddesses and prostitutes.


    After the big feast, the discussion was performed in the bathroom, it was a bit cramped but after that kind of feast, everyone was rxed and did not mind being around such pleasantpany. Leader made the speech about how they should choose their lives and that she could rmend any that wished to join the legion, the brothel manager stated that she needed personnel for the odd jobs as well as customer service, if any wished to join her they were weed, even Leol said he would wee anyone that wished to leave the dungeon into his home, where they can stay as long as they liked.


    In the ended 2 chose to willingly be ves for Leol as long as he allowed them to leave if they desired so, and they would only serve him and no one else. Three decided to work as maids in the brothel, while three decided to leave the dungeon and strike on their own, two wanted to join the legion, and thest two demanded to be branded as ves for Yunan, who refused them, after push and pull they agreed to work as maides only for Yunan.


    As Yunan wasining about how to bring them along with him, he was hit in the face by a bracelet that came flying from Balin, he only said "feed it, that will solve your issues".

 Chapter 130: Testing the new toy

    Chapter 130: Testing the new toy


    Yunan did not question Balin because Balin would not loe or try to destroy the armor that made him catch the attention of the best smith, therefore he activated the the feeding option and the medallion glowed with light momentster. Yunan asked the ck Fate to check the changes to the armor and the results made him think he was seeing things.


    "Dragonification, growing armor, level 18, new skills: mapping, time sensitivity, time flow in storage, master brand." Yunan looked at Balin with a very serious face. "Did you make it?" Balin shook his head " i know how, but i do not have the materials, that one was made by Hephaestus himself, we just spent thest few months trying to excavate it, those scientists are bing useful".


    People started asking questions but Yunan just touched one of his new maids and she vanished, he had willed his armor to take her to the portable house, after sometime, he brought her out, she was visibly shaken and after some silence she said loudly "how did you teleport me to that luxurious apartment? I could not open the door to get outside but everything else worked fine, although I felt like i was stuck, there was nothing that was harmful or anything".


    Sighing with relief, Yunan caressed the girl''s head to help her rx " i think we just made something impossible happen, let''s feast". Everyone in the room had read the description made by the ck Fate so they understood what happened, a storage that epts living being was born, because time was the only restrictions that made spatial artifacts uninhabitable and rejected living beings.


    However Reina always asked the wrong questions at the wrong timing "why does your armor have a very brand? Do you want to die early or something?". The threat did not go unnoticed, so Yunan patiently exined that his armor feeds on items with mana in them to evolve and grow, and that master brand had a lot of mana attributed to it, thus Yunan fed it to his armor and that is how his armor gained the very brand.


    "It''s not the same" ck Fate projected a screen "Tartarus has control over all mana inside of it, it deemed that the master brand was cruel and changed the resulting attributes from the armor digesting it". It then shed another message in Yunan''s mind "it was an apology for telling dad about your armor and status without asking".


    "What is the new brand like? If it''s as bad as the original i will kill Yunan before he turns evil" Lili had her priorities jumbled like always. However the screen detailing the new armor skill made Yunan feel like he was the target of a bad joke. "Master brand : can only be initiated by the ve to be, the ve must announce loudly their wish to be bonded to the master while touching the brand, the brand can only be broken by the masterter on."


    Another screen showed up. "The ves can have different types of bonds that links them to the master, it all depends on what the ve announces, all ves however will have a mental and emotional link to the master. All ve are bound to the masters will and all his orders in the domain of the bond will be apanied bypulsion toplete them".


    Yunan felt a dense sense of crisis as he saw the glinting eyes that looked at him like the newest toy in the orphanage. Before he could think "oh shit" to himself he heard Fae make the most repulsive voice since he met her "boys and girls, let us experiment with this new toy" and just like that the, solemn bath scene turned into a chaotic race of who could touch Yunan''s medallion first.


    Being tainted by Debauchery within a single dinner was a record for Yunan, seeing up to 3 dosen people trying to be his ves was not bad, but all of them only wanted to y around, and so started the longest night Yunan had and the most fun Debauchery had telling people what to do and say in ages.


    As a result Yunan was currently able to recruit 4 types of ves, affection ves, split in two types: romantic ones ;who pledge to only love Yunan and are not subject to anypulsion, no matter what he orders them, they would only feel a slight obligation to make Yunan feel happy when he is feeling down like he was now. The second type was the sexual type, those abhor the touch of other males to the point of vomiting at the lightest contact, depending on how serious was the pledge, however if told to service another male they would do so, without hesitation. They would also feel like having sex with Yunan at all times was their drive in life. The affection ves had a pink heart shaped mark on their left chests


    The second type of ves is worker ones, they can either be general servants or specify a certain task, the feeling they get also depends on the strength of the pledge, and the same for the degree ofpulsion they feel towards Yunan''s orders. They have a blue marl shaped like a broom on their arms


    The third type of ves is soldier ve, they do battle following Yunan''s will and ording to the strength of the pledge, they can die for him. Those have the strongestpulsion, and they will act any strategy that Yunan devisees even if it meant bing part of the first two types of ve. They have red crossed daggers marks in their wrists.


    Thest type of ves are those who offer their entire being to Yunan, those are the most closely linked to Yunan and offer no resistance to any order he gives, the pledge is the same for them and does not rely on the strength of their conviction, if they are willing to offer themselves to Yunan then the mark takes it seriously, even if they thought about only a part of them belonging to him. They understood Yunan best of all and did not dare blink before he told them to. Those had a ck mark on their napes shaped like like a butterfly knot.


    Since Yunan only had the power to dismiss his ves, he felt like this would be the newest piece of entertainment Debauchery will use to relieve boredom for the next few generations. Well he thought to himself he should make the heart of Tartarus pay for itter on.

 Chapter 131: Meeting mother

    Chapter 131: Meeting mother


    After the fun of testing the effects of the peculiar very mark, Debauchery told Yunan to rest that week and wait for them to start the next phase of training, therefore Yunanzed around in bed and toyed with his spell casting, but did not train seriously.


    Yunan also found out that Lili was getting jealous of the females who were only growing in numbers around Yunan, especially when she heard about the prostitutes teaching him, when he kept her in bed one morning to ask her what''s wrong, she confessed that she was scared of being left alone, because the legion still feels strange to her and the people there are only good to her because of her father, to that Yunan made her a promise "if you ever feel lonelye to me, i will hug it away anytime"


    Lili was really a spoiled child, and Yunan spoiled her more and more simply because he liked the innocent part of her, something that he knew would disappear sooner orter, therefore he kept that innocent part spoiled and took care of it. The same can be said for Reina, the promise of letting her join his harem when she was old and lonely was to the same effect, keeping the innocence alive.


    The week has passed peacefully, other than the prostitutes showing up now and then for what they called the most addictive touch, they would pledge themselves to be pleasure ves for Yunan and then let him caress their bodies, some would faint from the raw pleasure it gave while other attempted to take him for themselves, not that he would mind having some exercises to increase his pleasing prowess. And that is how Yunan became a regr customer for the brothel.


    When Debauchery came back they sent Yunan to the 19th floor, they told him he had one week to defeat the boss without leaning on the buffs of the armor, and therefore Yunan made a surprising decision, instead of going to fight monsters himself, he sent Drogon to hunt and find honey while he fought the boss without leaving the room. The boss was a Goliath, a humanoid monster but with the proportions of a giant, it was fast, strong, and had the ability to control all the elemental magic found in the dungeon floors so far.


    Yunan chosen method of training was to fight the Goliath into a stand still for hours on end and lowering the buff of the armor ording to his advancement, thanks to the monsters Drogon hunted and the honey it found Yunan only needed 4 days to fight it without armor, and used the next two days to finally kill it, however he did not move to the 20th floor, the armor still was not full from eating all the monsters after level 15, he chose to feed his armor and stabilize himself before crossing to the next part of the dungeon the most attractive 20th floor.


    Yunan spent thest day taking advice from Debauchery about "traceless casting" and his other spells and skills to push them to mastery a bit faster. They also told Yunan that his 20th floor and higher training would need to waiting for them to return from another attempt at reaching the 80th floor, if not they would only gather materials to sell and drown their sorrows.


    Yunanughed at the notion of Debauchery failing, he knew very well that they did not feel ready to cross the threshold yet, and that is maybe why they still did not cross it, also they have been together only recently, they are all thest remaining members of their teams, and they only met each other through coincidence, therefore even if they fought hard in the 70th floors, they still had the feeling of needing to be much stronger than they are, otherwise with how the power level ramped up in the dungeon, they would be annihted with their current strength.


    With the next full moon arriving in only a few days, Yunan started working on nning his next date, but stopped a mere hourter, he did not know what to expect, he did not know what is expected of him so he just made sure to be physically and mentally ready.


    The same time and the same ce, he waited for Fortuna to show up, and he did not have to wait long before he found himself being hugged from behind and was already drowning in affection, inside the house Fortuna was curious about the new maids, but she said nothing, she just let Yunan order the two girls around to pamper them in every way possible, it felt great being fawned upon as a couple, instead of just himself.


    That was the case until Fortuna sent the girls away, because she wanted to pamper her baby boy herself, ultimately making him spill out his misadventures and the newest toy he got, and making a few pledges herself to try it out, they spent the whole night in whatever master-ve fantasy Fortuna thought would be fun.


    In the morning, Yunan did not release Fortuna from hetest ve status, and made her promise to follow him today, instead of going away after the night was over, although she did not know what he was thinking she agreed to keep himpany until he told her it was okey to leave saying "silly boy, you just have to ask and i will obey better than any ve, thisdy here ispletely yours"


    With that in mind he took her to see his mother, he did not introduce her as his partner or lover, he just said she was someone who he wanted to meet his mom, Fortuna however introduced herself as Luna, and got along with sister Theresa almost instantly, one was a mother and the other was the sugar mommy to the same boy.


    Yunan ended up left hanging and did not get as much mommy time as he wanted, however by midday his mom secretly told him to marry this woman faster than he is nning, she could feel how much this woman cared for her son, it did not matter to her if she was older or younger, she just saw their happy looks when they were with each other and epted this stranger in her family. However before the end of the visit, she asked if Fortuna knew about his secret lovers, meaning Reina and Lili and Fortuna told he that she wees anyone who loved her man to join them.


    Fortuna amd Yunanter returned to the moonflower valley and spent a few more days there enjoying their time together, however before they separated, Yunan received a new mission, "taste a virgin" Fortuna vanished with her words still hanging on Yunan''s ears before he could protest or even think about it. He retreated back to the dungeon, and killed his way to the 20th floor feeding the armor until it couldn''t eat anymore.

 Chapter 132: Taken 2

    Chapter 132: Taken 2


    Back in the dungeon as Yunan was preparing to move over to the 20th floor, he was approached by some foxmen who said Reina and Lili were kidnapped when they were heading to cabin number 5 and ording to the legion, they were remnants from the cult, they had smuggled the girls outside of the dungeon and have lost all traces soon after.


    Yunan did not ask anymore but immediately made his way to the surface, and used all the mana he could on the armor to use the pocket watch, to the maximum range of 1000 km radius possible for the armor, and only sustaining the scan for 5 seconds per city to let the ck Fate find their mana Imprints.


    After 2 days of search Yunan found them underground in a base that was at the edge of the continent, near a coastal city, the underground base had only one entrance that was in the city, and Yunan soon found it thanks to the mapping function. Having exhausted so much mana, that even the ck Fate shared its reserved, Yunan was pissed, not only did they take away his friends they made him waste so much time.


    And so, Yunan recovered as he made his way into the city hideout, he used the first gift Fortuna gave him lucky cover, and walked to the hideout, first he told the armor to drain those inside from mana and then eat them, there was no need to ask questions, keeping the girls under lock and key and guarded heavily was a telling sign on its own.


    There were no doors that could be locked when faced with lucky cover, all Yunan did was walk by and they would open, and anyone in the range of 15 meters was drained from mana, then eaten by the armor, Yunan did take a few detours to get everyone in the base, andnded quite a few good items and skills from the offerings.


    Yunan entered an office that was hidden behind a hidden room, as the door opened on itself the man inside was on alert however he was drained soon after and he could barely think let alone cast magic " who are you and why did you take the girls" Yunan was already behind the man with a dagger on his neck, however the man stayed silent so Yunan let the armor eat him, and rummaged through the papers on the desk.


    This was a small independent unit under the order of one of the heirs, apparently there was one who faked his death and ran back to this unit, to n a revenge on the church, the heir himself was deepest inside the hideout, hidden too well, even for his subordinates, and them taking Lili and Reina was only a happy coincidence when they heard about the legion treating a spoiled child like a queen.


    And so Yunan reactivated his lucky cover and went on harvesting mana and people as well as the asional items, this base did not have a treasury probably because the heir did not trust his subordinates, it did not matter much, Yunan was still gaining tons of benefits as is, the storage items were used to expand the already huge space the armor had, the mana went to increase the effectiveness of the enchantments, and added to the fine tuning of the buffs Yunan was receiving from the armor, the materials went to enhance the armor even if it was a tiny bit, all in all, this was a lucky encounter for Yunan.


    After a few hours, Yunan arrived at the room where Reina and Lili were detained, they slept peacefully under the effects of some drug, Yunan brought out his maids and told them to care for the girls until he had the time to visit, he then teleported the 4 girls back to his portable home. Soon after, he had taken down every single person except one who was hidden very well, Yunan had to pump some mana into the armor''s mapping to find the magically hidden path to the room, However he found it was an isted room that can only be essed with teleportation.


    Afraid that he might trigger some trap, Yunan made both the armor and the ck Fate absorb all the mana they could as fast as possible, if there was a trap, he would just have to endure it, however there was no traps, evidently the guy did not expect anyone to find this ce let alone teleport to it, nheless the room was drained of mana within moments, and before the heir couldprehend there was another in his hidden room he had ran out of mana.


    Without mana, even treasures could not save his life if they did not know when to save him, and the idea of him having a sentient treasure wasughable, the amount of items and luck used to create a semi-sentient armor by the best mortal smiths in thend was too heavy to pay for any other organizations, even the idea of building something so expensive as a defensive item was absurd.


    Therefore Yunan walked to the stunned man trying to activate spell after spell, drinking mana potions only to feel like he poured water on sand, no traces of mana in his core, with a swipe of a hand the man was naked and every magical item in the room was gone, even the bound ring on his finger was gone.


    The man stuttered, begged for mercy, bargained with money, ves, women, and anything he could think of, however he was tied up and thrown into the portable home to be drained of every drop of mana his body regenerated. Yunan left the room afterwards and went straight to the dungeon, he made the guild build him their most expensive prison cell, with mana drain enchanted on it, he them put his prisoner inside and sent a message to Bai through the guild " i have been cleaning up after you,e find me, i need your assistance". Reina and Lili woke up after a few days of sleep inside the portable home, they proceed to sleep more and made themselves at home.

 Chapter 133: Greater bond

    Chapter 133: Greater bond


    Yunan left his prisoner to Lili and Reina to practice interrogation techniques on him, and went ahead with his daily routine of clearing and mapping the floors as well as feed his armor to bursting. Nights on the other hand was dedicated to Reina and Lili, although they didn''t know they were kidnapped, they still wanted to be fawned upon and spoiled rotten by Yunan, if not their best friend then who else.


    After finally reaching the early level 20, from feeding on the Goliaths he killed daily to gain as many extra points as possible, he was happy to know both he and his armor have reached level 20 and Drogon had reached level 40, the freedom to go and hunt it experienced recently was motivating enough that it only met with Yunan at nights to help with cuddling the girls.


    2000 points, a number most adventurers dream about for most of their lives, and most never reach it, ording to the guild 70% of the adventurers fall before reaching this milestone, but Yunan did not feel his life was threatened even once, he himself made things harder for himself, mainly because he did not want to reach a height that did not correspond with his skills and end up dead because of his own hubris.


    Yunan decided to walk into the 20th floor before going back to the 10th floor and retrieve the items he left in cabin 5, he then went to the brothel to say goodbye and show his gratitude for the prostitutes who took care of him, even if it was their job, they certainly made him feel like they enjoyed their time together too. Descending back to level 20, Yunan did the same thing, found luxury vi number 5 paid the current resident to move out and took it for himself, he then left Leol and Debauchery a note about the change of residence and made his way to the new vi.


    The vi had a green front yard and massive garden in the back yard. Yunan called the girls from inside the portable home and let them loose in the vi which they seemed to like, he let the girls take care of the cleaning and cooking amd went into the master bedroom to have some rest. Soon afterwards Lili and Reina strode in the bedroom still wet and only wearing some bath robes, recently they seemed to disregard the fact that Yunan had experienced the touch of a woman and was no longer the pure thing he was before.


    Yunan watched as the girls, took of their robes and drilled into his bed on either side, he was painfully aware how much the girls have grown ever since he started getting intimate with other people, he did not hide his response to their bodies from them, they have seen it enough times before, however this time, they were the ones causing it.


    "Why do you keep doing this? Don''t you think i might turn beastly on you two? I am suffering here" however the response he thought wasing, a punch and and insult, did note, instead what he heard was "its not like we are gonna reject you if you try anything, we said it before, we belong to you and you belong to us, that does not include Leol, he has been cheating on us so much ever since we came to the dungeon"


    Yunan did not know what to say, so he kissed both girls and hugged them tighter " i cheated on you girls too, i even have a partner that i will meet regrly, i have two ves that i do not mind ying with, and then I might still eat you both, is that okey?". " As long as you keep spoiling us rotten you can do what ever you want, just don''t forget about us and we are happy". "Forget about that, tells us about your dates with Fortuna, with details, not the vague bullcrap you gave to the prostitutes, we want to know everything thing".


    Yunan sighed and said "her name is Luna, and Fortuna is the name she chose after she ascended, because Luna was the name of the moon goddess and she was very protective of the name for some reason." Yunan started telling the girls who were shocked at times, giggled andughted at some point or another, and went "is that even possible?" With wide eyes as they heard his tale, they spent a day and a night talking like this discussing this and that, with the tale of the date long forgotten and pushed aside for other things more rted to the three of them.


    It felt like they were back at the academy, after a long tiring day of training, and all they could do was snuggle up to each other and discuss nothing and everything, they talked for the sake of talking, there was no other thing to consider but discussing whatever was on their minds at the time, and with that, all the pent up feeling Yunan had eased itself away, and he found himself epting the fact that there was no harm in looking at these two mates of his like the beautiful women they are, for they have epted him as a man and looked at him that way too.


    The feeling of losing their bond did not arrive, but their bond grew stronger, sometimes moving on and letting life take its natural route was not bad, in fact it helped promote the rtionship between the three of them into a better ce, a ce that many childhood friends are too afraid to reach for fear that getting their would cost them their old reliable rtionship. In reality, having such an amazing trust in each other is something rare and will not suffer from what most fragile rtionships go through just due to the arrival of a new friend or acquaintances


    Yunan finally understood that there is something between the three of them, a bond so strong, it is not effected by any other factors, not even love could shake it, they had each other to fall on when there was a block on the path, and at this moment, their bond just grew thicker because he epted them as women who attract him and stir his lust, not just the cute ssmates he had before.

 Chapter 134: Exploring

    Chapter 134: Exploring


    Yunan, Lili and Reina stayed in bed until the next morning, they left the vi feeling refreshed and joyful, they went to the guild branch and left messages for their organisations to pick them up sometimeter, although Yunan wanted to keep both of them close to him, he was not selfish enough to jeopardize theirmitments.


    They met leol as he wasing down from the 19th floor, finally Yunan was faster than an organisation, and he did not miss the chance to rub it in, none of the Valyrians were slow by any means, reaching the twentieth floor within two years of time is quite an effort by any organisation, and Yunan did it alone, of course the entourage Leol had with him called Yunan a liar and a show off, prompting him to literally throw some of the overbearing ones out of a window.


    Leol was now having an entourage of chicks following him wherever he went, even the pretend rtionship with muscles did not save him, and with him arriving at the 20th floor the entourage got bigger, most of them are girls from noble families who are dying to get their mittens on an heir of a powerful and neutral family to bind their families to him, although Leol is very liberal with them and does not refuse them all the time, he was very adamant about not getting into any kind ofmitment, he still pushed his friends to a secondary priority, out of self service.


    Yunan was not the kind of guy to believe in blind loyalty but he was still a loyal guy, as long as no one pushed him aside, if Leol was not as enthusiastic to keep the team together, Yunan would not begrudge him, however he would also not stick to the man either, if even the dull Lili noticed Leol was distancing himself from them, Yunan was sure to have noticed that too.


    No matter, Yunan still held a feast like he always does with guests and made sure everyone had a good time before tantly sending the guests away because he wanted some time with his girls, after cleaning up he took the four girls into the bath and performed his new massage therapy skill on them, he needed to use the skill on others and not just himself, that skill got a warm wee and was to be a permanent addition to all group baths from then on.


    The twentieth floor was the first safe zone in Tartarus, a floor with no monsters in it, it had a vast jungle and some grassy and flowery ins, it hadkes and rivers with small animals one can hunt for food, including hares and fish and some fat fowl, the floor wasrge and no one cared about exploring it before since most of the edible flora and fauna were nearby the stairways, and the town that was built by the guild had everything one needs so there was no map of the floor since the guild did not pay for maps of the safe floors.


    The floor also had a crystal ceiling that mimics the sky on the surface, time of day, brightness, or the shining of stars, all was to make it as close to the surface as possible. It was a pretty good ce for taking it easy so Yunan took Reina and Lili on a week long trip around the floor, they sampled the exotic fruits and animals, they swam in thekes and soaked in the hot springs, they found caves full of jewels and an especially beautiful obsidian cave that led to avake.


    Inside thevake they found a cluster fist sized lotus that were blooming, instead of seeds its leaves surrounded a fiery orange fruit, Drogon dove in theva for a swim and picked only one fruit for himself and one for each of the three teenagers with him. The fruit was not warm like they thought, it rather felt like it had been cooling in a spring, it tasted sweet and juicy, it had a fleshy feeling but still melted like chocte in their mouths.


    The fruit was a full 200 point increase in attributes, it made them feel full and congested, like they had eaten too much and needed to digest it first before they could move again. After leaving the cave they chanced upon a milky white pool, brave like always, Drogon dove inside and came out sparkling like an obsidian sculpture, Yunan put a finger in the milky pool and felt like his body was too dirty for his finger after pulling it out, and so the three dove in. ording to the ck fate, the pool was surrounded by a type of rock that filters water into a cleansing salve that can suck away the damaged body tissues and impurities.


    Yunan ended up digging the whole pool out and put it into his storage space forter use, after some thought, Yunan returned to theva cave and scanned it, not obsidian but it was called a fermentation rock, it can ept all kinds of waste and distill it into ava wine, a naturally cold beverage that is as nutritious as honey, the fruit lotus was something that must have been dropped there by an animal who came by the cave before.


    Yunan was feeling very bad that he could not dig the fermentation rock out thanks to its sturdiness, so he left with the girls in search of something they could take with them, however Yunan was told by the ck Fate that if he returned the milky pool he would be rewarded by Tartarus, Yunan did not understand but he still thought that if the ck Fate asked for it it must have some meaning to it. As the trio returned to where they took the pool they found a number of small animals anxiously running around the crater Yunan left behind.


    Yunan understood immediately why he should return the pool, this was the ce where the animals cleanse their bodies so that when they are hunted by adventurers, they would provide the best and cleanest meat. As soon as Yunan put the pool back the animals jumped in and out before running away. The ck Fate conveyed the gratitude of Tartarus and the promise of reward, however Yunan dismissed it and kept wondering about trying to get his luck to activate and shower him with good stuff.

 Chapter 135: Hidden room

    Chapter 135: Hidden room


    The exploration went on seamlessly, the trio, Yunan, Lili and Reina collected more super fruits like the lotus one, by the end of the week, each of them had gained a total of 500 points per attribute, simply by digesting the fruits, meat and wine they found during the trip.


    ording to the ck Fate, those items were designed for the flora and fauna in the floor to keep them healthy and benefiting to the adventurers, and they could only digested once per person.


    Yunan and friends found the wall of the floor while following a worker bee, and Yunan filled his ring with honey and gave some to the girls, he however traded for the honey with some monster corpses that his armor did not digest, making the Queen bee more tolerant of the amounts they took. Afterwords, following the wall to trying and find some rooms almost ended in failure, because all three of them got bored and were about to head back when the ck Fate led them to section of the wall where a hidden door opened up for them.


    After stepping inside the room, they heard the sweet voice of a girl weing them into the room, they found a hologram of a little girl sitting on thep of an old man who was toying with some metal and shaping it in the air above his palm like y dough.


    The old man conjured a table for four and gestured to the three to sit, Yunan took a seat and pulled out a bottle of wine and a bottle of honey, some fruits and meats he had collected and put them on the table and poured for the old man, when Reina and Lili saw that they also sat down and snacked on the food, if Yunan was okay with the old man, there was no danger on them.


    The old man did not reject the food and drink, and since his guests did not speak he asked first "you keep surprising me, not many dare steal from me, are you nning on getting rich by collecting those items?". "Not really" Yunan shrugged, "i have too much money, i don''t think i can spend it, therefore i never take wealth into ount when trying to pick things up, i usually think about those near me who will make use of them, and how good it would be if i could have such a thing at my beck and call".


    "You must have thought about the reward when Fate told you to put the pool back, otherwise why would you do it?" The holographic girl seemed a bit angry at Yunan " its not usual for Fate to interfere with me, it has only done it twice, because of a certain girl could not keep her hands to herself". There was an actual blush on the holographic girl, she wanted to retaliate but Reina talked before she could, "what rewards?, Yunan did not mention any rewards for returning the pool".


    The room went silent for a moment before the old man talked again "this is the second favour you have done for me and i have yet to reward you, can you tell me why you wanted the fermentation stone and cleansing stone?". Yunan took out his portable home, for some reason he did not think it would be too big for the room, and summoned it based on that hunch, the portable home floated above the table, looking like a ck rubic cube. The old man took hold of it and examined it.


    " I want to upgrade my mobile home with the ability to makeva wine and cleansing milk, if i could add in some of the fruits like the lotus fruit, i would be happy". The old man did not lift his eyes from the portable home as he said "you should have asked your talented smith to make it for you, this only looks good but is too shabby to surviveter on, tsk tsk so much wasted materials, not even 1% of its potential is drawn out".


    He then pulled the maids who were inside the portable home and asked Yunan " who gets into this house?" Yunan pointed at the two girls "only the most important people to me, for others i have a rental property in the base". The old man looked at Yunan for a moment before giving back the portable home "feed it to your armor, i''ll make you a better one, that would make us even". Yunan did as he was told and fed the portable home to his armor, it instantly shot up to level 30, all its buffs and attributes were strengthened immensely.


    The house Hephaestus made was formed from the same material he was toying with when Yunan and party walked in, the new house looked only to be 3x3x3 meters from the outside, but the inside was different. It had a bathroom with tworge pools, one was milky, one was boiling water. It also had a nursing room with a golden pool inside it, with many herbs, oils and items that are used for medical care, it had a kitchen with a freezing space and preservation space to keep all food rted items from going bad.


    It had a cer with ava wine pool and lotus fruits of all kinds of colors and shapes floated on the pool, there were alsorge vats where one can store the already fermented wine and make more in the pool. The house also had a vast botanical garden, with all kinds of flowers and trees and small animals that would insure it was aplete ecosystem. There was a study with a big library, there was even a music box with changeable tunes and recordings.


    The house had multiple bedrooms, a temperature control system, fully functional waste disposal, amunication system, a control room that was adjacent to the master bedroom, it was equipped with any and all things Yunan could think a house should have and more, but what took Yunan''s breath were the enchantments.


    There were basic ones, invisibility, indestructibility, independence from the outside environment and the luxury ones like intruders are teleported into prison cells, it had the ability to sustain life even inside any kind of storage, it could collect the items needed for function directly from the storage space it is in or from the environment if it was outside, size changing function and many more that were left for Yunan to discoverter on.


    Before Yunan left Hephaestus gave him some instructions "put water and monster corpses in the same storage ring as the house, and it will take care of itself, there is a genie that runs the system, call it and change what you feel needs changing, also don''t keep sleeping in the challenge rooms, you make them harder for the next challengers if you stay there after you open the chest, it calibrates the new challenge after you, instead of resetting to default" he waved his hands and all five found themselves inside vi number 5, they did not even feel the usual effect of teleportation.

 Chapter 136: Quack doctor (1)

    Chapter 136: Quack doctor (1)


    The 5 looked at each other then sighed collectively, meeting such an old man was like a dream, real and fleeting. However the maids were feeling so because they did not perceive who the old man was, they thought he was just a charitable powerful one.


    "So that was Hephaestus and the heart of Tartarus, so underwhelming, it feels like meeting with the grandpa next door and his spoiled grandkid", the words casualty spouted by Lili made the maids clench their hearts, they have met the supposed Fortuna and she acted like a an older woman being swept up by a youngster, so they did not believe she was an actual goddess, but now they knew, they have met two gods within the span of a few months.


    "What was that room anyway?" Asked Reina, she was more concerned about checking if there was anything missing in Yunan and Lili. "Probably the room where Hephaestus monitores the whole dungeon, those doors were probably a spatial shift spell" answered Yunan while he too checked on all four of the girls. "I thought spatial shift was impossible or something, they could not figure out the mathematical model for it" responded Lili.


    "I think it is possible to do with enough power, the whole point of spatial shift is to teleport without incurring any side effects, by changing the space around the person instead of relocating the person, it''s simple to think about and very hard to solve with mathematics, anyway let''s go check out the new ce, i hope it''s as awesome as it was when it was building". The maids who were stilling to grips with the reality of having been pampering a goddess, and just finished meeting with the most famous god with adventurers, they were surprised by how the three of their masters did not even feel supreme gratitude for getting an item built especially for them by a god.


    What else would they think is okey, thought the maids to themselves, but then remembered one of them was actually dating a goddess and the other two grew up with him, they must have seen enough to numb them to surprise or wealth, by the way how much would they get if they sold information about the portable home made by Hephaestus, just that notion had their brains crash because the amount of wealth was too high.


    Yunan walked to the master bedroom and made the portable house look like a side wall and ced it there, opening the door in the side wall would allow one to enter the portable home, and there was amunication hub by the door for the maids if there was someone visiting vi number 5.


    Inside the portable home was as vast as Yunan imagined it, the garden was a literal forest in the back, the bathroom could entertain hundreds of people, the nursery room had enough space, beds, and materials for a field hospital, there were some medical skill books inside there too, the kitchen was big enough to open a restaurant, and the rooms were unlimited in number, ording to the genie, the house did not have a limit on space and could amodate an army of thousands of humans without much trouble.


    Everything was provided in this house, well anything that Yunan could ask for, themunication system was genius, the control room was easy to use and Yunan only needed to recruit a doctor familiar with pharmaceutical work, a cook to deal with his meals and a masseuse to take care of him during baths, the current maides volunteered for the kitchen work and bath work, as for the gardening work and cleaning they were automatic functions of the house, the genie told Yunan to wear the new house as a ring or an essory so that he could be teleported inside if there was a critical moment.


    Yunan was very pleased with this piece of art work and decided to live there as long as he was not in a base, taking his time to have meals and rest properly, like any other adventurer. In the next few days, the organisations that Lili and Reina belonged to came to pick them up, however they spent each and every weekend after that soaking in the new baths, drawing some rumours and the ire of their organisation for affiliation with an outsider.


    Neither of the girls truly cared about such things, they even had their escorts follow them inside the vi number 5 to make sure there was nothing wrong that could happen to them, for the next three weekends. On thest week before the new moon and the meeting with Fortuna, Debauchery had returned with varying degrees of injury and lost appendages, they were brought here by Leader who was the most intact with only both her arms cut off.


    The rest of Debauchery were floating beside her like an exhibition of what would happen if someone came close to the woman, however with them they brought their own healer who seemed to not fit the profile of people who would associate with Debauchery, she looked modest and reserved, however that was only until she got inside the vi, and only those trusted by Debauchery were left inside.


    Inside the house, the woman got naked almost as soon as the door closed behind them, she introduced herself to be the private emergency healer of Debauchery her name is Anne and she was a level 70 adventurer, who only came to the twentieth floor to receive her newest apprentice, one that she taught for thest 5 years like Debauchery, she did the same because Debauchery were not getting injured during that period and they were he most lucrative business in the dungeon.


    Anne was an entric type like Debauchery and unless it was either her or death, most adventurers on that level would chose other options. That is how Anne decided to go get herself an apprentice while Debauchery were raising their own. Yunan brought Debauchery and Anne to the nursery room in his new portable home, the woman stood there, rooted as she looked at the high quality goods and system in the room, she refused to budge from the room and sent Yunan to bring her apprentice from the guild with Reina and Lili.

 Chapter 137: Quack doctor (2)

    Chapter 137: Quack doctor (2)


    Anne did make it easy for Yunan to find her apprentice, the only girl with a sceptre crowned with twin snakes. Yunan approached the girl carefully and announced his intentions clearly, god knew how that woman''s apprentice would be like, it was best to be safe than sorry.


    "Ophelia, you can call me Phi or snake girl, either is fine, now can you tell me how did my teacher send some unknown stranger to pick me up?". Ophelia made a very reasonable demand. Yunan did not know how to say this in a crowded ce like the guild hall so he leaned in and whispered "she is naked in my nursery room, refusing to budge, and drooling at the sight of my super collection of medicinal supply".


    "Lead the way" Ophelia had the same glint in her eyes her master did back then, she was definitely a healer with a thirst for knowledge and experience, as for the skills, he left that for the future, he certainly did not wish to find out the hard way. Upon returning to the vi and seeing her master''s clothes still on the ground Ophelia pouted and picked them up, evidently she is used to this kind of thing.


    Yunan led the girl to his master bedroom, and she followed, she expected to see her master in some kind ofpromising situation, but she was lost when the bedroom was empty and Yunan headed to the door obviously not part of the vi. She followed through the door into a new space, vast and luxurious, she was about to ask what is this ce when she heard Yunan ask in mid air "genie, where are they? Is there enough food and wine for a feast?", She almost jumped out of her skin when she saw a blue ball appear and startining.


    "Seriously master, what is wrong with bringing over nice guests, i had to use the spatial lock to prevent them from stealing half the house and eating the other half, when i told them they need my permission and yours to do anything here, they tried to capture me, i had no choice but to stop them from all actions, you can find them drinking themselves to perdition onva wine in the cleansing pool".


    "You did a good job genie, thank you for protecting my home, go check if there are enough supplies to run the ces for a few weeks, if there is not send the maids to the market, also link my armor to you, and use it to gain all you need in the future". With that Yunan walked with Ophelia to the bathroom, "i''ll exinter" Yunan could feel the questioning gaze drilling into his back as they walked.


    Inside the bath he found everyone there Debauchery, Anne, Reina, Lili, Leol, Muscles, and the maids who still did not tell him their names only letting him call the maid or ve. they were all chatting happily as they soaked in the milky pool. Yunan took off his own clothes and jumped right in and as soon as he popped up, he was in a choke hold by Balin who was holding a deep grudge. Ophelia also joined the team in the pool shyly with her underwear on, but was striped by her master upon entry.


    When the beating was over and Balin was not holding as much of a grudge Debauchery introduced Anne. "This is Anne, she is a quack doctor, good doctor, but her methods are questionable in the field of healing, she kept us in one piece so far and has been doing a good job at it, she is in love with your infirmary, and she is ready to pay any price to buy it". Anne then introduced Ophelia " this is Phi short for Ophelia, she is talented in healing and my only apprentice, please take care of each other, also how much for the whole garden, i want to buy that too"


    Yunan could feel pity from Reina and Lili, they did not say who built this house yet and the indignation of Balin was because he was not there to witness the house being built, a shudder passed down Yunan''s spine as he thought about the implications. However he had to say it " can you afford anything made by Hephaestus himself?" The question had all Balin needed to bury his head in Leader''s chest and start bawling his eyes out, asking loudly why he never gets to meet his idol and this guy met him twice and got a custom built item for him just by virtue of being there.


    After the bath, the maids went to make dinner while Yunan and the rest headed for the control room where Yunan introduced what he knew about the ce and the genie, there again he was assaulted by Debauchery because some lucky ones should not go all happy all the time. Yunan also promised to allow the group here to use his infirmary when injured, he also made the genie give each one of them a ring to monitor and teleport them directly here in case of mortal danger, otherwise the rings can be used tomunicate by leaving messages to each other.


    It was a brilliant idea Hephaestus had, but since he did not have many living acquaintances and all of them could send holographic images of themselves if they wanted to chat, he did not have a chance to use it, until Yunan told him that only important people can enter the house, he thought of the function, and implemented it. The most surprising part was that neither Anne nor Ophelia made much of a fuss about the house being built by Hephaestus, nor were they that impressed by the genie and the house itself, however, upon visiting the garden, the could identify and drool over any and all medicinal herbs, especially the honey bath.


    Yunan told them the secret of the Queen be if they promised not to use it to make a profit or divulge the information to others, otherwise either the Queens will annihte the adventurers or there will be no honey left in the dungeon because greed is the first instinct humans act upon most of the time.

 Chapter 138: Quack apprentice

    Chapter 138: Quack apprentice


    After introducing the new home and giving away themunication rings, Yunan led the others to a big room where a big feast was disyed for them to enjoy, soon the festivities began.


    During the feast Yunan''s mission was exposed as well as his desire for a resident healer, Ophelia made it clear that if she could use the library she would happily pay to live in this ce. However she was also wondering if she could meet with her master now and then to learn new skills and techniques, Yunan was not against the idea, he just wished for the master instead of the student as his healer.


    After the feast, Yunan''s try to use the heir he kept imprisoned as a distraction for Debauchery was a failure and a new round of master and ve games took ce, leading to enough embarrassing moments that muscles, Ophelia and Anne were fully inducted into the Debauchery extended family, letting the awkwardness disappear


    After the yful session, Yunan sent Bai back to read the memories of the prisoner heir and make him give up all his stuff to Yunan, Reina and Lili. Everyone else was sent to sleep, Reina and Lili went to disturb Leol and maybe shame him back to them, Debauchery took Anne for some sort of reason hidden behind giggles and chuckles leaving only Ophelia and Yunan, who no matter how Yunan tried, he could not leave her behind.


    Sitting in the hot pool, the two of them talked about the rtionships they grew up with, and the experiences they had so far. Ophelia was brought up by a couple of healers who then sold her to Anne for a medical skill book, after that, instead of enrolling in an academy, Anne took Ophelia as her own disciple and daughter, and registered her so in the guild, to allow her entry to the dungeon without trouble. The two of them traveled constantly, only stopping were a rare herb was spotted or where one can get good soil to raise medicinal nts.


    She was introduced to the healing arts very early and had them drilled into her head, starting from themon flu to the mostplex surgical procedures, Anne did not rely on magic but was an expert in the healing arts of the era before magic came to the world, where techniques and technology were the tried and true method, she only allowed Ophelia to learn about magical healing when holy magic was spread by the church on the premise that Ophelia would not discard the old way.


    Being the apprentice of the quack doctor was really bad for her ability to make friends, if one did not count the constant travel and relocation, no one in their age group would associate with a fringe science that had been lost long ago, even the healers found it strange that the use of herbs and surgical treatment was even a healthy option.


    Yunan told her how despite hisck of friends he made four that had unbreakable bonds, he told her about his lucky encounters and the suffering he had to endure to grow to his current position, be it Debauchery going all out and teaching them 15 sses at once duringbat training, or them beingzy and sending them into monster nests. he also did not forget how Debauchery took him and his band of misfits as their family, going beyond the normal range of effort a teacher usually does for his students.


    Despite Debauchery only teaching Yunan the healing arts for torture rted regards, he was still avid enough to keep up with a conversation about traditional healing, something Ophelia found herself eager to talk about, even after finding herself already naked in bed with Yunan andughing about it. Ophelia was having fun being with someone her age and that tranted into a long conversation deeper in the night.


    "Why are you not making a move on me?" Ophelia asked, she did not find herself in contact with men too many times, but they all had the same reaction to her presence, get her into a bed. " i heard you had a mission about taking a virgin, and here i am beside you, naked and vulnerable, all you have to do is take me" Yunan stopped her right there by cing a finger on her lips. "that thing about a mission is just something my lover likes to do to keep me from drowning myself in hard training, as for why am I not reacting like other men, well, let''s say naked women can only make me feel lust and not lose control, and thanks to Debauchery i have some immunity in that department, mydy friends prefer to be naked when they are with me".


    Ophelia flushed at the thought of him sleeping sandwiched between Reina and Lili, after sharing a bath together, she thought it might not be that bad to be around a guy that even her master could not cause to lose control and turn into a beast like many men that were killed trying to get their way with her master. So she did like her master taught her and hung her arms around his neck and nted her beet red face into his chest. Yunan reciprocated her actions and held her closer by the waist. she stuttered a request to try the effects of the affection ve, but Yunan smacked her behind ordering her to sleep and stop thinking about dirty things.


    Come morning Ophelia found herself in a sea of flesh, not only her master was passed out drunk, she was clinging to her for dear life, Reina and Lili were on the other side upying the other half of Yunan who did not seem too bothered about being slept on, the two maids were there too, each hugging a leg and sleeping peacefully, she wanted to get herself out but Yunan whispered to her to let her master sleep, she did not know why did Yunan ept so many girls by his side. Yunan answered her as if he read her mind " if they love me enough to put their bodies into my care without reservation, i would hold them dear over anything else in the world".

 Chapter 139: Finding a place

    Chapter 139: Finding a ce


    It was not until midday that the mass of flesh started moving, first were the maids who went to handle the daily chores, afterwards were Reina and Lili who kissed Ophelia on the lips telling her to work hard and was weed to the group, andst was her master who smothered both of them in a bear hug and told them to stay put and have fun.


    Ophelia was lost, she was never part of something nor did she ever expect to be epted by others that were not her master or her master''s only customers, and now she was being drawn into something that felt cosy instead of the lusty atmosphere she always thought her interaction with men would be. She did not feel like leaving the bed simply because Yunan was still holding her close and she did not want him to let go.


    Yunan was toozy today, he did not sleep wellst night because of the asional visitor who drilled into his bed, first was the drunken Anne who was mumbling about being discarded for a stupid male, who then tried to pounce on said stupid male but was put under a sleeping spell, she immediately switched targets and clung to her student. Afterwards came Reina and Lili who were very angry because Leol was having some fun with muscles while they were still in the room, and were ready to talk about it to the guy with a naked girl glued to his body.


    After venting about Leol they started snickering and giggling about how the impotent Yunan had caught another butterfly into his web and were ready to disclose all his deeds with thedies to their newrade, and by the time he got them to sleep, came the maids who were adamant not to let the neer have her way with their master before they did and that took another round of convincing and promises that he would do them first if they did not do anything tonight.


    Yunan was enjoying his half sleep state until he felt Ophelia fidgeting beside him, he looked at her and found her blushing so furiously from ear to neck "do you want me to take you to the bathroom?" He could feel a nod on his shoulder so he sighed and lifted the girl to the adjacent bathroom, where he let her do her own business and hopped into a quick shower to clean up the sweat from having bodies piled over him at night.


    Ophelia also joined him in the shower with her blush consuming half her body, Yunan did for her what he usually does for Reina and Lili, but on a smaller scale, he help her clean her up and untangle her hair, she seemed to enjoy being treated like a princess and that brought a smile to Yunan. He got her some new clothes and dressed her up himself in thefy pajama, and then put a shirt and shorts on before leading the girl to the kitchen for somete brunch.


    Ophelia was not used to being the center of the universe, and the experience brought out some feelings she forgot she had, after eating, Yunan left her for the girls to y with her and went to find his maids, there was a promise he needed to fulfill before he got busy again.


    Yunan took the maids to the bedroom and released them from the ve contract they had, he stopped them from trying to make their pledges and asking them to hear him first. " I want to know your names before i take you, i don''t want our first time to be under the very brand and I want to know about your past, so that i can find you a ce in this big family, i don''t want you to be just my ves, even if you choose that, I want to find a ce for you"


    The girls had tears glistening in their eyes, they were so touched the could not help themselves jumping on Yunan and taking the lead, and not until a few hourster did they let him go. On the messy bed, the two still held onto Yunan afraid that this was all a dream, they were happy to be epted by such a godly master who thought about them before his desires, a man they could love without reservation.


    "I am Lina and she is Nina" the one on the right said " we were born from pleasure ves, bred to have the ultimate bodies and the prettiest face, we were raised in a group instead of with parents, ves for generations as the master called us. We were taught how to please a man before we could speak, we were taught obedience was not a problem as long as we liked the pain, we were never given warmth or care, we were raised to be the ultimate pleasure dolls".


    Nina continued " we were sold from master to master, among hundreds of virgins each time, however there was always a shier ve, a bustier one, a prettier one, we were never chosen to entertain the master we served. Until we were chosen to be battle ves, we were trained by the best and were finally sold to that stupid master you met, he brought us to the dungeon and had us climb with him, he was too much of a selfish man that he would onlyy with the prettiest and most obedient ves as for us, he left us on the side to look upon and punch but never more".


    "Although we hated his presence, we were still ves raised to serve a master and we wished that our master would call upon us but thankfully he died before he got the chance, we two decided to be yours the moment you brought us back and took us to your own ce and gave us our freedom, we were surprised to see that not only were you nice and amodation, you were also warm and kind, we felt that we were born to serve you when you told us about your n to find us a ce in the legion or other organizations"


    "We were all happy and wanted to reward you with something but you did not care about anything we could provide, and so most of ourrades chose to take other paths we decided to serve you or die trying, you gave us a home without even trying to be nice, you even epted us and our very pledge and did not take advantage of it even though we were dying for you to use us, we hope that now that you have both our names and virginity, you can let us serve you even more"


    Yunan presented his medallion and the both girls happily made the strongest vow they could fathom, they had found their ce in the world and they were not nning to let go any time soon

 Chapter 140: 21 floor

    Chapter 140: 21 floor


    The next few days went by peacefully, under the guidance of Debauchery, Yunan was able to smoothlybine traceless casting and all his other spells, however ording to Fae he needed to practice ordinary casting as well to reach mastery in a more sensible way.


    Lina, Nina and Ophelia integrated well into the group and one could tell they have changed in some way or another. Reina and Lili were just so happy to have more sisters that can help them keep Yunan on a leash. As for Debauchery, they were always epting of those with pure intentions, so the girls were not put through any torment.


    Bai had sessfully retrieved all the assets the heir owned and killed of all the men that were left behind, the assets were sold and the money was put into the ounts belonging to the kids. Anne spent most of the time reading the medical books in the infirmary, and when Yunan told her it was about time to leave, she asked for permission to visit Ophelia and teach her on the same intervals as Debauchery, since all of them would be on the same floors.


    Yunan did not reject the proposal, since Ophelia was going to be the resident healer, it was a good thing of she could learn more, next was Yunan taking Reina and Lili back to their respective organisation, promising them he would team up with them when they reached the 50th floor. They reminded Yunan to show up every weekend while he is climbing down the dungeon.


    With all that done with, Yunan sent Lina, Nina and Ophelia inside the new portable home, and headed out to his date with Fortuna, this time the date was mild, and consisted mostly of the pair cuddling together without many words, either reading in the library or watching the moonflowers sway under the moonlight. Yunan felt that Fortuna was not as vigorous as she was before, and was thinking too much, very unlike her. So he could only give her what small warmth he could and did not ask or probe about what troubled her.


    Around dawn Fortuna spoke to Yunan in a very tired tone. "I think you were right, you need to be much stronger, very fast, let''s postpone our meetings till you reach floor 50" Fortuna had her eyes on figure that stood on high rise and watched them from the other side of the valley, Yunan could not help but nce at the figure before fixing his eyes back on his partner " and what happens when i miss you?" He asked, already longing to see her again.


    "If you are lucky maybe you can find me hiding" she answered him, she too did not like the idea of taking such a long time before they meet again. "You are too good to me, if she ever tries something, tell her I''ll turn her into your most obedient ve, maybe not today or tomorrow, but soon enough". Fortunaughed. "She is just bitter and jealous, you can seduce herter on when you have enough strength, I''ll help too, just be safe until then".


    The pair kissed a fleeting kiss that ended with the first rays of sunshine. Fortuna could still disappear like a sweet summer dream, and Yunan could not even tell if she was there or not.


    After collecting his stray thoughts Yunan returned to the dungeon, and stepped into the 21st floor. The floor was full of arachnids, they disyed 3 new patterns that one did not encounter in the previous floors. The monsters were using group tactics, they were able to cast spells and not just apply elements to their weapons or simply spread them out, finally they were able to use their wisdom stats more effectively.


    Yunan''s first fight was against spiders that were very adept at using their webs to surround and capture their prey, they weremanded by an Arachne, who could cast rooting spells and poison spells to slow the prey and destroy them from the inside out. The spiders also used their legs as spears and their fangs as daggers to incapacitate, causing Yunan to take his first wound in months.


    The strategy to fight these kind of monsters was simply brute force, if one allowed them time to start acting on the n, he would lose fast enough to not know how he was turned into food. Yunan did not turn the buffs of the armor on, and fought tooth and nail against the spiders, who under the leadership of the Arachne surrounded him and kept shooting webs and poison balls at him. Yunan used his short swords to get close and personal, it would be a losing battle if he made it a ranged one.


    Yunan found that every monster group had their own tactics and specialties, some were more proficient in ambush and stealth takedowns, some were better at closebat, there were also groups with multiple proficiencies, those were the hardest to deal with, because theirmanders had the highest wisdom amongmanders and would change the attack n as the battle went on.


    Yunan found that all monster meat in this floor had an attribute or another, for example eating the brains of the Arachnemanders gives wisdom points, the same thing for the rest, each proficiency gave a different attribute when eaten. As for the armor, it gained the poison touch effect, a minor camouge effect, and better string for the bow, making Yunan very happy with his findings, it took him around a month to fully map the floor and finally meet the boss, a veryrge spider queen that had filled the boss room with webs and eggs.


    Yunan felt like he was truly in mortal danger when he stepped inside the boss room, he could feel his every move monitored and there was a presence that grasped every minute twitch in his body, the spider queen made a very happy screeching sound as it watched Yunan edge closer to the center of the room. The spider queen lowered itself from the ceiling on a golden string and approached Yunan, and bared its fangs at him. The match started and Yunan knew why he had such a bad feeling.

 Chapter 141: Spider queen

    Chapter 141: Spider queen


    The spider queen screech has awakened its babies, they swarmed towards Yunan from the eggs, the ceiling, and the ground. The attack was organised in a marvelous way, yet Yunan did not have the time to admire it.


    The spider queen retreated just enough to let her children overwhelm the intruder, it ordered them to take up his attention while she spun her golden thread and dosed it with poison so poten it had a corrosive effect. She watched as the intruder summoned something that made it freeze for a second. The intruder had pitch ck mes surrounding him and any of her children that got close was burned to ashes, not even a body left, the fear turned to rage, she screeched once more ordering her children to drown the intruder in poison and webs, he needs to die.


    Yunan felt dizzy from all the screeching, his armor was already full from eating spiders and had fully evolved the spider rted effects, even the bow was upgraded at least once, most notably is the spitting mes cloak, it now had an additional poison effect added thanks to the armor, the mes looked grim ck and menacing. Yunan also found himself in need of activating the buffs on the armor to stay alive.


    Yunan had an epiphany while dodging and blocking the spider swarm, what if he could directly store the poison and threads as they came within the range of automated looting, he asked the genie if it was possible since it was linked to the armor, the genie answered positively and promptly started to store anything dead and close to Yunan, saving Yunan some troubles, but there were still spiders that would suicide into the spitting mes barrier and made life harder for Yunan.


    Yunan also contacted Ophelia who was reading in the infirmary and asked her if she can make a general antidote to all the poison in this floor, she said as long as she had enough spider nds and poison, and some other items, Yunan ordered the genie to provide everything for Ophelia and soon there was a tank of liquid poison, and another tank filled to the brim with freshly extracted nds, Ophelia started to work and Yunan returned his focus on the spider queen.


    Yunan took out his newly upgraded long bow, and started shooting arrows coated in all elements at the spider queen to see which is most effective, he found the arrows with double wind and lighting coating had the best chance to pierce the think armor with a bonus of low paralysis on the boss, the arrow killed almost all of the spiderlings that it touched so he went for it. Yunan also used his multiple casting to cast ice spears and lighting bolts at the spiders swarming him.


    The spider queen had made some kind of rope with all the time she was given by the swarm of her own children, and she started to throw it into seemingly random locations. The golden rope would stick and contract afterwards, she then started toy eggs mid fight, those eggs would hatch secondster and make their way towards the already swamped Yunan, however this new batch would climb the golden ropes the drop down near where Yunan the explode to douse Yunan in poison or sticky cement like substance that hardened after brief contact with the air making Yunan into a statue for a moment before he broke the shell and proceeded to fight his way to the spider queen.


    The spider queen would run away everytime Yunan got close andyed new eggs and shot new ropes to make the fight harder for Yunan. She would asionally shoot a poisoned stinger at Yunan adding more injuries and prating the armor.


    Finally having enough forey Yunan activated the full power of the armor, something he had not done in a while, the buffs went up to 300%, and the shadow meld, invisibility and other effects were used immediately. The invisibility activated after shadow meld under the shadow of a falling spider, with invisibility, the spiders did not know where to attack, but they felt fear rising in their hearts. The suppression effect of the draconic nature caused the spiderlings to flee back into their corners even though they did not know where the threat came from.


    Feeling the old and nostalgic feeling of the rush of new found power, Yunan teleported on top of the spider queen and turned the fight into a closebat fight, he used his short swords to hack the neck of the spider queen who responded fast by coating her entire body with a golden hard substance, it came from its pores like sweat and covered the whole body within a breath of time.


    The spider queen rolled on the golden ropes in an attempt to make Yunan stick to them and leave its body, but unfortunately for her, Yunan was fully pushing his mana to create a very big ball from spitting mes with the aid of the armor, the pitch ck poisonous me took the shape of a great ball and it burned any roped that came close to Yunan. Once the ball was big enough Yunan engulfed the spider queen in it, the mes clung to the boss and slowly but surely cooked it to a crisp.


    Yunan was now getting familiar with the newest effect of the armor, integration. The armor would allow Yunan to use any digested effect allowing it to be applied on any spell cast while Yunan was in contact with armor, even in medallion form. That effect was the one that added the poison effect to spitting mes, and after that the stickiness of the spider threads to the poison mes to ensure the spider queen could not escape from the mes.


    Yunan promptly deactivated the 300% buff, his constitution was much better but still, there is nobody that can handle 3 times his own power added in such a rapid fashion, he could handle 100% fairly well, for now that is. After iming the chest and the corpse of the boss, Yunan descended to the next floor, then went inside the portable home and into the infirmary, he let Ophelia check on his wounds and just in case his own healing and detoxification missed something.

 Chapter 142: Using the rhinoceros

    Chapter 142: Using the rhinoceros


    Yunan only checked on the monsters of this 22nd floor before leaving, they were armored rhinoceros monsters that could shoot spines at the enemy and charge at them, they could also cast a sort of destructive beem from their horns after a brief charging time. Yunan did not stay long, but returned to the 20th floor and headed straight to the guild, he sent a message and some money to the orphanage his mother was in, then sold the antidote to the spider poison of the 21 floor, something that the guild were more than eager to buy after Yunan disyed its effects, the guild would be insane if they did not keep samples of all the poison in the dungeon to test out the potential antidotes.


    Thanks to the hard work of Ophelia, Yunan yet again filled his ount, he put half the money from the copious amounts he sold to the guild into Ophelia''s ount, after that he went to the guild warehouses for medicinal nts and solutions and bought all their stock, thanks to the genie, even the bad quality ones could germinate in the garden, and allow Ophelia to both experiment more without concern for the dwindling stock, the genie also was also tasked to create as big of a stock of all medicinal items it could find in the twentieth floor as possible.


    To do that Yunan gave a storage ring to Drogon and told him to fly around the 20th floor and help the genie, in exchange for freshly killed monsters from the 50th floor, the ring was linked to the portable home and the genie couldmunicate with Drogon through it. Yunan felt Drogon was sleeping too muchtely, especially after thest feeding frenzy, it seemed he was on the verge of evolving again, and needed better food in the next period of time.


    After a day of rest Yunan returned to 22nd floor, he chose to do gueri tactics, using shadow meld and invisibility as well as lucky cover, he tried to kill the armored rhinoceros monsters in one attack, using decapitation or fatal instantaneous damage to the body, but his most effective method was poison touch. He would just pass by the monsters unnoticed and prick them with the most potent paralytic poison he had and watch them fall down momentster dying from asphyxiation and heart failure.


    The poison was chosen by the armor as the most suitable for Yunan, ording to Ophelia, the paralytic poison would onlyst for 2 minutes before dposing on its own, making sure that if the monster meat was eaten, it would not have any effect on the eater. Yunan has be very dependent on the armor recently, especially since it had itstest upgrade, Hephaestus must have done something to the old portable home, because the armor was smarter and closer toplete sentience, that when it was before.


    That was by no means a bad thing, Yunan felt like he should be more in control and try not to rely on this armor, however he thought what was wrong with using the armor to its fullest potential, it was bound to him and the chances he loses it are extremely small so what is the point of trying too hard when he had a way to get stronger without losing too much life span in too much struggle.


    With that idea in mind, Yunan returned to using the buffs of the armor, he started with 100% and kept increasing 10% every few days when he got used to the power difference with the help of the honey, the monster meat that was treated by the genie, the lotus fruits, theva wine and the cleansing pool. Yunan could adapt to 180% by the time he had finished mapping the floor.


    The boss of the floor was a bipedal rhinoceros with four arms and full body armor, it had two arms for casting spells and two arms for using two gigantic clubs that looked like stctites torn from the ceiling of the floor.


    Yunan was almost crushed by its first charge, it was agile beyond its weight ss, this hulking monstrosity at the height of 8 meters and the weight of a few tons, could move almost at the same base speed as Yunan. The boss also had high attack speed and very impressive striking strength, each club that missed Yunan would stir the winds and leave a crater in the ground. Yunan decided to make use of the boss to train his agility and blocking, it had been a long time since hest used a shield against any foe.


    The battle went on without winner, the force of the rhinoceros boss was enough to ground Yunan to mince meat with the slightest mistake, and the dual wielding and high attack speed made Yunan feel like he was in a blender, therefore Yunan used his shield to parry more than fully block the attacks of the boss. Yunan has been hovering just under mastery for all thebat skills he had, and thanks to this fight he got the insight to get full mastery over all weapons, Yunan did not defend much using weapons, mostly dodging the attacks or using the armor to block them, however the new insight in defence helped Yunan formte a new understanding of attacking with weapons and defending without need to dodge as much or take as many hits with the armor.


    After achieving mastery at the shield, Yunan started to change weapons to try his new found insights, although it was harder in practice, he could still keep up with the boss. Next came thest part of the fight, how to kill this fully armored hill, the armor joints left some space for Yunan to work with, also the possibility to use paralysis poison, but Yunan opted to use spells instead, he had been leaning on weapons too much, and so the spells of choice were lighting bolts, ice field, mud mire and finally earth spike. Yunan chose to go for versatile spells to try different strategies, and exercise his wisdom for a little bit, after all he wasing on his 17th birthday, even if he had a good brain on his shoulders, he should exercise it, before it turned to mush like his mother told him before.

 Chapter 143: Endless

    Chapter 143: Endless


    Using basic and versatile spells to take down a boss monster is by no means an easy feat, there were too many variables to take into consideration and even if all went as nned it was still a huge hurdle to cross.


    The basic n Yunan executed was simple, use lightning bolt for goading and leading the boss, use mud mires all over the boss room to slow and maybe trip the boss, use earth spear to deal damage and also hinder the mobility of the boss, using ice field to freeze the boss to the floor when it fell and then cast earth spears and lighting bolts aimed at the joints of the armor and finally kill the boss by either by exsanguination or hypothermia.


    The boss ended up dying from therge amounts of lightning magic that caused its heart to burst from irregr pulse, a new way of killing that Yunan added to his arsenal, heter learned from Ophelia that exposure to lighting type magic is bad to the nerves and the muscles, especially fragile ones like the heart muscle, since any light interference in its electrical system would lead to irregr heartbeat and on extreme cases heart failure or bursting heart. An assassination technique that would make the death look natural since heart problems are more prominent the older one gets.


    After sharing the boss as a meal with the girls, Yunan submitted himself to the daily bodily check by Ophelia, before taking the rest of the week as a vacation to rest in the twentieth floor, doing nothing but touring the ce with his special family, orzing about in the vi and ying this game or that with the girls. It was all smiles andughter, until Reina started a talk about birthdays and star signs.


    Ophelia was sad to learn that Yunan did not know his own birthday, she felt like it was a tragedy for someone to not know the day they graced this world by joining it. Yunan told her that he always took his birthday as the day he was assigned to his mother Theresa in the orphanage, and had a habit of celebrating that day when he was in the orphanage. That drove the discussion to when will Ophelia meet her mother inw like Reina, Lili and Fortuna have done already.


    All joking aside, Yunan thought it was near the date for his birthday and maybe he should visit the orphanage and meet his mom, all he had to do was speed up his exploration a bit and reach the 25th floor before the next seasonal change and he would be on time, 3 floors in 4 month was not a bad prospect, especially with the aid of the armor. Therefore it was decided that the extended Debauchery and associates are to meet for the seasonal change for a birthday party outside the dungeon.


    With the invitations sent to the relevant parties, Yunan descended to the 23rd floor with renewed vigor. The 23rd floor was a literal rat infestation, it had rats from the size of cats to 5 times the size of humans. There were ones that stood on two legs and some that crawled on 4, some were hairy some were bald, and worst of all they were gue carriers. One would be infected by a host of pathogens simply by stepping into 5 meter radius of any rat, practically all the floor since the rats were Rolling like waves to attack Yunan.


    Again Yunan contacted Ophelia to work on a panacea for this floor, and ended up calling Anne as well because the synthesis of a vine took much more effort and wad much more nuanced than making an antidote. ording to Anne, creating the panacea is almost impossible thanks to the ever changing and mutating pathogens in that floor, however, it was a good exercise for the idle Ophelia to make a vine to individual types of gues as long as she took her precautions.


    With his quick rich idea rejected, Yunan simply relied on the armor to cleanse his body and keep the gues froming into contact with him, and just for safety he activated mana shield to filter out anything dangerous. Yunan marched through the floor killing as many as he could even using taunt to draw greater numbers of victims to his wide range spells, mainly spitting mes and fire pits, a spell that has the same effect of mud mire, it changes the ground in a certain radius into a smoldering crater that kills any enemy that enters it by overheating them, instead of directly burning them.


    Yunan cast the spell to be always active under his feet in a radius of 100 meters, Draining his mana like whirlpool, but thanks to the mana absorption from the armor, Yunan could sustain it as long as there were enemies, and in this floor, the rats were numberless and endless, therefore, Yunan was not even losing mana, while both the armor and the ck Fate were storing as much mana as they could.


    ording to the genie, the Dragonification armor, had such an efficient mana extraction it could extract 100% of the mana from the body before it starts dissipating after death, even the genie started storing mana because only after 2 days, the armor and the ck fate were on full capacity, the armor had strengthened its enchantments to the current maximum capacity, and there was nothing left to pump mana into, therefore the genie opted to grow the medicinal herbs in the garden at a faster speed, by drowning them in mana, while still having enough mana left to create liquid concentrated mana in vats as big as the ones used for theva wine.


    ording to the genie, if the mana kept flooding at the current rate, they would umte enough mana to operate the portable home with reckless abandon for 1 year by collecting mana for 12 days, the ck Fate suggested that Yunan should take this opportunity to spend as much mana as possible to advance his spells and increase efficiency and core capacity as well as mana regeneration speed.


    Yunan did as he was told, and cast every single spell he had in his arsenal continuously as he simply trudged his way into mapping the floor, the genie made use of the extra corpses that the armor did not digest to stock up on lotus fruits andva wine, while the armor had a new skill called gue immunity, that was transferred to Yunan with the help of the genie, the ck Fate and the endless mana.

 Chapter 144: Unavoidable attack

    Chapter 144: Unavoidable attack


    Now that it had be full of mana, the ck Fate has be more active and revealed a new functionality. It could transfer abilities to and from its master, it only needed avability of the ability and willingness of both ends of the transfer, however there was a heavy tax of mana that was required to perform the function.


    The ck Fate had many functions that were sealed because the limits of Yunan''s mana, and it decided that the use of such sealed functions would only be revealed at times of abundance or critical moments, like this moment, although it did not reveal more, Yunan did not press the issue, after all, the team work between ck Fate and the genie was already impable enough, and he did not require assistance from the ck Fate at the moment.


    For the next 3 weeks Yunan had be so tired of seeing rats all over the ce, whether he fought them or not, he felt sick of being around them, if not for the fact that he kept upgrading his mastery over his spells andbat effectiveness, he would have left the floor much sooner. He mapped this floor faster than it should have taken simply because he wanted to move on, and soon after, he was going for the boss.


    The boss did not have a room, like most other bosses, instead it was sitting in the middle of a sea of it own species. It was a man sized humanoid, it looked awfully close to a half-beast if not for its fully animal head one might be tricked to think it was one, it had 6 arms, exposed thick skin and a prehensile tail. It had bodyguards and servants, a king of rats. Seeing Yunaning close to it with maximum spell damage output killing his way into its subordinates, the rat king roared summoning even more rats to his side making them attack Yunan in a frenzy.


    Yunan kept his charge forward, and did not slow down, since there was endless mana, why should he hold back?. Yunan currently looked like a half sphere of mixed attacks and elementals discharges, wind des met lighting bolts and twisted around me tongues and ever shifting earth. There was an ice storm and a meteor shower, there was a maelstrom that ripped apart anything that made it beyond the border if the cast radius.


    The rat king was also shredded by the maelstrom Yunan had around him, although it was salvaged by the genie, its body was ruined beyond recognition, even though the genie rmend it to be eaten, Yunan would rather starve than touch or see a rat for the next eternity, making his way straight to the 24th floor, before heading to the portable home to rx and forget about the endless hordes that he could now see behind the eyelids.


    The boss was served for the girls to eat, no one would say no to free attribute points. After a few days of rest the 24th floor exploration began, the monsters here were all winged bats of some sorts and different sizes, they could suck out mana from the body, and they lived in perpetual darkness. Yunan was almost disappointed about this floor, the range his armor could steal mana was further than the bats and by the time they got in range and tried to cast mana drain on Yunan they were already dead to an ice spear and drained from mana.


    Since Yunan has been casting spells endlessly without stop for almost a month, he had developed speed casting to be almost reflexive and instant, and was already using it in tandem with life Vision and the radar detection of the pocket watch effect. Another side effect to the prolonged usage of mana, Yunan was now able to shoot 10 ice spears per second endlessly, also his ice spears changed shape and sturdiness, they were now foot long needle that were as hard as steel, with high prating capabilities and speed, and cheaper casting costpared to the ordinary ones. The same was true for each of the other spells, for example lighting bolts became as wide as an arm and had a destructive impact onnding instead of just an electrical discharge.


    In the dark environment, and with the help of the mapping ability and the scanning function, Yunan mapped the entire floor within 5 weeks, without much hindrance. The armor also integrated a new functionality, echolocation, which was made for finding hidden enemies that were good at hiding their life power and body heat, something he would eventually meet in the dungeon, this ce was fascinating, able to have any variation of monster abilities. It only stood to reason if an ability exists, there will be another ability to counter and negate it.


    The boss looked like a gargoyle with sharp ws, hideous fangs and a wretched looking body and wings. It could perform sound attacks, both infrasonic and ultrasonic, making Yunan feel dizzy, and slow and have a headache, or simply be in so much pain that he could barely focus. Auditory attacks are by far the most annoying to deal with because even if you plug your ears the sound waves can still disturb the brain, a vicious type of attack that can not be defended against except by creating a vacuum bubble to protect oneself.


    The fight made Yunan feel like all his training was useless, he could only curl with his hands covering his ears as the ultrasound attack hit and waited for the attack to run its course, before using whatever instinct he could muster to attack for as long as possible before the cool down on the sound attack finished. The fight ended with Yunan luring the gargoyle into closebat and emptying half his mana to fry the wretched thing using lighting bolts as thick as adult thighs to burn holes in it.


    After the fight Yunan needed a week to recover from the side effects of the auditory attacks, he felt like he was in the wrong skin most of the week, but thanks to the careful efforts of Ophelia, Lina and Nina, he could recover fully and gain a new resistance into his defensive arsenal.

 Chapter 145: So fluffy i wanna die

    Chapter 145: So fluffy i wanna die


    After full recovery, Yunan decided to take a break, he still had time before the promised date; a month and a half were enough to map out the 25th floor or even break through it.


    nning for a week of pampering and self indulgence and having 5 fairies swooning over him did some bad things for Yunan''s idea of rxation, honestly, being treated like you can do no wrong by the fairer sex was a corrupting thought to have let alone live such a life. s that n did not reallye to fruition as Reina and Lili hase by asking for Yunan to help them climb their way down the dungeon, simply because the groups they were part of were either too slow, too stuck up orpletely insensitive.


    Feeling the headacheing Yunan told them to wait for a good floor and he could transport them there in his home and they could work hard there. Spiders and rhinos were a bit too much for the girls, and rats and bats are out of consideration. Well, since both Lili and Reina did not relent in getting him to help them level up, Yunan epted reluctantly to take the girls with him into the 25th floor.


    After arriving at the 25th floor Yunan was amazed at the scene; he found himself fighting all his impulses to indulge in. he brought out the girls from the portable home and the highest pitched squeals were released into the floor. Yes, it was the legendary fluffy fuzzy cutest monster exhibition, if it was cute, fluffy and fuzzy it was present in this floor, probably an apology from Hephaestus for thest 4 floors.


    Felines, ponies, unicorns, and more were in abundance in this ce, one could literally die from being smothered in cuteness, and after enduring thest 4 floors, it was a very appealing death. The cute and fluffy monsters were very yful and peaceful, they would not attack even if attacked, they would just guilt you into tears by looking hurt; if they see you attack; with tears filling their eyes and sad looks on their faces. They would still y with you if you call, but the sadness will not go away.


    As for the only threat, it was the only non cute thing in the whole floor, hos, those gigantified death dealing insects would basically manage the cuteness level of the floor, where which monster shows up and how many in each location, and they hated their fluffy monsters being touched by adventurers, so they would be aggressive on sight and start killing both adventurers and the traitors ying with them. And just like all horents, where there is one, the whole nest was close behind, thus upon agression, one gets a hive of the gigantic things asking for their deaths.


    As to be expected from some folk waltzing in blind, the party dove into the sea of cuteness and did not care about anything else, well not until they were awakened by the the buzzing sound of hos wings, hundreds of them flew at the party and the sh started with the unfortunate deaths of cute beings, the emotional trauma was enough to drive the girls to tears and rage as they saw their cute friends being attacked with reckless abandon.


    Ophelia did her best to heal, Lili just charged in blindly followed by Lina and Nina, while Reina took her bow and rained arrows from afar, Yunan yed the role of brace for the team and jumped around to where he was needed, the fight ended quickly with the party only having minor wounds, however they all had unanimously agreed on their next mission, hunt the hos into extinction while cuddling as many cute monsters along the way as possible.


    Yunan identified the location of the next hive and led the way there, the n was simple, seek and destroy, ruthless and efficient, it did not take long before there was not a single hive within 500 kilometers radius from the entrance, the only major gains this period were that the floor was mapped faster and the girls were not hugging Yunan to sleep every night.


    During their month long travel in the 25th floor they did not find a boss figure, making the party feel anxious, could it be a free roaming boss? Either way it was a good bit of Training for our party, Yunan especially, since it was rare for him to work with others, it was a bit harder for him to choose actions based on what the others are doing. It was second nature when it came to Reina and Lili since they knew each other too well, but with the newest additions it was a challenge to amodate the fighting style of the three girls who has joined him for the first time in battle.


    Yunan had a very strange idea after finding other groups who roamed the ce aimlessly before just leaving the floor to the next one. Maybe the boss would only show itself after a certain number of hos and hives were destroyed in a certain period of time, therefore he left the girls to y with the cute monsters and went deeper into the floor trying his luck at finding and killing as many hos as possible.


    The next week was spent hunting down all hives within striking distance, with 230% attribute buff, Yunan was killing hos with one swing and destroying hives within 5, and exactly as Yunan expected, the boss required the death of hos and the destruction of their hives. The boss drilled from the underground it was a giant ho queen with a hive as its lower body, it was 100 meters in length, 5 times as big as the ordinary hos on the floor. Its appearance caused quite the stir on the floor and many groups ran for it to get the kill, but none of them could run as fast as Yunan, he was operating on more than twice the attributespared to the others.


    When the adventurer parties arrived they found Yunan already buzzing around it, making it attack in such a frenzy that none dared to be the first to rush and steal the kill. Yunan''s strategy was simple ground the boss and then just bombard it withrge area spells. So he first went for the legs then it''s 4 wings, once the boss was grounded, it could not even roll around so Yunan decapitated it as fast as he could when he saw his audience getting ready to help him with the kill.

 Chapter 146: Next evolution

    Chapter 146: Next evolution


    After sessfully ying the boss and storing it, the usual band of idiots stopped him in his tracks, The girls had just arrived to see Yunan store the boss so, they stood there watching how Yunan would respond to bullying so they yed the cheerleaders for him adding more bullies to the already doomed bunch.


    Yunan patiently waited for the group that approached him to start issuing all kinds of threats, almost boring Yunan to sleep, once they were done, he just teleported like a ghost between the bullies, knocking each one in one hit and teleporting to the next lucky one before the first fully lost consciousness. With mastery over teleportation, Yunan could simply teleport instead of walk anywhere in his field of view, and it was as easy as breathing.


    After meeting with the girls everyone entered the portable home and ate the boss, it turned out, the boss was the creature birthing those cute animals, and those tasted as cute as they looked, earning the party a little bit of guilt for loving the taste of the cute things they yed with and never wanted to leave. After leaving the floor Yunan headed for the guild and ordered fresh kills from the 50th floor or above, size was not an issue, it was their freshness and being untouched,plete with the cores. Yunan would pay for anything delivered within 1 hour of its death.


    Yunan was advised by tye genie to buy a copy of a flying spell that could grow wings or even a simple floating spell, Yunan already had learned a flying spell that he had not yet found a use for, as well as things like wall climbing, underwater breathing, and such quality of life passive spells. Yunan looked through the catalogue of the guild and found some things he wanted. He found 3 type of flying spells, one that sprouts wings, one that uses the wind element and one that is more like floating and can be guided with mana, all those three were fed to the armor.


    Yunan also found corpses of dragonkin with their core intact, were just hunted and from the lower floors, and he immediately bought it, he made sure that the guild would focus on dragonkin for the gathering mission he gave them, before the hour was done, Yunan had acquired lots of fresh bodies that were fed to Drogon and the armor, Drogon at the innards while the armor got the husks left. Drogon went hibernating inside the garden of the portable home, simply because it was abundant in mana.


    After some deliberation, Yunan bought all the passive spells he had himself and fed them to the armor that had changed significantly after the visit to the guild. Now the Dragonification had 2rge skin wings, that looked like metal sheets, it had now, gills on the helmet, retractable ws and in the gauntlets and boots, there was a tail that swung hypnotically behind Yunan. All in all a makeover thanks to the power of money and good smithing.


    Yunan also became aware that the armor had fully digested all the food it had been full on from floor to floor, resulting in higher affinity for elements. Yunan was notified by the ck Fate that he should go to the rat floor because the armor needed tons of mana to finish its evolution process, and since the floor was just there, it was better to do that than use up the mana reserves they have built up.


    Yunan went down to the 23 floor and yet again started harvesting mana, however this time he did not use all his spells, but just the ones needed to kill everything in a certain radius. Yunan was quite happy to know that the armor was now fusing physical traits and skills from all the previously digested monsters to create better versions of them, of course not all blend of strong things would lead to something stronger, but there was a genie using mana topute the best results for the armor and the ring who had direct contact with the best smith leading the armor and the genie to the path of bestbinations.


    After two full days ofbining all kinds of the things the armor finally evolved into the next phase. Most notably, Yunan now had perfect control over the tail and the wings of the armor as if they were part of his body, the vision and scanning functions were merged into a 3 dimensional map that had heat vision, life vision, echolocation, topographic map and a bit more. The vision in the hemet was 360 perfect vision, with details up to 10 kilometers away in vision and 1000 kilometers in the radar map.


    The weapons all had elemental cores now that can be activated on will, there was also a high elemental resistance created for the armor and shared with Yunan, the enchantments in the armor were now operating at 5 times the original numbers and the intelligence of the armor was also upgraded. All in all an overhaul in the ability of the armor to Keep Yunan alive and well.


    With the evolution of the armor done with, the genie asked Yunan if there was a need for mana clusters or liquid mana in the guild, when asking why did the genie wanted to know, Yunan was shown a mana storage room, it was over 30 times bigger than the rest of the house, ording to the genie, there was so much mana, that was used to increase the space limit of the portable home, to a point where there was no need for mana to create rooms for guest, and the only minte amount of mana was used to partition a piece of the avable space.


    Witnessing such a giant space full of mana crystals and liquid mana vats, was enough to drive anyone into blind greed, so Yuan decided to sell some of the mana and keep the rest as a reserve on case they needed it, afterwards, Yunan stayed 3 more days in the rat floor stocking up on mana and leaving behind a trail of blood. After leaving the floor, Yunan met up with the extended family and together left for Mar sara city to prepare for a birthday party, renting an inn and emptying half the fresh produce market, Yunan invited the sisters in the orphanage and managed to get his mom to stay in the inn for a long week of celebration and debauchery.

 Chapter 147: Mercenary (1)

    Chapter 147: Mercenary (1)


    Since Yunan had cleared the 25th level he was then eligible for the next phase of training, mercenary work. It was the next step in the growth of adventurers: working with strangers.


    For the next month Yunan would join a party per week, he would fill in for whatever roll they needed in the party, with Yunan''s kit he was suitable for this kind of training, and so Yunan went to the guild and asked for a the opportunity to join a party that is looking for a new addition. There were 5 parties in the 20th to 29th floor range who urgently needed a new recruit. Yunan chose a party that were in a hurry to reach the 25 floor, they promised a bonus for defeating the bosses of each floor and even an equal share of loot.


    The party was made solely from beast-lings, there were a total of 30 in the party including Yunan, the only human in the group, ording to the party, they were going to set up camp in the 25 floor and then go down slowly from then on, Yunan was hired as a damage dealing magician, simply because the party had to deal with the rat floor and they brought 20 shield bearers at once. Yunan told the leader that he can lead them within a week to the 25th floor as long as they stayed within 30 meters from him and did not do anything stupid.


    Of course there were dissenting voices and many arrogant and condescending faces and they all looked at Yunan like a lunatic, there was no way in hell they could reach the 25th floor within a week, not even level 30 can do it, however Yunan just said "as the hired muscle i can only tell you about what i can do, as for if you use it or not is up to you". The leader thought for a while and discussed with his closest aids before saying "if you clear the spider queen with in one day, you get to order everyone here to your every whim, the loot will be yours, all of it if you can get us to the 25th floor within 2 weeks".


    Yunan just smiled and did not say anything, the meeting waster dismissed and Yunan was told to stay with some members in case of unforeseen circumstances and he obliged. The party was very solemn, they slept and rested almost all the day, eating light and energy rich foods and checked their preparations for the 100th time. Come dawn, the party headed out and descended to the 21 floor.


    After everyone reached the floor, Yunan gathered them closer and said " i will now apply a major buff to everyone, the buff is active as long as you stay within 30 meters of me, you will feel like your body is different and will take time to adjust to, please spend the next hour carefully adjusting to the new level of power". During the speech many used Yunan of dying and speaking nonsense.


    Yunan touched his medallion and activated it mentally, the medallion swallowed him in full armor, then he activated one of his new armor skills, "aiding aura" it gives a 150% attribute buff to all allies within an adjustable range to 30 meters because that would save him some mana and make him look awesome but not too awesome. The party changed from criticism to awe and wonder. "I think doing jumps and punches, and some basic exercises would be great in helping you gauge the new strength" Yunan told the party as he sat down and took out a piece of meat to chew on.


    After 10 minutes everyone had roughly gotten used to their new found powers, Yunan started to walk slowly, then increased the speed slowly allowing the rest to catch up, he went straight to the boss room ording to his own map, and within 3 hours everyone arrived there without as much as a scratch because anything that got within 100 meters was dead and collected like an afterthought. Outside the boss room Yunan told the troop to rest for the time being, he could not understand why a level 20 adventurer would get tired after running for a few hours, not to mention the 150% buff. "eat as much food as you can, the buff makes your bodies burn almost three times as much energy" Yunan advised the party and stood still providing protection for what he considered dead weight.


    After everyone was fully restored, Yunan led the way into the spider queen room, there were still as many spiders around as he remembered. Yunan told his fellow to not do anything and just watch, he waited for the spider queen to start the fight and activated his 100 meter radius maelstrom, a blender of elements in chaos, the maelstrom kept the huge number of subordinates at bay and gave Yunan a shot at the queen that was taken immediately, a rain of ice spearster and the spider queen was dead.


    Yunan did not exin as he pocketed the corpse and the items that were in the chest without saying much, and led the group to the 22 floor, he told everyone to just sleep and rest because the toll of the buff was too much to bear, and Yuan only nned to help them get faster and run better. Yunan was thinking about how to deal with the gargoyle when the leader approached him, he was impressed with Yunan and tried to rope him in, but Yunan politely declined stating that this mercenary work was just part of his training, and that Yunan was the type of adventurer to work better alone.


    Yunan took some rest but did not sleep fully because he was responsible for the safety of these people simply because he thought that losing an adventurer was a hit to his own reputation, something he should avoid for future jobs if he wanted to keep doing this jobter on.

 Chapter 148: Braggart

    Chapter 148: Braggart


    After a 6 hour rest Yunan roused the party for some more food, and then led the party on its way to the rhino boss room, the journey was 4 hours long because of the geography of the floor, again, the whole party did not get enough time to even check out the boss properly before it was dispatched in a lightning shower.


    Yunan did not stop to rest after the 4 hour journey, mainly because he was anticipating how to deal with the rat floor because running at high speed there is just impossible with these teammates, and so once they descended to the 23 floor Yunan walked at a brisk pace to allow his teammates to regenerate their stamina, andst as long as possible.


    Wading through the wave after wave of hip high stacks of rats, the party was visibly shaken at the fact they stood in the middle of the same mana storm that is killing the endless horde, the maelstrom Yunan was using was just the elemental one, he did not add in his other area of effect spells simply because it was inconceivable for the usual adventurer who doesn''t have optimal mana control nor can they draw upon the full power of their best attributes.


    At this slow cruising speed, the party started getting to rx and chat together, and slowly made Yunan the center of the party instead of the head, however they still did not include Yunan in their conversations mainly because they thought he was under extreme focus trying to keep both the buff and the maelstrom running at the same time, and what they feared most was apse in judgement that could lead to Yunan lose control over the maelstrom and end up killing them along with everything else.


    The party could not be faulted for thinking so, Yunan had slowed down the speed of travel, did not rest, and they could not see his rxed and bored face under the helmet. Therefore it was not strange for them to keep to themselves and try not to disturb the man who had their fate in his hands.


    " I have wings too" the words startled everyone in the vicinity, thinking the man was going crazy. Yunan was talking to a particrly curious feline looking girl who seemed to be fighting her own desires to touch Yunan''s tail, so he brought it closer to her to inspect. The girl had steam rising from her ears as she ced her hands on the metallic tail and felt it carefully. Her friends beside her were about to grab her by ears and pull her away but they saw that Yunan did not even mind her so they themselves took a closer look.


    "Is it real?" One of the girls asked subconsciously. "Its as real as your own, except for that it only exists as part of the armor, and only then i can use it" Yunan''s answer got their eyes sparkling. There was very little armor with a working tail, let alone one that can respond to the user, however they soon found something more interesting, Yunan was not in any kind of stress from his voice, it was the same voice he used when they first met, and the girls as casters were curious about how he could pull it off.


    The first one to start talking to Yunan was the curious feline was was now tracing the edges of the armor with her finger, it felt good to touch the cool and supple scales, " is your tail sensitive like ours?", "Cough, would it help if I said this armor feels like another skin, you are basically tracing your fingers on my bare skin" the girls immediately took their hands off of him. Touching the tail of another in the beast tribes was a very intimate action, and they thought Yunan could only control the tail and not feel it. Yunan chuckled at their reaction and said " you can keep touching it of you want, i know it feels good to do so, its materials were the best dwarven treasures that were collected from bygone eras"


    "You got a dwarven master to make this for you?" There was silence in the party, every ear was perked to Yunan''s answer. "Technically i got the best mortal smith to forge it for me, he is the a disciple of the heart of the mountain, so we got to use her private forge and treasure, i was so lucky". "You seriously met the heart of the mountain?" Asked someone on the edge of the party. "Yes" answered Yunan nonchntly " I met all the four hearts once, they had a meeting when i was training under the lonely mountain".


    "Whoa~" was the only answer to hearing someone meeting a legend, and even iming to meet with their own god king. The conversation however shifted again because the cat-girl stroking the shoulder pads of Yunan asked a question that in turn blocked the questions they wanted to ask about their own heart of the beast. "How can you keep spending so much mana and not even sweat it, and you don''t seem to be too focused on keeping us alive in this storm you are using to clear the way"


    "Easy, i don''t control the spell, and i have mana drain trained to the highest perfection. Simply put, my area of effect spells only require the range of activation, the mana required and an answer to friend or foe, anything i consider friend can benefit from all my buffs and is immune to all harmful spells and gues and poison created by me, those i consider neutral are not affected by my spells, and those who i deem foes are targeted by all harmful effects i release and immune to my buffs, as for way i can keep using so much mana, well i have a unique mana drain spell that refills my mana as long as there are foes in range" it felt good to brag about one''s strength to an adoring crowd.

 Chapter 149: Mercenary (2)

    Chapter 149: Mercenary (2)


    It took about 10 hours of travel to reach the boss room, during that time Yunan was better epted by the party as a legend, mainly for his immunity to seduction, followed closely by the fact that this guy had cleared the 25 floor solo.


    Yunan had a bit of a rumour about him that was circling around because he had a dragon, fought off whole parties and saved a few maidens. Yunan was by no means a weakling, with his power level alone letting him fight on the level of 40th floor, yet still taking time to challenge himself in every way was something you do not run into at all in the modern dungeon, maybe in the olden times there were brave men who cleared their way solo in Tartarus.


    After dealing with the boss rat, Yunan did not allow rest and headed for the gargoyle room with Yunan finally showing some tension, they thought he was tired or low on mana, if they knew how much mana Yunan had in storage, it would make them shed tears of frustration demanding he would get punched in the face at least once. Yunan kept chatting with the party talking about strategies to deal with the previous floors. The discrepancy between one man tactics and small team tactics and therge party tactics was immense.


    Yunan could easily make a strategy for one man fights and small elite team fights, but when it came to organising more than 10 he was hopeless, so the chat was very beneficial to both sided. Yunan''s take on small number strategy was almost artistic, and the expectations were too high for a random party, and his one man tactics were borderline insane ording to the leader and his strategists.


    Yunan had a bad feeling about facing the gargoyle with such big numbers especially with them showing signs of slowing down and getting tired. Yunan racked his brain for a moment before ordering a rest around a kilometer away from the boss room just in case of stupidity. And his worries just got worse when Ophelia told him toe by theb to get something rted to the gargoyle fight.


    The restless mood of Yunan did not go unnoticed by the party prompting the leader toe by and ask what is going on. "I am getting nervous because i don''t want to you guys to be close to the gargoyle in the fight, this is my first mercenary mission and i don''t want to lose any of the team i am leading, and i also need to meet my healer, and i feel restless about leaving you behind because shit happens no matter what". That promotedughter by the party, some even felt grateful for Yunan to think that way.


    "We honestly have expected to lose at least half of out numbers before reaching this point, even the time frame it took to get here is beyond imagination, 4 floors in less than 3 days is a miracle, and to reach here without a scratch is beyondprehension if we were to mention it to others, as for if you need to leave and you fear for us then take us with you, originally we nned for 5 months of travelling, we are too early, so a detour is not a bad thing."


    "Fine, i''ll take you with me, get your stuff and let''s move" after he said that Yunan waited for the party to pack up and when everyone was ready he walked to the nearest wall and put down the portable home, it looked to them like a door in the wall of the dungeon. "before you get inside i need to tell you the rules, do not touch, do not oggle too much and do not ask questions, this is for the safety of everyone, now get inside, you will understand inside" Yunan opened the door to a decontamination room as the party passed by and assembled inside the strange room.


    After Yunan got in he told the genie to shrink the door on the wall to the size of a pebble and camouge it to look like part of the floor, he then activated the decontamination room and steam rose, cleansing everyone inside. The decontamination room was built by the genie on the requirements of Ophelia, who thought having such a room would protect the portable home and all within from possible threats because this was Tartarus and it was always good to be prepared. The room had the same principle as medical facilities in the technological era of the world its job was to prevent the possibility of poisons and diseases to spread inside the portable home.


    After the steam dissipated Yunan led the now scared party to enter the guest living area, it was a big spaced hallway connected to 5 rooms, and an open kitchen and many tables that looked like a diner floor. "Feel free to use the rooms and the kitchen, i will go see my healer, we are staying here until you guys are in top shape so rx and enjoy". With that Yunan left them to their own devices and headed for theb, he was followed by the leader and the curious cat, they stayed close to Yunan, one was curious the other was feeling like he was lured into a murder house because Yunan was no longer as stressed.


    "So this is your base in the dungeon?" Asked the visibly shaken leader. "No, this is my private home, actually, it''s an artifact, i live here with my healer and two maids, i asionally have friendse by on weekends, they are not permanent residents yet". The curious cat was looking with fascination at the extravagant dcors and the big hallway that looked like one from a pce. " Must have cost you a fortune" said the cat, Yunan smiled to himself debating if he should tell her or not " you won''t believe me even if i told you", Yunan could feel the curious cat staring daggers at his back so he kept going " it cost me an imp and pool, made by Hephaestus himself". Both the cat and the leaderughed as if Yunan just told the worst joke in history.


    However Yunan just ignored them and pushed open the door to the infirmary, inside there was a huge table with a dead gargoyle being dissected on it, beside the table was a pretty girl operating a spell formation and mulling over it.

 Chapter 150: Not a healer

    Chapter 150: Not a healer


    Ophelia took a nce at Yunan and the two who came with him and then returned to what she was doing. Yunan approached the girl and ruffled her head then kissed her cheek. "At yourmand miss, is there anything you require?" Yunan jokingly took the posture of a kneeling knight making Ophelia giggle at him.


    "How is work? Lose any so far?" Ophelia asked trying to keep fromughing too hard and making a mistake in her examination. "All good, i brought them here so they don''t go dying when i am not looking. How goes the autopsy? Are there enough gargoyles in the guild?" Yunan did not shy away from talking honestly around his two guests, there was no need to fear harm with his current set of skills.


    " I confirmed all i needed two gargoyles ago, i am looking into something else at the moment, it was like you said, this thing makes his sound projectiles have some kind of force to bypass vacuum, and they are reinforced with mana. However it is single target, all the bodies i got ,died from being attacked by a group, so i found you a solution" she pointed at a book on her desktop.


    Yunan used telekinesis to bring the book to him it was titled "create golem" so he learned it immediately and turned his attention back to Ophelia and asked her what was she looking for now. "I am trying to locate the organ that keeps its own body from being affected by the the sound attacks, no luck so far". Yunan thought for a moment before picking up a pair of rubber gloves and getting closer to the table, he pointed at the intact skull of the gargoyle "did you try the brain?".


    "Why? The brain is very fragile and should not be able to handle the pressure from such an organ it would be more logical to find it near the heart or near the rest of the organs". Yunan used a metallic saw and opened the top of the skull while he exined his point of view " this is a creature that can use mana to make sound waves pass through vacuum, logic can be ignored sometimes. But think of it this way, all the bosses are on higher evolutionary level than the monsters in the same floor, and the bats in that floor have echolocation, that organ sits near the hearing center of their brain, it is very sensitive to sound, my point is, with mana, a sound sensitive organ is the best for negating the effects of sound".


    Yunan lifted the brain and on its bottom was a red and swollen ball that had the feeling of being overused. Yunan than took out a freshly killed bat and did the same, both brains had that lump, but the one on the gargoyle covered much more space in the brain then the one in the bat, it was much more prominent too. Ophelia felt like a deted balloon " why are you better at my job than me? I''ll stop telling you my trade secrets"


    "Well, two brains think better than one, anyway, don''t y around in here all the time go rx a little, as for what you are thinking about, lets do thatter, it''s a very good idea" Yunan patted the girl her head and took his leave with his two guests tailing him. The leader was first to speak "that is a butcher not a healer! You were cheated, how can a healer open up a corpse and look inside it as if he was touching sand, something is terribly wrong here".


    Yunan was feeling that he should punch the man but refrained from doing it, not now, he told himself instead he replied like talking to an ignorant man "it''s part of healing from the era before mana, where the physical body was investigated to eliminate the sickness, it''s not magic but it could heal a great many things rather well". Yunan returned to the guest living area and found the party all gathered talking about something "if no one is tired maybe we should keep going?".


    The party surrounded Yunan and the other two trying to discern if they were still the same, Yunan did not even humour them as he teleported leaving behind only his voice "get some rest, we have a big dayter, i''m going to sleep". Yunan teleported to the bath where he found Nina and Lina ready to care for him, so he just left himself for them and fallen into deep sleep.


    After a good rest Yunanade breakfast for the girls filling his bed and had some quality time chatting happily before he went to the guest living area, he saw that everyone was packed and ready so he opened a door to the outside and let everyone through to the 24th floor, and then led the way to the boss room, once inside he made 4 golems and told them to attack the gargoyle. With the gargoyle targeting the golems with his attacks, Yunan killed it easily with big fat ice spears to the brain, heart and limbs, effectively nailing it to the wall.


    Yunan stored the corpse and the items in the chest and led the way to the 25th floor. Once inside, the assault of cuteness made the party forget they were in the dungeon for a moment. Yunan walked to the leader and said to him "work with the other parties on clearing a perimeter, make sure to destroy all hives as soon as they appear and do not underestimate the hos, you could end up wiped out. Now that my mission is over, put in a good word for me in the guild" with that Yunan took his leave and left the party, returning back to the 20th floor.


    Yunan went to the guild to look for a new assignment, he was told when he went to confirmpletion of his mission that the guild would send someone to investigate, in case of fraud, and he was allowed to take another assignment for the meantime. The next mission Yunan chose was an escort mission he needed to bring someone to reach their party that is camping on the 29th floor. There was no specific reward, and only said that rewards were depending on performance.


    There were two days left before this mission started so Yunan contacted Debauchery through their rings aboutrge party tactics and the rules of escorting someone to their party, he was almost stunned when he heard the response, army tactics are easy, choose who to sacrifice, as for the escort, if it''s a man feel free to act like you always do, if its a girl feel free to use her body as you please. Yunan knew that Debauchery would not lie about such a thing so he talked to a mercenary consultant in the guild about escort missions, and to his dismay was told that as the one escorting ,one or many, any females in the group would not reject him no matter what he asked for, however it was taken as epting the reward ahead of time.


    Yunan left the guild feeling like this was a stupid world, he went to the vi to rest and maybe meet his friends before leaving for the next mission.

 Chapter 151: Sarah

    Chapter 151: Sarah


    After resting for a few days Yunan went to the guild to pick up hismission from thest mission and meet his charges for the next one. He found himself getting some weird looks from the guild staff, but he ignored them all and waited patiently for his customer.


    After some time an old woman and a younger one walked into the meeting room, there was arrogance in the old woman contrasted by the humble youngdy. Neither had apologised for beingte, but it was obvious that the Youngerdy was at least sorry about it. The old woman looked down at Yunan and harrumphed like she was looking at trash.


    "That just doubled what you have to pay, i will leave after this meeting towards the 30th floor with or without you, i have not been in the floors lower than 25th and i will take my time exploring it, i keep you fed and protected, you follow my orders and do not move a muscle without asking first, break any of the above and i will leave you behind" Yunan pushed the contract the guild had provided to the older woman andid back in his chair.


    "Who do you think you are? Do you know who i am and what organisation i belong to? Keep acting that way if you want to die" the old womanshed at Yunan so he responded in kind. "You are trash who are not worth sending a party to get you, they do not care if you die or live and the best you can do is hire me, the guy who just tripled his fee to bring you to your destination, sign or leave".


    The old woman was seething with rage but could only shout profanity at Yunan who just sat there and took it, when she was about to sign the contract Yunan pulled it away and stood up " i feel like taking you along will be a headache, not even her warming my bed will be enough, forget it, i hate headaches". With that Yunan started to walk toward the door, there was panic on the face of the old woman, she tried to grab Yunan but he was too fast for her and dodged away.


    "Can we negotiate?" were the first wordsing from the youngdy, she stood and bowed to Yunan. He stopped with his hand on the door handle about turn it, he looked back at the old woman trying to get the youngdy to stop from bowing to the man she had been insulting for half an hour. "What can you offer me that is worth taking her down the dungeon, other than feeding her to the rats?".


    The old woman started spewing another bout of profanities but Yunan kept his gaze at the youngerdy, not until the older woman stopped talking did the young one speak again "forgive my grandmother, the pride of royalty is only strengthened when all the servants and riches disappear, you were right, we are no longer wanted by our organisation, even myself joining that party is dependent on me reaching them, would you please sit down and forgive ourck of respect".


    Yunan put a smile on his face and walked back to his seat, the youngdy sent her grandmother away from the room, once the room was quiet again, the youngdy bowed again in apology she started the negotiations right after. " I would like to tell you that the maximum price we can pay is for myself to be at your service and the amount stated in the request, due to some circumstances, we have lost our titles,nds and wealth, currently i am thest adventurer in our family, the rest have left us, so i have to beg sir to be magnanimous and ept these terms"


    "What is your name?" Yunan''s response caught thedy off guard so she stuttered "my name is Sarah", she was cut off before she could say more. "I like the way you can be honest Sarah, i can take you down to the 30th floor of you wish, all you have to do is heed my warnings and listen to my words, as for your grandmother, i know worse, so you can forget about it, if you don''t mind I would like to call some old friends to join the trip, if that is okay with you".


    " Sir, i am a modest woman, i hope that you would not sell me to others, i do not mind serving you, that is a price i am prepared to pay, but if others are invited I would rather wait for another opportunity, otherwise i would not mind join your team if you promise that i can keep the choice of whom i give my body to". Yunanughed hard at the woman after a few moments he said to her "you are an amusing one Sarah, there will be only one other guy and the rest are girls, you have nothing to worry about".


    Right afterwards Yunan activated hismunication ring, and sent messages to Reina, Lili and Leol to see if they wanted to join him for a trip down to the 30th floor, Leol has just reached the 25th floor with muscles and his entourage, and was itching to run away from them, Reina and Lili were both in 25th floor, in a joint expedition between the royals and the church legion, and the expedition was now trying to tame the cute monsters in there, he told the three of them to get ready for a meeting in a week and move out right after.


    The youngdy was looking with fascination at the written message shing from screen to screen, when Yunan put his hand down she pretended to look away from him. " We will meet ourpanions in the 25th floor, for the sake of speed i will carry you there, after the 25th floor we will explore every floor for around one month to one and half months per floor, you can choose to follow us to the 30th floor or stop at the 29th, forget about using your body as payment and just enjoy yourself".

 Chapter 152: Meeting the team

    Chapter 152: Meeting the team


    Yunan thought Sarah would take some time to say her goodbyes and prepare for the descent, but she just walked beside Yunan as he made his way to the market to buy supplies and sell the extra corpses he had umted in hisst mission.


    "I fear you would leave me behind" was the exnation a bashful Sarah offered to Yunan when he asked if she had nothing to do, so Yunan offered to follow her around as she did what she needed to do, but Sarah politely declined, and by noon both were leaving the 20th floor. As soon as they were down, Yunan activated his medallion and had his armor on, a tail and magnificent span of wings appeared, Yunan moved closer to Sarah who was visibly shaken by the armor, to her Yunan looked like one of those legendary half dragons that were part of the tales only royalty were able to read.


    "The armor is not that hard and it will not be ufortable for you to lean against it, how would you like me to carry you?". The first thing Sarah said was "you actually meant it when you said you will carry me?". Yunan simply got closer to her and ced a hand on her waist "well of course, i do not have the habit of lying, so put your hands around my neck, lean your head against my shoulder and hold on tight". Once Sarah did as she was told, Yunan picked her up in the most romantic princess style, their posture looked like that of two lovers in the midst of intimacy.


    Yunan pped his wings and flew at a high speed, leaving behind only after images of him as he passed by, floor after floor. For the bosses he would spare them a sliver time only for their bodies and chest, each boss was dead to a giant spear made of lightning and wind d ice. Sarah could feel when Yunan slowed down after meeting a boss but she did not feel him stop or use his hands to cast any spells, so it was imaginable how she felt when Yunan put her down after entering the 25th floor.


    The arrival of Yunan made a stir in the camps nearby, his armor was the stuff of legend after defeating the Queen ho on his own, especially among the party he helped deliver to the 25th floor, and now the same armor had appeared with a set of wings and flew down , it was a rather captivating sight to behold.


    Momentster, there was a curious cat ying with his wings, Reina and Lili were introducing themselves to Sarah, and Leol was whispering to Yunan "the faster we get away the better". The leader of the party fromst mission came by asking where he can by the armor even if he had to sell his own mother as a ve, but Yunan just told him even if the maker wanted to make another one there was no materials left to make one in the whole world.


    Once introductions were made, Yunan was told to meet up with the heads of the expedition to get their permission for Reina and Lili, since the heads of the organisation were not around, the leaders of the expedition were the ones to talk to. Reina and Lili did not need to burn bridges if all that was needed was a simple meeting and an agreement.


    At the tent of leadership, Yunan, Reina and Lili, Leol, muscles and Sarah were standing before 2 older gentlemen who were honestly worried about the girls, the priest from the church was aware of the identity of Yunan and how close he was to the two girls and gave his permission after asking about how long will they take, and which floor they nned to stop at. The older gentleman from the royal society was aware of the rumours about the guy who was corrupting the girls, but was surprised to see how innocent they interacted with each other so he did not keep them too long, only made them stay the night in the 25th floor.


    Since the demand was not unreasonable, Yunan set up his portable home and entered with his friends and client. Inside a feast was already prepared so the festive atmosphere started almost immediately. On the outside, the sudden disappearance of the party wentpletely unnoticed as everyone just thought they went to hunt for those rare cuteness monsters.


    Sarah could not understand why did these bunch who seemed to get along very well did not form a party and go adventuring together, the answer that was provided by Yunan sounded like an excuse to miss each other. "You see Reina, Lili, Leol and I were students under the same teachers, we even have our own registered party, however the responsibilities that caught up with us are something we were not aware of until it was time to enter the dungeon, for example Reina is also a princess, and she was added into the ranks of her organisation at birth, Lili as the adopted daughter of the pope was also registered into the church''s own organisation, as for Leol he belongs to a neutral noble family and he was also drafted at birth, so we separated, but our party is still registered and we are looking forward to resuming our adventurester on".


    Sarah felt like she was an outsider in this group, there were the four core members, and then came the servants or protectors, then was her, the only outsider, however before long she was integrated by the unrelenting style of debauchery she was facing, most notably bath time, seeing the group ying around and having fun together blinded her to the fact that she too was striped naked and thrown at Yunan simply because she was the newest girl and as the master of the harem, the first touches were exclusive to Yunan. Bed time was another below to her, everyone just climbed into the same bed, even she was included in the clump of flesh.


    Sarah had the best sleep in her life squeezed between body parts, she only felt that this was the most peaceful moment she had in a very long time, forgetting about all the social norms and the outside world, this bed full of naked bodies provided enough sense of security that it was contagious, she didn''t even know when she fell asleep and when she woke up, she could feel that this was where she belonged in another life, but in this life she had burdens to carry.

 Chapter 153: Adventure and kitty

    Chapter 153: Adventure and kitty


    Sarah started her adventure with the new day, it felt like that to her because she became emotionally invested in this mission for a chance at helping restore her now ruined family. Although she had epted that reality, she was extremely grateful for Yunan who gave her the chance to redemption without asking anything in return simply because he liked her honest personality, something that was very discouraged by the same family that is now being saved by that trait.


    The party left the reason defying "portable home" Yunan had, she felt like there was something wrong with calling something that was bigger, better furnished and better decorated than her old castle by a name like "portable home". After leaving, the party made their way to the exit straight ahead, the party did not discuss about what they will face in the 26th floor, rather they discussed whether to or not to provoke the queen ho but ended up reaching the exit of the floor before reaching a consensus, therefore they forgot about the whole thing and just left the floor.


    Inside the 26th floor no one took out a map, nor apass nor did they mark this ce, they did nothing like the other parties, first they checked their armors and checked theirmunication rings, Sarah was surprised to be given amunication ring, because transmitting ideas and thoughts was much more efficient than talking. She put the ring on her index finger and it adjusted itself to look like it was custom made for her. The first thought she received was a congrattions from all other girls on joining Yunan''s harem. Sarah blushed and hung her head down, she was thankful that the boys were not aware of this message.


    When everyone was ready to depart Yunan stood still and waited for a few minutes before going behind a rock and dragged out a cat ear girl by the nape while she curled like a kitten, Yunan dropped the girl in the middle of the party, she had the feeling that one gets from an overly familiar cat that would just rub itself on anyone that enters the house. "Name?" Asked Lili overbearingly, she was squeezing her fists ready for a fight.


    The cat girl stood up and sniffed at everyone surrounding her as she talked "call me Kitty everyone does, don''t have a name, howe you all smell of each other?" She then inched her way behind Yunan and hid behind his shoulder "I like the way he smells most". Kitty was almost purring as she said that, the party looked at her then looked at Yunan with a very scary look, after some deliberation, Sarah heard the most absurd statement ever "if you like him that much why not be his pet? You can be his ve and he can do nothing to reject you".


    Sarah looked at Yunan to see him face palming with a painful expression, it was true she thought to herself, what kind of party did she join?. Kitty had her eyes glowing like stars as she jumped from behind Yunan and into Lili''s embrace "tell me what to do, anything, i will do anything to make him my master", looking back at Yunan who was dejected and depressed with Leol standing by his side andforting him "why are you so against having such a cute thing as your pet? Do you know how lucky you are? There are men including me who would kill to take your ce, brace yourself".


    "Fine stop it, all of you, i don''t want anymore ves, if she wants to be around me, she is wee, just not the ve thing again, why does this happen every time we meet" Yunan was not happy with the start of the adventure, so he just silenced everyone and gave kitty a ring ofmunication, she was so ecstatic about being able to join in that she was hopping and skipping for half the day.


    What made her happier was a message that was broadcasted to all the rings by anonymous, "if you want to be a ve for Yunan just touch him and loudly pledge what you want to be for him, good luck". Yunan yed dumb as if he did not see that message and led the party to explore the 26th floor.


    The monsters in the floor were hellhounds, they were as big as horses and patrolled around in groups of 7, the response from Yunan''s party was fixed, there were now fixed roles for everyone. Reina was a ranged damage dealer by magic or arrows, Ophelia did the healing, Sarah cast her spells, Muscles was a shield bearer, leol yed the magical rogue and Lili was a bruiser, as for Yunan he was everywhere, doing everything. Kitty however was charged with babysitting Sarah and Ophelia because they were defenseless, unlike the rest of the party.


    Yunan had his active aura buff at 20%, and used his weapons most of the time, while casting the asional heal or mana restore on his allies. It was obvious to see that he was holding back, this was an adventure where he can have fun with friends, it would be too boring if it went too fast. Another thing which caused Sarah and Kitty to feel awe was the party having time to chat and joke about whilst knee deep in the blood of hellhounds.


    Yunan kept the party advancing in a pattern while scouting the floor, every now and then he would use his scarry taunt that sounded more like a dragon''s roar than an ordinary taunt, it was always abnormally loud and drawn in too many creatures, although the party was never overwhelmed they were getting tired and sluggish, and whenever there was a challenge room, they would leave Yunan to do it because they simply did not care, they would just find a corner and huddle together to rest until he finishes with the room.


    Although the snacks, drinks and food Yunan provided were highly nutritious and energising, mental fatigue was a worse enemy than a horde of monsters so the party would rest whenever they could while Yunan just did like he always done when he was alone and carved his way without feeling the need for rest, not until night time arrived.

 Chapter 154: Hellhounds

    Chapter 154: Hellhounds


    Following the established routine, at night time Yunan brought everyone inside the portable home, Lina and Nina had dinner ready and served, so after a good feast it was time for a bath then sleep, with the exception of Leol who wanted to be alone with Muscles everyone else was sleeping in Yunan''s bedroom.


    Sarah was now a bit numb to the endless disy of affection in this weird party, they did not shy away from being frank about any and all things, they couldugh and get angry and thenugh again within minutes, all of it were real feelings. Kitty on the other hand proved to be more beast than most half beasts, she acted like a spoiled cat and stuck to Yunan even fighting with his ves about who gets to pleasure him that night, however they were all rejected, and Yunan took hold of Reina and Ophelia to cuddle with, Sarah thought about every lewd scenario in her little brain but none of them took ce.


    Come morning, Yunan woke up the girls and made breakfast, afterwards it was time to hunt the hellhounds. The hellhounds were dogs the size of horses, almost 2 meters tall and about 2 meters long, and a correspondingly muscled figure. They had curse and poison effects in their ws, a burning effect around their bodies at all times and could spew hellfire from their maws, the ckish hellfire was nigh inextinguishable, and would burn until nothing mmable was left.


    The hellhounds also had thick skin and high magic resistance, however like all dark type beings they were very weak to light magic and holy magic, making it easier to handlerge groups of them just by casting a number of mage light spells, and then attacking relentlessly, or one can do it the Debauchery way and power through with disregard to anything else, one can walk his path without obstacles if one had enough power.


    Since Yunan and friends were taking their sweet time advancing, they ended up bumping into other parties, as one would expect, a party with a half a dozendies and only two men would be perceived as vulnerable and can be taken advantage of. The first of such situation happened while the party was grilling dog ribs while Yunan was clearing a challenge room.


    Another party made predominantly of males who had the advantage in the numbers, the good looking high level uniformed armors and weapons as well as the experience. One could tell immediately upon seeing both parties. They approached the Valyrians asking of they could use the fire to set up camp around this ce. Since there was no harm Lili epted on behalf of the rest, Yunan had been in that challenge room for 4 hours already, he would be out soon and they would continue their journey immediately after.


    After setting up camp opposite the Valyrians, the arriving party sent out alcoholic beverages and food to be eaten and drunk around the fire, soon after, they invited the Valyrians to join but were rejected without hesitation. Later on they started getting intimate and chummy with the girls, something that ended up with one of the newly arrived with his head into the wall of the dungeon. And that spark almost set off a war when Yunan came out of the challenge room.


    Since Yunan got out, the Valyrians just forgot about the soon to be war and just walked away as if nothing had happened at all. The other party kept taunting the Valyrians until they disappeared from sight, but did nothing more, if all those girls could drive someone''s head through the walls of Tartarus, numbers and gear simply had nothing to do with winning, their best chance is angering the Valyrians, and that proved to be out of their reach too.


    Another party tried the run by tactics to consume the energy of the Valyrians, they would taunt the maximum number of monsters they can flee from and run away towards their target leaving them to fight against an overwhelming number, that got Yunan pissed off thus when that party was trying their tactics one more time, he did his maximum range taunt and the horde made contact with Yunan''s group almost at the same time as the bullies, making them fall to the monsters they gathered because they could not run away when it was packed like that with endless monsters.


    Although the days were not always peaceful it was fun for Yunan to just allow himself to be part of a team and rx his guard a little bit, it was okay to get injured or make mistakes, the others had his back.


    The boss of the 26th floor was a three headed hellhound, each head had a different function, the left head could spew hellfire, the right head could spew poison while the middle head released a dark miasma that would buff itself and debuff all others. For this boss fight Yunan had to fly up and make sure the monster was focused on him, while the melee fighters would attack its soft underbelly under the protection of the magicians who would focus only on their teammates to keep them alive.


    As the one who took the role of bait and ultimate annoyance, Yunan did a risky move by teleporting to the poison head and freezing its mouth shut, that earned him all the attention of the monster, afterwards the boss made sure to coat itself with hellfire, however that proved useless once Leol, muscles and Kitty took down its front legs from underneath it making it m heads first into the floor.


    Yunan saw an opportunity and nailed two of the heads to the ground by piercing the muzzles with earth spikes, the hellfire head missed it''s designated spike and in an act of rage it spew hellfire all over the floor around to prevent the pesky little humans from approaching it as it melted the earth spikes and healed its legs, poor thing focused on the wrong thing, because with the melee attackers unable to make any moves the magicians were free to bombard it with their spells. Yunan rained lighting and ice from above, while the Reina, Sarah and Ophelia used healing magic on it to make its body rot and lose its resistance.


    Healing spells were considered as light magic especially those that originated from the newly spread holy magic, therefore they were poison to dark type monsters. Some adventurers would use poison and debuffs on this boss only resulting in empowering it. The existence of elemental type bosses from the 26th through the 29th floor was in preparation for teaching the adventurers about types and how to counter them, the first was dark type because healing a boss was not something any sane explorers would do, therefore knowledge about such things is empirical in helping adventurers advance.

 Chapter 155: Lamia

    Chapter 155: Lamia


    The three headed hellhound boss died soon after to its umted injuries, the meat was inedible so Yunan stored it for Drogon to feed on after it woke up from its evolution, it had taken a long time, long enough that Yunan tasked Lina and Nina to feed it monster cores andva wine to keep it alive.


    Yunan had left most of the boss corpses for Drogon as for the rest they were added to theva wine, creating more and more of the stat boosting wine and the corresponding fruits. ording to the genie, eating the fruits with theva wine would yield the best results and that is how most of the progress Yunan and friends was made.


    It would take much longer to reach the 25th floor for ordinary adventurers, even if someone was carried to the 30th floor, they would take a longer time eating and fighting to reach the same level as Yunan and friends.if we add in the cheat armor Yunan had, there would be noparison between Yunan and any other in the dungeon, especially since Yunan taking the time to map out each and every floor was simply so that he wouldn''t be a brat in the middle floors.


    After taking the items in the chest Yunan used the ws of the boss to make an iron w for Kitty since it was her favorite weapon, since she was staying in the party, he thought making something for her would be a good gesture. Having finished with the 26th floor it was time to descend to the 27.


    Inside the 27th floor was filled with snakes, all kinds, shapes and sizes, they drilled from the walls and dangled from the ceiling, they curled ready to strike on rocks and his in crevices everywhere, some were bold and big and sauntered on the floor, trying to swallow anything that was not itself, and some disyed their beautiful colours to show off how venomous they were, Daring anything to approach and try to harm them.


    Girls and snakes did not make for the most agreeable partners so Yunan just sent them to his portable home and told them to wait there until he found the boss room, he would send in some of the harmless snakes for them to fight while Ophelia was once again elbow deep in venom nds making an antidote to keep the girls safe when they were ready to fight beside Yunan.


    Half a monthter Yunan had flew around the floor mapping it and feeding snakes to his armor andva wine. Yunan received a new addition to his weapons, he could now chose the intensity and effectiveness of his poisonous touch. Spider venom and snake venom belonged to two different categories, one was designed to liquify the victim while the other was made to shut down its nervous system. Having both would give Yunan a good control over the kind of venom he could use at any point in time.


    Around that time, Ophelia had sessfully created antidotes for all types of snakes Yunan had caught, although it was useless when healers with cleanse exist, it was a very good when mana was scarce and the healer could not help, therefore with the help of the genie she set up an automated factory for antidotes, in hopes of selling them, since the antidotes were useful and rare, they could sell for quite a sum.


    The main reason for things like gue cures and venom antidotes being scarce in the early floor is the alchemists are mostly born after the 40th floor and the asional alchemist that is trained before the 20th floor would provide the greatly limited amount of cures and antidotes, hence the exorbitant prices that Ophelia could sell her creation for were justified.


    After two weeks of getting used to fighting snakes, the girls once again joined Yunan, and tw party merrily looked for the bosses room, what they found was a charming Lamia that danced in the room for them. Leol, Lili and Sarah were almost immediately enchanted by her and were about to stop Yunan from fighting her. The Lamia is the queen of snakes, half woman half snake, it had a very rare magic in the dungeon, charm, it uses it own body and hypnotic movements to send the watcher into a trance, if the watcher lets their guard down, the mana of the Lamia turns them into her allies and even soldiers who fight for her.


    Yunan pped the three back to sense, and faced off against the Lamia. She continued to make those charming moves as she watched Yunan approach once he was within range of striking she talked "why must you resist my charm?". Yunan froze in ce, he sheathed his weapons after a moment and sent a message for his teammates that if they attacked there will be trouble.


    "It is not that I resist your charm Lamia, your charm is not effective against me" Yunan took out afortable chair andid back face to face with the Lamia. "Are you not going to attack me?" The Lamia was confused so she stopped her dance and moved closer to Yunan inspecting him, she even feigned trying to bite him but when she saw he did not react she slithered around the party making sure her charm was working properly, then returned to face Yunan.


    Since her charm was ineffective and her attack did not even faze the man in armor she knew well that she was no match for him and since the man made himselffortable, she did too. "Could you please entertain me while we wait?" She figured out there was something the man was waiting for since he neither killed her nor fled away.


    "You are not like your sisters Lamia, you fear death and can think clearly without the shackles of instinct, you can speak too, and you are much smarter than the rest of your sisters" Yunan told her that he knew she was not the same. "I am not the first Lamia to achieve such lofty ce, nor will i be thest" she responded seriously.


    " Yes that is true, however, there wille a man to im you, he will take you to a ce where you will not be the only one, you will find many like you, not just Lamia, but all kinds of monsters that have reach your lofty ce, and if i keep you safe i can meet that man, i would rather not fight nor harm you, nor would I let you attack us as you will". The Lamia frowned at the words Yunan said.


    However just as she was about to retort she felt an irresistible attractions to something behind her, she looked to find an old man walking towards her, she could not help but wrap herself around him and then shrink her size to a tiny thing that weaved along his fingers and wrist.

 Chapter 156: Forgotten feeling

    Chapter 156: Forgotten feeling


    Hephaestus as always had a presence that could not be ignored, as soon as got his hands on the Lamia, Yunan put anotherfortable chair for him and a table between them, he produced someva wine and lotus fruits for them to snack on.


    Reina and Lili moved forward from their position in the back with the rest and offered their greetings, seeing that the others did not approach they were left alone by Yunan. If they did not have the manners to personally greet the man on their own volition there was no way that Hephaestus would ept such forced response.


    "It has grown tastier in your cared, how do you make it?" Hephaestus took a sip from his wine cup andmented on its agreeable taste, since theva wine was not alcoholic nor did it cloud the brain, its taste was what mattered to someone like Hephaestus. "I drop in all freshly killed monsters, i don''t clean them not do i take from the pool more than I consume, so it always had the taste of all the monsters i feed it, you should try the fruits the tastespliment each other perfectly".


    Hephaestus nodded his head in appreciation, he seemed to enjoy having contact with people so Yunan invited him to join them for a meal. "Old man, how about youe by my ce and we can have some lunch, we have an assortment of exotic snakes kept for a day like this one". There was a look of excitement on Reina and Lili who seemed eager to be able to talk casually to the old man so Yunan told them through hismunication ring to just be nice and honest.


    Hephaestus looked at the youngster with studying gaze for a moment before bursting intoughter "inviting me to the house i built for the food i reared and the drink i fermented, that is a first, everyone else just provides food from the outside, i like you kid, but not today, next time i wille by unannounced and just walk in on whatever you are eating yourselves, i hate being treated like an exception". Yunanughed as well "if i try to lock you out i fear my own house will reject me, fair enough,e by whenever you have time, here keep these in a ce with time, they get better with age".


    Yunan passed 5 caskets ofva wine to Hephaestus for personal consumption, and then stood up to leave. he looked at the Lamia as she danced on those overworked finger of Hephaestus "if she ever feels like roaming the dungeon, send her to me, she is much smarter than i expected, oh and if you see my wife, tell her i miss her and that i got a few more concubines" with that Yunan turned around and headed for his party, however he was stopped by a sudden request "introduce me".


    Hephaestus walked to Yunan''s side and together with Reina and Lili walked to the back of the room and met the rest of the party. Yunan started with Leol "this here is Leol, a good friend and a founder of our adventuring party, behind him is his protector and paramour, Muscles, this here is Kitty, a stray cat that seems to like the way i smell and want me to be her owner, behind her isdy Sarah a fallen royalty with good personality, you would get along with her nicely, and finally this here is Ophelia the 5th and most recent addition to our adventuring party, oh our party is named the Valyrians". Yunan then motioned towards Hephaestus "this here is Hephaestus, a talented artisan, and a good friend".


    Dropping the name Hephaestus out of the blue was enough to cause Sarah to feel like the world has crumbled, Leol and Muscles have both heard enough talk about Fortuna and Hephaestus so they could handle the shock as for Kitty she was mostly sniffing around Hephaestus while Ophelia just clutched her staff in a nervous grip.


    Hephaestus scanned the group before him as if appraising their worth, he did not forget to pat Kitty on the head and take a second look at Ophelia''s twin snake staff. Yunan however was busy contacting Debauchery and Anne asking them if they wanted to meet Hephaestus. Showing a faint smile Hephaestus waved his hands and everyone found themselves in the vi number 5, Debauchery and Anne were also brought in mere momentster.


    By the time it sank in for the big party that they were in a new location, Yunan setup the door to his portable home, while Reina and Lili got hold of an elbow each and led Hephaestus into the house he built but never stepped inside, Lina and Nina were there to greet the old man before rushing to make enough exquisite food for the uing feast.


    Yunan pped his hands at the bloodied Debauchery "clean up before meeting the old man, everyone else, get inside we have a feast to attend". He then entered before getting trampled by the eager Debauchery, who were racing towards the bathroom. Sarah was still in a daze as she followed the crowd not sure what to do or think.


    An hourter one could see Hephaestus being the cool kid in the room, answering patiently the questions asked by the starstruck fangirls, chief among them Balin who was squealing from delight, just because Hephaestus had acknowledged his request for a forging session. Hephaestus ate the food provided to him, even allowing Fae to hand feed him, he would joke around with Sarah and Muscles while petting Kitty, every now and then he would cast a grateful look at Yunan who simply was sitting further away from the rest, he was grateful, because most of the people who get into contact with him are those who wish for this thing or that.


    What struck Hephaestus as the oddest about the bunch was that they cared about him more than about what he could do, even Balin the self proimed biggest fangirl of Hephaestus was asking questions to improve his own smithing rather than seek the divine smithing others sought after, as for the rest of the extended Debauchery family, they were just happy to have a celebrity for lunch, since Fortuna was as evasive as air, they had poured all their emotions into him, even the girl who belonged to another god did not seem to be as afraid as before and was as warm as the rest if not a bit reserved.


    This was something Hephaestus missed, meeting people who were interested in him rather than his ability, it was something he almost forgot how it felt.

 Chapter 157: Gift of gratitude

    Chapter 157: Gift of gratitude


    After the feast took away all the stardom Hephaestus had, he invited Yunan and Balin to join him on a forging session. Yunan was not aware of the forge he had in his own home, something that was called into question by Balin as being undeserved.


    With Hephaestus being the nice guy he was, his status deteriorated from star to uncle in mere hours, so rather then be the town fool, he took his leave from everyone promising toe by and y now and then.


    Inside the forge was the dream world of any smith, most notably, was the extensive library written by bygone smiths from great many era, it was not unlike a personal diary showcasing the path each of them took to chase after divine smithing, Other than that, this ce had an amazing furnace that can go from cold to melting a with a turn of a dial, tools that were beyond the understanding of Balin, he imed them to be immortal tools, to be used even after life itself died out.


    With Balin back to fangirl mode, Hephaestus brought Yunan over and gave him a few pointers on forging a sword, an item that was definitely unnecessary for Yunan, but the contents of this lesson could be felt by Yunan in his own soul. He felt like anything he thought about could be forged by taking the same steps "one hammer, one furnace, one sword, all of creation" that was how Yunan described the forging technique imparted to him by Hephaestus.


    When Balin was about to forge, Hephaestus told him some words secretly before leaving him to work on his own and departing from the forge with Yunan. Balinter on would tell his disciples "all paths are one, you are just walking on small section of the road". The enlightenment Balin got from Hephaestus took almost a week before it ended, he forged and reforged the same clump of materials to the point it started to crumble.


    Hephaestus left soon after imparting his knowledge, he left behind him the chest from the Lamia and some modifications to the portable home. Yunan did not open the chest and left it as a decorative item. It was dazzling to see and very attractive to behold, there were multiple tries to steal it or open it ording to the genie and Yunan did not need to know who or why.


    A day after Hephaestus left, Yunan was told by the ck Fate to open the chest, as there was a message Left by Hephaestus in there, Yunan left the party to their devices and walked into the room where Drogon has been sleeping for months now with no signs as to when he will awaken. In there Yunan opened the chest, inside it was a golden book, two fruits, and a piece of paper, Yunan picked up the paper and read what was on it.


    " Thank you for taking care of Lamia and myself, it was fun to meet your friends, i never imagined such an entric bunch could coexist together, it was fun watching you. I have made a few upgrades to the house since i felt it wascking for something i made, as you know, the pursuit of perfection is endless and i will never allow any of my creations to be less than their maximum capability. And i may have identally inconvenienced you and dyed your adventures so i gave you a small gift in return. As for the fruits, give one to the sleeping critter and put one into your fermentation pit. Enjoy your stay in Tartarus and grow Faster, your wife misses you too".


    Yunan felt like his luck has been spent for the next millennium simply by getting an advice from Hephaestus, and now Hephaestus feeling indebted to him was possibly stealing luck from others in this world, Yunan prayed silently for the unlucky souls in this world.


    Yunan opened the untitled golden book and a beautiful rainbow light surrounded him and knowledge was poured into his brain like a light rain, it soaked his mind gently and tenderly. When it was done and the light faded so did the book, Yunan felt so grateful he had tears in his eyes. He then stood up and fed one of the fruits to Drogon and gently caressed his scaly head for a while, afterwards Yunan left to the fermentation pool and dropped the other fruit in there asmanded.


    Reaching the control room Yunan sat on a chair and told the genie to scan the house and identify all the new functions, it took until midnight before showing the results. The screen it showed had the following written on it. "Mana core : storage and efficiency enhanced. Communication rings andmunication room now provide visual and auditory feed as an option, mental link and emotional link added as options to the rings. Home is now an independent space, now the rules of Tartarus do not apply on those inside."


    Yunan knew that luck had stopped being a factor when he read those words on the screen, it must be the gratefulness Hephaestus had for something or the other, because giving someone and independent space; a whole dimensions so to speak; was not something that luck would influence, and definitely not something that Hephaestus would feel obliged to do and there is not enough money on this to pay for an independent space especially one that was built and augmented by Hephaestus.


    Yunan decided not to dwell on it nor speak of it to the rest, it was not something to share, but to keep close and appreciate with fondness and gratitude. While Yunan was thinking this way he could feel a strange vibration in his soul, not long after, Drogon roared loud enough for the whole house to shake with him, Yunan sent a message to calm down everyone, "my reptile just woke up".


    Yunan teleported Drogon to the control room, there he held the little critter in his arms and gently pet him, he had missed the reassuring presence Drogon offered him when it was hanging beside him and Drogon returned the sentiment, although it was only a few months, he acted like he had not seen Yunan in centuries, revelling in this proximity. It sent a message to Yunan through telepathy "we dragons take a parent instead of a master, we link our souls to you in search of kinship, when we stay far from you for long time we feel our souls torn apart and only by returning to you do we mend and heal".


    Yunan simply smiled and kept petting the dragon "i missed you too, partner" he mumbled under his breath. He then sent a thought to the ck Fate "scan me and show me everything, use as much mana as you need, tell meter when ie back here" after that Yunan teleported to his bedroom with Drogon, there he spent a few moments having some sweet pillow talk with the girls before sleeping soundly.

 Chapter 158: Overpowered

    Chapter 158: Overpowered


    After a good night sleep Yunan returned to the control room to check on the results of the scan the ck Fate has performed and the results were rather pleasing to him.


    Name: Yunan. Title: wise prowler, suiter of Fortuna, lucky bastard.


    Attributes : Strength: 3500, Constitution: 3500, Dexterity: 3500, Wisdom: 3500.


    Skills : Combat mastery: master (epasses sword, dagger, shield, archery and unarmed). Heavenly smithing: level 35, Appraisal: level 30, Ranging: level 33, Dual wielding, Multi-casting, Technician, Thinker, Mastermind, Lucky cover, Hardened skin, Dark sight, Taunt, Intimidate, Voice maniption, Cooking, Therapeutic massage, Traceless casting, Mapping, Regeneration. Wall climbing, water breathing, echolocation, Mana maniption: master


    Spells : lesser heal, mend, healing grounds, all attribute buff, toxin flush, spitting mes, automated looting, dizzying spell, teleport, spatial shift, icicle, fireball, lighting bolt, wind de, earth spike, spell break, elemental coating, mana syphon, fear, paralysis, ice field, mud mire, elemental maelstrom, fire pit, icicle rain, lighting cascade, meteor shower, earth shifting, camouge, invisibility.


    Resistances : elemental, gue, toxin, vibration, detection.


    Pet : Drogon, Valyrian, 2nd evolution.


    Attributes : Strength: 9500, Constitution: 9500, Dexterity: 9500, Wisdom: 9500.


    Skills : luck bringer, enhancer, lucky cover, shape shifting, taunting cry, intimidating roar, imposing presence, me control, mana syphon.


    Armor : Dragonification, level 40, draconic nature, evolutionary.


    Abilities and enchantments : master mark, self repair, storage space, camouge, invisibility, presence hiding, dark sight, heat vision, life detection, echolocation, attribute buff, wall climbing, water breathing, istion, permanent restoration (included health, stamina and mana), damage reduction (from all inferior level items), mana syphon, mana storage, mana inject, mapping, detection, integration.


    Integrated effects : winged flight, prehensile tail, contact sensitivity, poison, adhesion, elemental cores, elemental cloaking, spreading effect (allowing any spell to be an area of effect covering a controlled range), adjustable effects.


    Resistance : elemental, decay, damage, gue, toxin, detection.


    Yunan had a smile on his face as he read the long screen full of information, he has worked very hard and this screen was indisputable proof of his aplishments.


    A gentle sigh came from behind Yunan, a momentter Leader sat on the arm support on Yunan''s right side leaning on him, "I''m proud of you" she said as she kept her eyes on Yunan''s status. "You worked too hard, sigh only two and a half years and already in the 26th floor, i really am proud to be your teacher and friend". Yunan pulled Leader to sit on hisp and started caressing her hair gently "if you are tired how about i find you a few good ves to pamper you back into shape?" Yunan had this feeling like Leader was just tired of it all, just like the old barber, maybe she needed to just quit this life and find something as boring and mundane as possible.


    "Nah, you just keep what you are doing, that should be enough for a few months" said Leader with the tone of a purring kitten. "Well, if that is all it takes, i can only offer myself as healing aid, whenever you need to". Leader nuzzled her head on Yunan''s chest "thest man that told me that got two cute daughters and stopped petting my head ever since, are you going to break your promise too?" Leader was really tired and needed some simplefort, she did not know why this kid could understand her more than most of those around her, still she would enjoy this as long as she could.


    Yunan did not respond to Leader after all, because making promises to someone who had seen many broken ones, would be like pouring water into an ocean, inconsequential, so he chose to keep silent and keep Leader in his arms.


    After a few minutes of silence Leader picked herself up and sat straight "we have a name for guys like you" she looked at Yunan in the eyes "overwhelmingly overpowered" she then ced her hand on Yunan''s shoulder and nted a kiss on his forehead " you however have taken that name and took it to a new hight, and as the one who raised you, i must say i am so very happy i can carry your baby". Yunam looked rather happy hearing her confessions " i don''t think i will survive seeing you turn fat from pregnancy though, so let''s not risk it, now tell me the big secrets you are hiding from me".


    The duo looked at each other before smiling tacitly "lets go have breakfast first, your beloved wives are acting like cats in heat especially the cat one and they need some pacifying, since Balin is currently in enlightenment we need someone to y the pervert, and you my dear are the only jack of all trades that i trust" leader stood up and dragged Yunan by the hand out of the control room, and into the living room where a lively and lovely atmosphere was radiating like sunshine.


    Yunan and Leader joined the fun like they were there from the beginning, Yunan did y the perverted role for Leader acting all vulgar and talking in the manner of Balin imitating his jokes and quips, making the party cringe andugh at the same time, but ending up promising to never turn into a Balin ever again.


    After the lively breakfast Yunan told his friends he had an urge to return to the surface world for some reason, and proposed a trip to Damascus to do whatever the elite and rich nobility does with their money, he had too much money and nothing to spend on, since neither Anne nor Debauchery were from nobility nor had anything to do with them for a very long time, all gazesnded on Leol, who as expected said that he had not been part of anything since he joined Debauchery and his grandfather would y him for not doing his best in the dungeon.


    Since all others were out of touch with the world, Sarah as the royalty that has been in contact with society recently, was given the mantle of fun manager for the rest of the day, however she tried to refuse by stating: " my family is in dire need of money and i can''t just leave when i started making money in the dungeon, i have to apologize, but i do not think i can be your guide". Yunan grabbed her by the hand and looked at her with puppy eyed "if it''s just money, everyone here is richer than half the kingdoms in Burkan, we can absolutely buy a duchy or something like that, that way you don''t have to work too hard in the dungeon".


    "Absolutely not" screamed Sarah " i can send them money that i worked for, but i would never do something like give them authority again, if you want to give me money then pay me like any other guide" Yunan noded immediately, he would never force someone into a position they were ufortable with so he said " fine we will pay you the average daily ie of an adventurer between the 20th and 30th floor, now take us outside and lets us feel like royalty".

 Chapter 159: Shopping for her

    Chapter 159: Shopping for her


    Under the guidance of a royalty, the extended Debauchery family arrived at Damascus city for a fun time, not that they were bored or anything, they had to trust the urge of the guy who was known to have a luck so high it was called godly, almost infringing on the domain of his wife goddess.


    And so the sightseeing under the royal guide Sarah, started soon after breakfast, the first stop was the opera house, were Debauchery got to listen to the most popr music styles and performances, but that got old only 2 hours in, next was the theatre, although Yunan seemed a but distanced in thought, the rest of Debauchery wereughing madly at the hrious performance of one of the mostically acimed ys.


    Yunan sneaked out and made the manager of the theater change the program and invite different theatrical troupe to perform an array of ys, from the romantic to the thrilling to the tear jerking ones, and left Debauchery behind telling them he is out to stretch his legs, only a madman would stand between Yunan and his luck so they all stayed and enjoyed the private performance in the supposedly close theatre.


    Walking the streets of Damascus Yunan arrived at a street filled with stalls made of jewellery, what drew his attention was a stall that had no business, its owner was an olddy that was making lucky items from a milky white precious rock that was easy to shape and mold, the old woman worked with sure steady hands and the technique of a master, Yunan approached the stall and watched all kind of lucky charms on the stall, although there were too many, the old woman did not stop making them.


    "Can you make make one to my design?" Yunan asked the old woman with the respect of a fellow artisan, she looked at him and shook her head "all those i made have their owners, luck and fate are present within moonstone ores, i sell none today, i might sell all of them in the next vige, so i have to apologize, i do not make personal requests". Yunan held his jaw for a moment and kept his eyes on the jewellery thinking about something "then let me have the ones made for my wives and friends".


    The old woman looked at Yunan like a lunatic for a second before putting down the materials in her hand and cleaning up " tell me about your wives and friends" after some deliberation Yunan started spouting nonsense at the olddy.


    "There is an orc who loves money more than his own life, a dwarf who is more vulgar than half of thebined, a thief who is as scheming as the devil, a lykan who like to stay silent, an alfardy who loves cuteness, a saintess in the midst of devils, a stray cat, a hard working royal, a spoiled brat with abandonment issues, a guy with no ambition and his lover a muscle, aforting fox, a quack doctor, a quack apprentice andstlydy luck"


    The old woman was doubting Yunan''s sanity for a moment before she started choosing items ording to the descriptions Yunan gave, for Dustan she chose an idol with ga eyed and emerald smile, for Balin she chose a half naked mermaid with tail encrusted with sapphire, for Bai there was a miniature chess board with obsidian, for Lucian there was a rabbit foot, Fae got a white unicorn, and Mary got herself a in 5 point star enameled with gold.


    Kitty got herself a sitting cat, Sarah had a rose, Lili got herself a two small kids holding hands, Leol got a hand sized crown, Muscles got a ring with tiara crowning it, Reina''s piece was a nine tailed fox, Anne got a snake bracelet, Ophelia got a twin snake ne and Fortuna got a small luminous crystal moonflower.


    Yunan teleported each piece to their respective owner before paying and deciding to leave with the moonflower in hand, however the olddy stopped him "you did not get one for yourself, what is it that you find unsatisfactory about my jewellery?" Yunan looked back "you just don''t have my piece, otherwise you would have given it to me" with that the woman kept looking at Yunan''s figure melting into the crowd, no matter how she tried to picture something that suited him, she came up with nothing so she shrugged and returned to her work as if nothing had happened.


    While looking through the streets Yunan kept his hand on the moonflower made of moonstone, it looked white and beautifully serene, his aimless steps took him towards an obsidian stall, The owner was more of a performer than a salesman, he had many watching his stall and striking conversation with. Yunan stood silently watching the man for half and hour before moving closer to the stall and making an order.


    "Hey old man, can you make a hairpin that can seat this flower? I want the hairpin to be inspired by this medallion and this essory, obsidian and red ga, is that possible?" The old man looked at Yunan thinking that he should refuse and promote his own merchandise to be the top of the hair pin, but heard himself say "as long as you can pay for it, then there is no trouble".


    Yunan gave the man the amount of money he thought appropriate and the moonstone moonflower to work around, the old man scrutinized the medallion and Drogon who rested on it like an essory, then made for Yunan something that was exactly what Yunan wanted, a dragon carrying a moon flower on its back. After iming the piece of marvelous jewellery, Yunan let his feet carry him to the end of the street and further into the city''s giantmercial district.


    Passing by a coffee shop Yunan''s eyes were drawn by a prettydy sitting alone with a mncholic look on her face, so he walked into the shop and sat down opposite of thedy and presented the gift he bought to her "and to think that i was feeling such an urge to leave the dungeon only to wipe away your sad face". Luna looked at the man who took his seat as if it was the most natural thing "is this what couples feel like when they miss each other"


    "I don''t know, but i bet the usual standard for couples is not meant for you and me" Yunan patiently unwrapped the hair pin then stood up and ruffled Luna''s hair before making it in a style that matched the hair pin, he used spatial shift while she was closing her eyes and took her to his own private space.


    As Luna opened her eyes and looked around her she had a smile on her face saying "the old man has been good to you". Yunan picked his woman and took her to his bedroom he threw her on the bed "at this moment, all I know is that I should be good to you and you will be as good to me" he then joined her for a passionate moment.

 Chapter 160: Untrusted god

    Chapter 160: Untrusted god


    When Debauchery and friends, finished the program they went for ascivious dinner in one of the most luxurious restaurant, they ended up being kicked from three such ced because they hadcking manners to put it mildly, and in the end found a small pub for the ordinary people, Sarah had to admit that the price to vour and amount ratio was iparable to those fancy restaurants and them making such a big raucous would them a few free dishes and cheers from the other patrons.


    Only after having that much fun did they remember that Yunan was not with them, and sent him a few messages asking to be sent back to the portable home. Yunan obliged them, and they found him in the middle of a candle light dinner whispering sweet nothings to his date. Lina and Nina bowed hurriedly to Yunan and Luna and scurried away to the kitchen trying to make sense of what Yunan had prepared for dinner and what they could do to help.


    Yunan gestured to Debauchery to get lost and leave them alone, but he forgot who Debauchery was, first to punch Yunan was Lili who justified herself with "i told you not to bring girls where i can find them, now you made me angry", followed after by more dissenting voices and punches "you ditched us for a date?", "How dare you bring another woman here, you have too many" and the like while Luna just giggled to herself at the obvious disy of affection.


    "Get yourself in order and sort everything out tonight, by tomorrow make sure to introduce us, seriously, i wish your wife will find out about this ande beat you too" was what Reina said while winking at Yunan before joining the retreating troops, towards a feel good bath.


    After Debauchery left Yunan sat back in his chair with a smile on his face "told you they love me too much" he said with his childish grin, " and that finally made you actually smile, i owe them one now". Luna found herself blushing like a maiden, never had she met someone who wanted to see her smile hard enough to get beaten up for it.


    "Fine i''ll smile all dinner long but i''ll turn grouchy granny after that" Yunan retorted immediately "even grouchy granny can taste good as dessert, so i won''t say no", bothughed and talked merrily during dinner. Afterwards Yunan took her to his bedroom expecting to find his girls waiting there but there was no one, so they got in bed and cuddled while talking about this and that.


    "So what happened to make you so sad, if you wanted to see me you could have just used your ring to send a message" Yunan had been proding into this subject for the whole night and finally could not stop himself from asking directly. "It''s not like that, remember that jealous bitter thing fromst time? Well she has been trying to influence our love connection to stop you from loving me anymore and she said she sessfully did it so i was sad about it"


    "Well i love you in so many ways i think she chose the wrong one to target, you just let her believe i don''t love you anymore, and we can keep up our secret meetings like the pair of love birds we are". The two of them talked halfway through the night before sleeping peacefully in each others arms.


    Come morning, Yunan introduced Luna to his mates at breakfast "this is my first wife, Luna you guys know her asdy luck and Fortuna, she was missing me and that was why i had that urge to go outside yesterday, anyway, be polite and mind your words, your luck is literally in the tip of her fingers". A moment of silence and then the raucous started again.


    With their tiny bit of luck on the line, Debauchery were surprisingly not very careful att all, sessfully making Fortuna sheer up and join their unorthodox ways of seeking fun, but still kept her eyes on Ophelia all the time. Yunan found a good moment and took away Ophelia from the room to ask her about it "any secrets you want to share with me?", However Ophelia stayed silent until they reached the infirmary.


    "What do you want to know?", she felt bothered and ufortable when Yunan put it so straight forward, "I just want to know why 2 gods have kept watching you and your teacher, that is all, if you want to keep it to yourself then that is an option too" Yunan was asking out of curiosity nothing more making Ophelia rx a little bit.


    "My god is a bit untrusted in the heavenly realm, although he has many children, i was only introduced to him recently by teacher and as a recent believer his mark on me is still fresh, that should be the reason" she looked down at her own feet and fidgeted with her fingers waiting for judgement to fall on her, Yunan got closer to her and patted her head " is it good enough if i trust you?". Ophelia nodded her head like a chick pecking at grain with a choke in her voice "it''s enough, for me it''s enough".


    Later on Yunan and Ophelia joined the party with a visibly better looking Ophelia, from then on Luna did not pay as much attention to either Anne of Ophelia simply because she thought the matter was settled, and there was no more reason for concern.


    Later that Day Yunan returned Luna to Damascus before using spatial shift to transport himself to the dungeon and bring out the rest to continue their adventures. Since the new home was an independent space in itself, Balin could stay inside with Debauchery and Anne for 3 more days before heading back to their own levels.


    Since the the 26th level was already mapped it was only a matter of defeating the boss Lamia before heading to the 27th floor. The Lamia fight went very easy since the new one did not have charm magic and only used water or ice magic against the party, and since everyone had just got a 4 day vacation they simply used their all to end the fight fast, the Lamia had fallen with all kinds of injuries, and as usual the living shared the internal organs while the armor got the husk.

 Chapter 161: Enchanting man-eater

    Chapter 161: Enchanting man-eater


    On the 27 floor were the gorgeous harpies, enchanting females with ws instead of hands, wings and plumage on their arms and talons instead of feet, they used whips to attack from range and their ws and talons to finish of the prey.


    The harpy had great mobility but were physically weak, they would enchant males and bring them peacefully to be eaten or if failed they would relentlessly attack until the target is no longer able to make a response and then they would be killed and eaten.


    Using arrows against harpies is the very definition of futility, and ranged magic is hard to hit if its not faster than the harpies, however of you force them to fly low by conquering the sky, they would be sitting ducks, another venue for attack was mind spells, any spells that can cause confusion and slow response would basically end the fight against the harpies.


    With Reina around, she would cast her illusion magic wherever Yunan told her before the harpies took to the sky, rendering them easy pickings for the party to harvest, however if for some reason the harpies did take to the sky, Reina would cast her illusions to hide the party while Yunan filled the sky with lightning cascade and meteor shower, forcing the harpies to fly lower and be easier targets, or try to flee.


    Another month passed by the party as they made progress in their team work and individual prowess, the main beneficiary was Drogon, he seemed to love the taste of harpies and their eggs, the eggs tasted unbelievably good when fried with fat from the the harpies, it had be a staple of breakfast every day. As in thest floor, Yunan would always get to do the challenge rooms alone simply because his teammates were toozy to help.


    After the first two weeks the party picked up a habit of making dresses with the plumage of the harpies, they would use the soft plumes to stuff pillows and beds and bedrolls, and the hard long feathers to weave skirts and armlets, crowns and coat tails for dresses. The main reason this hobby was picked because they saw a party pick the feathers of the harpy and sew it to various things, therefore came the amazing idea of making such stuff to mainly relieve boredom.


    After the whole floor was explored and mapped, Yunan and friends headed to the boss character of this floor, a harpy matriarch, it was smaller than the rest of the harpies and was more human looking than the rest of her species.


    The harpy matriarch was man sized, and had enough charm to topple a few kingdoms, Leol was asking if he could keep her and making sure that Yunan was going to help him tame her, but what surprised the party was that the matriarch was willing to mate instead of fight but the girls did not allow her to even finish her proposal before they were beating her like a punching bag.


    The harpy matriarch finally fought back and got away but she still eyed the boys like a subus sighing softly every time she looked at them, Leol was weeping at his fantasy that did not get to mature while Yunan consulted the ck Fate about the viability of having the matriarch as a pet, the answer wss not too surprising. The matriarch could drain the life essence from males and kill them within 2 or three sessions of intercorse than feed on their dead body toy healthy eggs.


    After hearing the news, leol changed his attitude from lusting after pleasure to lust after blood, there is no point in having such a beautiful thing of he could not spend his days making babies with her, or thats how he thought. As for the rest of the party they just unleashed their spells and skills on the matriarch simply because she tried to literally feed on their men.


    About an hourter the Harpy matriarch fell to her wounds and left behind a golden egg and a chest, the egg was eaten along with its mother, the golden shell was fed to the armor and the chest was distributed among the rest.


    The party descended to the 28th floor and then returned home to get some rest and rxation before starting a fresh floor. Inside they found a gift left by Balin, he made armors for the juniors with his new understanding of smithing, the armors were tailored and had a very ssy design to them, these new pieces would be enough to work with until the 40th floor.


    Debauchery and Anne had left home and were trained for their next face-off against the guardian of the 80th floor, with The secret of Honey and healing herbs in the dungeon, Debauchery could train diligently or wait until they ate enough monsters to reach that kind of height.


    The next morning, Yunan and party were summoned by the guild, a messenger found them about to start exploring and told them to head to the headquarters of the guild in Dungeon city urgently, although Yunan did know what was wrong he still made his way up as soon as possible, and arrived 2 hourster, he told that recently there have been activity in the dungeon targeting adventurers in the early floors and that the guild have been trying to find the culprits, and until everyone was safe and sound and the culprits were dealt with they expected Yunan as a VIP of the guild to stay under their protection for the time being.


    However Yunan responded with "if i am lucky they will find me and we can end this before it gets too much for the rest of the adventurers, whether i hide or not, if they are after me then we would meet inevitably, therefore i would like to continue my adventurers in peace and if they find me the that is bad luck for them." With that Yunan returned to the 28th floor to start his exploration

 Chapter 162: Cats

    Chapter 162: Cats


    The 28th floor was filled with big cats,rge predatory felines that ranged from 3 meters of height up to 10 meters in hight, there were lions, tigers, leopards, panthers and more, all had razor sharp ws and mouths full of pointy teeth.


    The cats all had different attributes and used different magics, Lions hunted in packs with a focus on surprising attacks and deadly force, they used strength and dexterity buff. Tigers were solo hunters that used stealth spells and strength augmentation buffs, leopards were dexterity focused stalkers and relied on camouge. There were mixed groups in the floor if there was a 10 meter high monster.


    All the cats had high elemental resistance, but they were susceptible to overwhelming strength, and so the party went to melee focusedbat, the ranged members would cast buffs and shields, while asionally shooting an attack aimed at the eyes or the open maws, as for the melee users they were buffed by Yunan''s area of effect all stats buff at 100% simply because it was easier to adapt to the new found strength.


    With Yunan only Buffing his friends and not himself, he started feeling the difference in the power level he is used to and his own true body, he started taking injuries and feeling exhaustion, just like he did before, it was thrilling to have the feeling of his life hanging by a thread.


    Although the armor was higher level, the damaged he was sustaining came from momentum and kic energy, giving him internal injuries instead of external damage, it could be healed easily by using mend and lesser heal but he chose not to ovep his own healing magic with the healing provided by Ophelia, even if she was not needed, being able to do something was a good boost to morale.


    The 28th floor was split into three biomes, jungle, savannah and in, there was no apparent order as these biomes intersected with each other like checkers, in each biome was a set type of cats, the jungle cats were stealth and ambush experts, able to hide from life detection and heat detection, the savannah cats worked in numbers and gave short chases, as for the in the cats were more focused on speed and chasing than the rest.


    The after feeding on the cats, the armor has changed the tail and ws, the tail gained the function of adding bnce and stability, as for the ws, they be more hooked then just straight, they couldtch into target''s easier and allow better grip when climbing.


    Yunan has been getting the feeling that the armor was turning more and more into another skin, the more it ate those monsters with sensitive hides, especially after sprouting whiskers that were extremely sensitive to air currents. And Yunan could feel the minute changes caused by a butterfly pping its wings.


    Yunan and friends were taking their time collecting hides to sell for funding Sarah and Kitty, and since the floor was basically an open space its mapping depended only on how much mana Yunan wanted to expand, it was a circle with a 5000 km radius, one could encounter as many as one group of monsters every kilometer if they were lucky, or up to a group every 100 meters if they were the luckiest.


    There were mini bosses in each biome to rece theck of challenge rooms in this floor, the boss of a biome would never leave his territory, Yunan hunted as many mini bosses as he could within one month and sold them to the guild.


    The Valyrians also happened to bump into those who were hunting down adventurers, they approached with kind looking smiles and damaged bodies asking for healing because their healer was out of mana, once their wounds were healed they asked for some money or corpses because the one keeping it all was eaten by a monster, the Valyrians did not have the concept of extra corpses, they all had a purpose or the other so they just took out about 100 corpses as pity, however as the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished.


    The Valyrians has been taking this floor as a pic when ever they hit the ins, they would camp in the open simply because it felt good being exposed to nature, and since everyone slept together only one tent was needed. The adventurer hunters were a bit jealous of Yunan and his party full ofdies warming his bed and being able to fork a whole 100 monster corpses with cores still inside for pity.


    Since wherever envy was the rest of the sins were never too far away, the adventurer hunters ended up using some mind control spell to capture everyone for some lusty activity, however they only incurred the wrath of the Valyrians, and were beaten to an inch of their lives, healed and beaten again, before being sent to the infirmary to be models for anatomy lessons by Ophelia.


    When all was said and done Yunan was impressed that his group did not have any signs of killing intent, they did not even need to vote to see if they could keep them as prisoners or kill them. The adventurer hunters were delivered to the guild soon after when Yunan felt it was time to challenge the boss.


    The boss was female cat withrger than life proportions, it looked like a mixed breed of all the monsters in the floor, it was stronger, faster, and harder to kill, it had very high Regeneration and it could regrow a severed limb in seconds. After a long arduous fight, the Valyrians found it was a mere illusion after they shattered it to pieces. The true boss was a cute little kitten that Yunan mistook for an offspring.


    It was the only wisdom type cat in the floor and used such big images to tire out and cheat adventurers to leave the floor without killing it, and she could still kill them all if they decided to stick around tired and exhausted.

 Chapter 163: The 29th floor

    Chapter 163: The 29th floor


    With the boss captured, Yunan made a meal of it and let everyone have some of his best cooking. The party had just descended to the 29th floor and had yet to see any monsters yet. Yunan decided that since it was thest floor that Sarah would be part of the Valyrians she might as well feel like she belonged here for thisst period too.


    The 29th floor was aplete ecosystem, start from earthworms to insects, to small animals, herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores, most of the residents here were beasts that had not yet created their cores and they were im the bottom of the food chain, the higher one was on the food chain the higher the possibility it was a monster.


    Through his scan Yunan could see that this floor was like a subcontinent, it was vast, had different biomes and was popted mostly by beasts, there were monsters from all the 28 floors in here, however they did not take even 1% of the poption, rare enough to not destroy the ecosystem but still plenty of them to hunt down. In the 29th floor the monster nests looked very simr to that on the surface, they were mostly underground and had a territory to be protected from all other humans or monsters.


    Be that as it may, fighting monsters from level 1 to level 29 was hardly trouble for the Valyrians even if they were surrounded by such a horde, however due to the vast area of the floor, it was easy to slip between monsters, nevertheless, the Valyrians took out every monster nests they came across in their bid to map out the floor, in most humanoid monsters nests one could find a plethora of ores and precious stones, Yunan would appraise the ores and pay a sum equal to its value to the party and feed said ore to the armor.


    Although the armor was made of extraordinary materials, it could still extract the effects of lower level materials and add them to its own empowering itself and Yunan in the process therefore Yunan did not hesitate in acquiring the materials he came across, he did not buy such materials from the guild because they would be processed and there is very little chance he could buy raw unprocessed material from the guild even if he asked for it.


    The floor was seriously big, not even after 3 months of roaming did they fully map it, ording to some parties they met, there was no full map of the floor only one that leads to the boss, because how vast the floor really is, since that was the case, Yunan took the way to the boss of the floor, the boss room was an underground corridor partitioned to create 29 rooms one for each floor boss, the partition would copse immediately after the boss in the room before it was defeated.


    It was a nostalgia trip for Yunan, he did not ask his party to let him fight alone, that he would doter on. The first boss, a goblin died before it knew there were intruders, same for the kobold and the boar, then one by one, the Valyrians killed and feasted on each boss, gaining precious points after each kill, and after every boss there would be a chest with something for each member of the Valyrians.


    Yunan did not restrain himself as he usually did, and granted his teammates enough buffs to let them ignore most of the bosses. Fight after fight, the Valyrians made their way through the corridor gaining strength with each step forward, they arrived at the 20th partition to find it was a resting site with many groups setting up camp there, one of those was the party Sarah hase her to join.


    Although Sarah did not directly join said party she still went and talked with their leader for some time before returning to the Valyrians. Sarah did not talk about her other party and no one asked her about it, she was after all, just extra for the trip, after ample rest Yunan led his fellows through thest few floor bosses. It took them about 20 hours to reach thest boss, so they decided to head back and rest before fighting thest one.


    Although the party had set up a tent, they were all sleeping inside the portable home, although many came to offer their services they were shocked to find the tent empty, mere moments after the party entered it. After a good rest, a good breakfast and a refreshing tea, the party went out of the tent once again to the surprise of those who confirmed the tent was empty. Right after they were swarmed with assistance offers but they were all turned down.


    Inside thest room there 27 bosses all at level 29, without time to think as the bosses swarmed their party, Yunan gave his orders and took the lead by casting mana shield on everyone to keep them safe until they got into battle mode, he then started casting his spells like crazy. Yunan had trained his own casting to the point he had no cool down time and the cast was instantaneous, since he had all magic constructs already permanently built in his mana core there was no need for incantations or creating the magical construct.


    Yunan spammed his most destructive attacks namely icicle wich he developed into ice spear and lighting bolt which he evolved into lighting strike, earth spikes and fireballs. He was focused on pushing away the bosses to give his mates room he did not notice that with his precision he had killed many of the early bosses with a single hit, after his barrage was over the room only had 7 bosses left, each of them had stayed back and were nning something or the other.


    This power level was more surprising to Yunan than his own party, they knew he held back but he did not know the extent of his own power, since he never went all out before. And now that only 7 bosses were left, Yunan retired to the supporting role he had been acting in with his party, running everywhere doing everything that was needed at the moment.

 Chapter 164: Reaching the 30th floor

    Chapter 164: Reaching the 30th floor


    With only 7 bosses left in the field the danger was much more manageable, and with everyone protected by mana shield Yunan could go all out without worrying about their safety, he took the front row with Muscles and Lili while covering the party with earth shift to create an enclosure with one entry point.


    Yunan passed someva wine to his teammates before downing some himself, he then increased the all stat buff to 300%, the maximum output at the moment, and with that, the party was temporarily able to withstand the onught without much damage sustained.


    As a frontliner Yunan coated his short swords with dual lighting and wind, maximizing the damage and the sharpness of the weapons, he then took the time to deal with the tendons of any boss that came before him, blocking and parrying any attack that came within range.


    With the 300% buff fully unleashed, add in the mastery over spells and weapons, Yunan was like a rapid firing machine gun, sending an untold number of ice spears and lighting strikes to keep all 7 bosses at bay and give his friends the time and space to freely attack and damage the bosses. And thanks to that extreme output the battle soon ended with victory. The bosses got gradually paralysed by lighting and slowed down due to frost, making them weaker and easier to handle.


    The battle ended after 3 hours with one boss after another falling dead, after all was done, the Valyrians sat down on the ground exhausted and gasping for breath, the effects of 300% all stats up started showing themselves and to deal with it a high energy meal was made out of the dead bosses.


    After getting well deserved rest the chest was opened and the items inside distributed, Yunan sent his item to the armor to feed on and told his teammates to go ahead and step into the 30th floor, and that he would catch up with them after finishing something.


    Leol, Muscles, Lili and reina went ahead and descended to the 30th floor, Ophelia went to her infirmary as for Kitty and Sarah they returned with Yunan back to the 29th floor. Sarah gave Yunan hismunication ring before leaving to meet with the party she hired Yunan to reach. As for Kitty she just snuggled closely to Yunan and followed him back to the floor.


    After taking in the scenery Yunan headed for the mountainous region that looked like the centre of the floor, there he found many nests of goblins and kobolds drilling deep into the mountains, these tunnels were shared with rats, bats and spiders as well as snakes. There were some that were dug by goblins and were inhabited by wolves and foxes and other monsters that moved in once the the tunnels were abandoned.


    Yunan did not pay much attention to Kitty and was focused on dealing with the nests, where he found enough treasures to feed his armor and guide its next evolution. Although Kitty tagged along all the time she was basically a cheerleader for Yunan who was now trying to finish every fight as soon as it started.


    It took Yunan a whopping 5 months to get his hands on all the possible resources he could get in the 29th floor as well as fully map it, he worked diligently and methodically not without minding the amount of resources he poured in to finish such a huge endeavour.


    Since Yunan has used up so much mana he decided he should return to the 23 floor and stay there for a month doing nothing but store mana at all times, by the end of that month, Yunan made his way back to the 29th floor and made his way back to the 20th partition in the boss corridor and started selling his services in return for the corpses on the way, he did not care much about the rewards from the chest because it wasn''t enough to entice him however he still made sure he would get first pick from each chest, simply just a precaution in the case Tartarus decided to reward him with something worthwhile.


    Yunan found that most the parties were still the same, as most of them failed repeatedly to break thest room, some did not even reach it, and Sarah''s party was one of them. With Yunan selling his services, Sarah somehow convinced her party leader that Yunan had the ability to lead them to the 30th floor. Besides Yunan did not ask for much, first pick from the chests and the bodies of the bosses were not as bad if he was sure to lead them sessfully to the 30th floor.


    Thanks to that, Yunan led a few groups to reach the 30th floor on his own, simply he would unleash Drogon on thest room and a few secondster, the well cooked remains of the bosses would be in his storage space. Yunan left the 29th floor after ferrying the most promising parties and making sure he had nothing left to do in the this part of the dungeon he took the steps down to the 30th floor with Kitty behind him.


    The thirtieth floor was simply one big beach, thend mass was almost fully colonized into arge city surrounded from 3 direction by water. the first thing you notice is the salty breeze blowing at you face, the second thing to notice was how luxurious the city looked, its architecture and design reminded one of those royal castles, simply exquisite and captivating. Beside that, was the fishy smelling from the market, where one could find monster fishes and other seafood ingredients dominating the other items by a fair amount.


    Yunan made his way to the guild, sold some leftover stuff and bought some fresh corpses for himself and Drogon before finding the most luxurious housing area and approaching the number 5 estate. Yunan smirked at the idea of the number 5 representing a meeting location for Debauchery and the Valyrians after it was the number of the location where they received the most important training.

 Chapter 165: Feeling Tartarus

    Chapter 165: Feeling Tartarus


    Inside estate number 5, Lili and Reina were sitting down with some unidentified people and conversing about something, Yunan was brought in by a maid and he did not linger in the reception, he just waved his hands at the girls and said his greetings before saying "i''ll be taking a room to set up, see yater".


    The biggest bedroom was where thedies of the house stayed and the maid was flustered trying to stop Yunan from entering it, however since he was granted the use of a room without specifying which one means that he can choose any one. The maid ran towards herdies terrified from the creepy dude but was pacified by saying "let him do as he pleases it not like there will be trouble with him in the first ce".


    It took Yunan 29 floors to finally feel like a true adventurer, helping his teammates, fighting for resources, working as a mercenary, andst but not least having someone stick to him for no apparent reason. Although Yunan did what most adventurers do on a regr basis, it was never on such a scale as thest 5 months, so he finally was feeling the true effect of Tartarus or at least he was starting to grasp it.


    Fighting alone in the earliest floors was mere training for Yunan, there was no challenge, he had to make the challenges for himself, however when he reached the 29 floor he got the sense of desperation others had when trying to move forward with the maximum resources and the least number of casualties.


    Yunan felt that he either should embrace the lone wolf path, or be a mercenary, he omitted the third choice of making his own party because he would either recruit his own friends and stay in the same mentality as before or recruit outsiders and that will hurt his friends. After thinking for a while Yunan decided he would take the lone wolf path to to be an explorer, he would progress at his own pace and atst really be an explorer of the dungeon.


    Thinking up to this point, Yunan looked at the flushed face of Kitty beside him, she was the strangest and most honest being he met in this dungeon, he would have been happier if he met her earlier in his life, she would make for a perfectpanion, silent but honest.thus Yunan asked the question that bothered him the most "what do you want from me and what do you expect me to do?". Kitty looked at him with her passionate gaze like she always did and rubbed her face on his chest "i want you to be my master, and i expect you to treat me like you would a pet or pleasure ve, as long as you are happy with this Kitty i am pleased".


    Yunan rubbed her hair for a moment before saying "can you pledge your heart, body and soul to me? This medallion has a master mark, if you willingly make the vow and give yourself to me, you will be my ve until i decide otherwise." To his surprise she made the most beautiful smile he ever saw her make before she gently ced the medallion on her forehead "i give my body, my heart and soul to you, i give you my life, my past and my future, i give you all of me" the medallion glowed and Yunan could feel Kitty bonding to him, after the glow he felt warmth in his heart when she uttered the first word under the bond "master".


    This was a very strong bond he made this time, it was much stronger than any ve contract he made before, in his mind he could feel the effects of his own fingers brushing against her face, their link was stronger than it should be, he questioned the ck Fate about it and after sometime he received an answer "there was no contradiction in her when she made the vow, she did not expect anything from you but to be her master and her being your ve,plete devotion and without any unconscious regrets, that is what made the bond stronger. treasure her you lucky bastard"


    "Kitty, can you tell me what you desire most" Yunan was now unconsciously moving his hand all over her skin, enjoying the feeling transmitted through their bond. " I have no desire anymore, my only desire was to have master and now that it is fulfilled i only lust for master to use me for his own pleasure, i only wish that master would hurry and use me as fast as possible". She looked like an angel to Yunan, she was so happy and excited just from being beside him, he wondered what she would feel of he used her like she wants.


    "Can you please wait for a little bit? I have to disappoint you and keep you waiting for a little bit longer, there are things I have to solve with myself, after that you can be as selfish as you want with me, is that alright?" Contrary to Yunan''s belief, there was no disappointment in Kitty just massive anticipation and excitement for theing future.


    After a soft and gentle nap, Yunan set up the doorway to his home in the master bedroom, he left Kitty to sleep more in the fluffy bed and entered home before meeting with Ophelia in the library of the infirmary, she was together with Anne who had beening over more and moretely after she got themunication ring and Yunan did not stop her since most of the time she would be working on making Ophelia a better doctor, both in the old way and the magical way.


    Yunan did not ask Anne to leave as he approached Ophelia and got her attention " i want you to quit being an adventurer and devote yourself solely for medicine to make sure you would heal any injuries i might get in the future" Ophelia just looked at him silently, before saying "sure, as long as you keep me safe, feed me attribute points and let me exercise in the dungeon once in awhile, just to get used to my attributes, i have no problem with being your property even".


    Yunan looked at Ophelia for a moment, before saying " if you have spare time between studying and improving, you can go out with Reina or Lili to the dungeon, otherwise please be prepared for any eventuality" Ophelia nodded and that was the end of it, Yunan left home and back to estate number 5 to start in his next phase of the journey to the heart of Tartarus.

 Chapter 166: Facing the ocean

    Chapter 166: Facing the ocean


    After leaving the number 5 estate Yunan headed for the guild in searching for new items or books that could deal with water, he ended up buying some books and items and monster corpses. First in the list was predatory monsters, sharks and killer whales to be precise, Yunan made sure they were with their cores still intact so that the armor would be able to extract their traits more efficiently, the armor needed quite a number before changing its characteristics, most notably the tail where a big t fin grew on its end and a dorsal fin on between the shoulder tes.


    Second on the list were items that would allow Yunan to swim and float without sinking unless he wanted to, for that he got himself two diving books and two swimming books. Lastly, he bought items to prevent water from seeping inside the armor. With all preparation ready, Yunan sent the location of the door to his portable home to Debauchery and friends so that they would not disturb his underwater exploration, he told Kitty to go home and wait for him there.


    Yunan left the city and walked into the beach, the pearly sand parted under his feet, and made him feel like he was already drowning in the blue ocean he was walking towards, as the first wave brushed against his feet he had to stop, he looked at the deep blue ocean and felt fear, he was feeling small and insignificant, he looked up at the luminous crystal making the ceiling look like a blue sky and felt he was safer on this side of the world.


    Putting his armor on to help steel his heart Yunan put his hand on Drogon to gain some courage, the great dark depths were unnerving especially for the first time seeing them, after a good moment of preparation Yunan walked step by step into the big blue ocean feeling the water swallowing him bit by bit every step he took, the water was cold, chilling, and hostile.


    Yunan felt a chill down his spine, but he still kept going until he was fully submerged, he walked a bit more until he reached a natural cliff that seemed to be rooted in the deepest and darkest abyss. There were small fishes that were swimming yfully around Yunan, that led him to take a second look around him, there was a coral reef full of life, he could see the colorful world underwater, a stark contrast to the abyss beyond the cliff, that brought some soothing to his heart.


    Yunan started pushing with his tail to slowly float his way to the surrounding coral reef, he was by far the biggest living being in this ce and for some reason he was quite attractive to the wildlife around, the fishes would dance around his arms and fingers, he could guide the dance by twirling his fingers and and moving them like the fished did. Time seemed to stop in this ce, he was only awakened by hunger after losing himself to the hypnotically beautiful scenery, especially after the fear and insignificance he felt walking into the water.


    Yunan returned to the market, bought some monster corpses and returned home, he found Kitty anxiously waiting for him with tears in her eyes, behind her were Lina and Nina who were more concerned about making dinner since their lord seemed to be hungry and had no injuries on him. Kitty was afraid and shivering in Yunan''s arms, it must be the shared bond between them that led her to feel his earlier anxiety, she was relieved to see her master safe and sound however that cold depressing feeling was still weighing on her.


    Yunan yook kitty in his arms andforted her, bit by bit her feelings returned to their warm sunshine state, Yunan decided to give her a little happiness as thanks for being such a wonderfulpanion, for the first time in months Yunan spent the night in passion, although he did not stay exclusively with Kitty, it would be unfair for the other two who waited just as long for him to call on them.


    After that night, Yunan told Kitty that no matter what she felting from him as long as she she kept her heart as strong and as warm as she was when with him he would always return to her.


    Yunan left after breakfast to the beach, he stood there drawing energy from the warm and beautiful feeling that was radiating from Kitty, he then flew up in the air before diving back into the ocean past that cliff, he told genie and ck Fate to use the scanning features of the armor to find if there are any herbs and special fishes he could raise in his home, prompting the genie to construct and aquarium for him. The first order of business was to look through the reef eventually finding a type of sponge that could naturally produce mana, then it was a few fished that worked as the cleaners of the ocean floors who would eat all the waste and convert it into fertilizer for the underwater flora.


    Yunan also found some sea grasses and algae that were mostly good for photosynthesis and storing oxygen and mana inside them. Other than that there was an oyster that could produce consumable pearls that provided a cleansing for the body, it should be worth a great deal, there were also some coral polyps that could grow a multicoloured reef mainly for sustaining the rest of the special species collected all that was left was to find more special specimens to popte the aquarium.


    While leaving the coral and descending to the depth along the wall of the cliff wall, Yunan saw many things he did not recognize, but since neither the genie nor the ck Fate reacted he did not think about them until he passed by a luminous m that emitted a multicoloured light, the m was hiding in a hole in the cliff wall, it was as big as a helmet and inside it was a ck pearl so big that it was forcibly keeping the m open. Yunan reached his hands and grabbed the m before scanning it with the ck Fate but there was no results, when he scanned the pearl however he got a pleasant surprise, the pearl was basically a biological space storage device the m stores its food into, the bigger the pearl the bigger the space.


    Yunan added it to his collection and took away the pearl from the m, so it could make more, and along his descendants imed a few more, the pearls were not always storage devices, some were luminous, some were predatory detectors, and many more functions, thest one Yunan found on the wall was apletely transparent m with a shell made of crustal inside it was a crystal clear pearl that was merely a decorative item. Yunan decided to keep some of the pearls to feed the armor and some for jewellery production, after all he had too many women to y favourite safely.

 Chapter 167: First fight in the water

    Chapter 167: First fight in the water


    There was a rocky tform 50 meters under the edge of the cliff, the lighting was bad in this region which prompted the previous dark look and the endless pit feeling.


    Taking a small jump to start moving in the water away from the cliff then using the tail to act as a propeller Yunan started swimming forward for a few kilometres without encountering anything in the water. With the bad visibility and the limited lighting Yunan started to feel he was too small to be in here, and decided to swim to the surface to check of he might spot something with better light.


    There was a school of medium sized fish about arm length and thick as thigh, hundred of these fishes swirled around each other in an ever changing cloud. Yunan spotted this school around 20 meters below surface while he was swimming upwards. Yunan decided to shoot out some icicles and try to kill some of them, but he failed miserably, the aim was distorted, and hindered by water resistance, it took Yunan a good few hours to finally sessfully aim and hit anything from a distance of 50 meters.


    It was considerable progress because using spells in mana roch waters was not the best way to hunt anything, with that in mind Yunan used his crossbow to shoot a few bolts and had better sess with traditional aiming, all the fish he caught gave modest points in one attribute or the other, after some experiments Yunan figured it had to do with the color of the eye, red for strength, green for constitution, yellow for dexterity and blue for wisdom.


    While Yunan was digesting his findings while snacking on some fish flesh he noticed a shadow moving beneath his feet, the school of fish did not seem perturbed by the unknown presence. The shadow was not visible through the usual detection of the armor thus Yunan ordered it to add echolocation to the map function, Yunan could finally see what was beneath him.


    It was a gigantic shark that was around 20 meters long, and had a jaw width of about 7 meters, it gently hovered at 30 meters below surface, it circled the school of fish afew times before suddenly lunging forward towards the school and ultimately Yunan who was just behind it.


    In his panic Yunan discharged some lighting to paralyse the giant shark but only ended up paralysing part of the fishes before the lighting dissipated. The shark got a mouthful of fish and sharply swung back unaffected by the lighting discharge. Yunan hurriedly swam away and drastically increased the range of the sonar only to find himself surrounded by a school of sharks that all swam around him between 200 and 500 meters away, and only 50 meters deep.


    Yunan also discovered many fish schools under attack at the same time as the one he was close to, therefore he decided to just fight his way out of this predicament. The first thought that came to mind was paralytic poison, he could create that poison as long as he had mana but that was also a waste of mana because unless he could deliver the dose of toxin directly into the system of the sharks he would have to spend so much mana filling the region with a big enough dose of toxin to take effect fast enough to stop any charging shark.


    After asking Ophelia and Anne about if they had any ideas, they gave him the dart method, a bolt or an arrow with a hollow head that is filled with the toxin, the arrow head has a hole that is protected by something that would disappear as soon as the arrow prates something, with that description in mind, Yunan made the armor create a new type of bolts and an extra crossbow, since it was all under the control of the armor, the crossbows could reload very fast and shoot almost without stopping.


    With his preparations ready dove down and hid his presence, swimming towards the closes shark, after closing into 20 meters he shot a single blot into the body of the shark, momentster the shark stopped moving and started sinking, Yunan followed after it and sent a lightning discharge into its brain killing it promptly, and an idea popped into Yunan''s head, what of instead of having his bolts deliver toxins wouldn''t it be more mana effective to just deliver something like apressed elemental attack, a small bomb if you will.


    However Yunan dismissed the thought immediately simply because he wanted to kill the monsters without doing much damage to them since everything is valuable, therefore Yunan used phase shift to return to the city and buy all kinds of venoms and poisons the guild had, it did not take long for the guild to provide Yunan with what he asked for with very generous amounts and basically very little money, ording to the guild employee those prices were designed for alchemists and pharmacists to encourage them buying such ingredients and working on their antidotes.


    "The guild has handled many venomous corpses and poisonous nts in order to sell the meat safe for consumption, most of those are treated as extra materials to be sold separately, the guild has amassed a big reserve of these materials over the years and since they keep piling up without much use the guild sells them dirt cheep for those interested in such things, you would be surprised to know what these materials are used for, anyway since you have bought suchrge quantities of materials from the guild you have gained a ton of guild points, as a token of appreciation from the guild".


    "So the guild have too much of these toxins, huh, how about you double my order then, I thought i would be stretching the guild thin with my current order" the guild looked very happy to hear those words and immediately processed the order for Yunan. After a few hours a group of old men arrived and Yunan was told to follow them into the VIP room, where he was given 10 storage rings full to bursting with other storage rings, Yunan transferred the stored rings to his armor and returned the ten, such valuable rings were not for sale, Yunan told the representative from the guild to wait for a few minutes, he returned to them a ring as big as the other 10 full of empty rings, he told the representative that he could sell it if the guild payed a fair price for it.


    Before Yunan left the building he was approached by the guild representative who gave Yunan a receipt for the price paid by the guild and requested Yunan to sell more items like these to the guild if ever he had some more. Yunan teleported himself home and allowed the armor to digest all the toxins slowly, he gave the shark he got to his girls for dinner while he tasked the genie and Ophelia to provide support for the armor and create a toxic that would kill fast, by causing brain death or heart failure within 10 seconds of contact and it should break by itself after 5 minutes from exposure.

 Chapter 168: Getting stuck

    Chapter 168: Getting stuck


    It took the whole night to separate and categorize all the toxins Yunan brought back home. And only from dawn to sunrise to synthesise the newest toxin that Yunan wanted.


    As a thank you, Yunan gave all the toxins left from the digestion to Ophelia and said " the guild would love to get antidotes for these toxins, use these to get some money, no need to split the reward, just keep the money from the antidotes and spend it wisely" after those words, Yunan made sure he could reproduce the toxin they have been working on all night and then tested it on one of the fishes in his aquarium, the results were exactly as he wanted.


    Yunan used phase shift to return to the coral reef from then on he used echolocation to find the nearest shark, but what he found was a group of adventurers swimming away from him towards the deeper part instead of the further parts. Yunan decided to follow them from a distance and see what he can discover. Yunan was disappointed to see that they kept avoiding all monsters until reaching a depth of 5000 meters.


    The crushing weight of the water made him feel breathless and confined, he could not move as freely nor could he see much in the ensuing darkness, if not for the mage light spell they party was using he would have been blind for a while now, other than that he found that the monsters that are closer to the shoreline are much smaller than those in the open water, he had dove 5000 meters down and did not see a single shark that surpassed the 10 meter mark, let alone a school of them.


    After diving another 5000 meters the party entered a cave under water and started to swim up, halfway to the surface was an air pocket and the cave changed from vertical to horizontal, when Yunan popped up from the water, he found the party resting so he pretended to rest as well, he used echolocation and the mapping function to find that this cave led straight to the downward spiral staircase, it was the path to the next level. Yunan was very happy he did not have to fight any bosses to get here. Also the fact that he could control the size of his pray by how far he goes was certainly fun.


    The first challenge he set up for himself was using swords to kill a shark in the deepest possible location. So first he had to get used to fighting in 3 dimensions instead of only two, and so while looking for a shark near the shoreline and about 200 meters deep, he found three 7 meter long sharks and decided to fight them. The sharks had a two part attack, one is lunging forward towards the pray and second is sawing what it bit out of the pray by twisting left and right.


    So all Yunan had to do was to dodge the lunge and he should be fine, but moving suddenly underwater was very hard, even though Yunan had to teleport a few times to save himself, he still managed to learn to swim better and use less teleports over time.


    Yunan also did not forget about hunting as many monsters as he could so he kept inching towards the open waters and encountering tougher and rougher enemies, he also found special monsters as well, for example some bioluminescent jellyfish that can be used asnterns ny injecting mana into them however they were too fragile to handle so Yunan only fed them directly to the armor.


    The deeper Yunan went the more he could find such special beings, however he was still slowly advancing towards the location where he found those giant sharks from earlier. The further he went away from the shoreline the bigger and the more monsters could be found in the same location, and the more aggressively they fought. By the end of the first day, Yunan could handle 3 charging sharks of any length below 12 meters easily, however that was his current limit, since the sharks change strategy in groups. Not only they stop lunging teeth first, instead they would use body ms and tail strikes to stun the prey and make it spend energy to run away, and when the prey is tired they use the same moves for body m to take a bite out of the no longer struggling prey.


    Yunan had seen this tactic so many times and he survived mainly thanks to his armor that now had enough teeth marks on it proving how tough it was, not even sharks could break through its defence. Yunan did not stick to only using swords and daggers, he also used his crossbow with the toxic bolts to turn a dangerous situation into a manageable one.


    For the next few days Yunan hunted at a depths of 1000 meters and around 2000 meters away from shore, the monster sharks in this ce were around 10-15 meters long with 2-3 meter wide jaws, and corresponding teeth, Yunan trained until he could handle 5 sharks at once at this pressure zone and then moved to higher pressure zones bit by bit while trying to keep that record up.


    After almost a month of hunting and training Yunan understood that he could only increase his ability by eating more and more monsters, to increase his stats to be corresponding to the level of the floor. Yunan''s attribute were still at 4300, something that is a bit lower than the requirements to be level 30 and he had more than 350 points to reach, and with monsters that could provide only 7 points per week, it would take a year to eat his way to the required numbers, this limit on being able to get points from the same monster only once per week was to keep thezy ones from paying their way to lower floors.


    With that in mind, Yunan changed his strategy to fighting all the time he was in the water in the ten kilometer mark and take on one more shark tham his current tolerance. If he wanted to evolve, he must work hard for it.

 Chapter 169: Bullying the gods

    Chapter 169: Bullying the gods


    During the 3rd week of fighting under water in the 30 floor, Yunan was now fighting an especiallyrge shark that has been hunting the smaller sharks im the area, it was 55 meters in length and had a 8 meter wide jaw, it simply split in half anything bigger than its jaw and just swallowed the rest whole. It has been hounding Yunan for thest 6 hours, although Yunan could deal damage to it, he still did not have the required power to defeat it with brute force only.


    Yunan was using his lighting d weapons to stun or paralyse the monster and deal more damage to it, however the monster had its own monstrous regeneration and healing, making Yunan grit his teeth trying hard not just finish it with a toxic bolt but he was summoned mid fight to entertain some guests.


    Reluctantly Yunan sent a bolt at its gills when it opened its maw in an attempt to swallow him, Yunan teleported away and waited for the monster to die, making sure it stayed that way by frying its brain when it had no signs of struggle left.


    Yunan sent the beat to the kitchen to be cooked before teleporting home, there he took a moment to bath and heal before meeting his guests, there were 4 people in the room along with Kitty and Ophelia, since Lina and Nina were sent to the kitchen to prepare something to eat.


    Yunan could identify 2 out of the the 4 visitor and he greeted them like usual. "Hello old man, wee back to my humble abode, have you been well?" After Yunan sat down he felt something brush by him, he turned to find it was a cat sniffing at him before jumping on Hephaestus''p. Hephaestus merely nodded at Yunan in response to his greetings so Yunan switched to his wife "old hag, howe you never contact me these days, and you said that you have given yourself to me until either one of us gets bored, i still have some things i want to make you do, so try to keep in contact"


    Fortuna blushed Furiously as she she stuttered and stammered a mumbled reply that no one heard. She is not bored of me yet thought Yunan before turning to the other two "may i know who might you be, esteemed guests, i do not usually have strangers in my ce without prior notice, so excuse my rudeness". The first to respond was the man, he looked young and energetic, his eyes looked like they could epass the stars and his body was well toned and cared for, Yunan new immediately not to trust this man at all.


    "I am Hermes, god of liars and thieves and merchants, please be at ease i only came here to see my cute little follower, she has forgotten to pray to me as much as she used to back then. Did you do something to my cutie?". Yunan just shrugged and smiled at Ophelia and gave her a wink, Ophelia immediately put her head down trying to hide the smile on her face. Next came the beautiful enchanting woman who would make men start wars simply for the right to look at her.


    "What are you looking at?" Was her reaction to Yunan looking at her without a hint of passion or interest, so Yunan ignored her and turned to Fortuna "is she the bitter, and jealous bitch?" Fortuna nodded and for the next few seconds you could feel the fury burning into the beautiful woman, but Yunan looked without interest at her "so what is your name and when do you want my seed? I can''t have you sabotage my wife simply because of jealousy" that was thest straw that broke the camel''s back.


    Abuse started hurling itself at Yunan who simply closed his ears at this screaming woman, a goddess of beauty and love, was just told that she should stop being jealous of another being and was offered love in the most vulgar way since she was born. "Fine fine, just stop acting like a spoilt brat and tell me your name and why you are here" Yunan was still as dispassionate as ever driving the woman to even more rage, how could he resist her charm when she was the personification of beauty.


    Something was wrong with Yunan, and that was Debauchery teachings, never trust your senses, never be impressed by anything, and never allow another to capture your true emotions. With that kind of mentality, even the creator himself, would have no sway over Yunan, let alone an ascended who was by all means and purposes a bait that Yunan had never been interested in, therefore he did not react to her beauty.


    One might say a man loves beauty as much as beauty loves a hero, but Yunan was always more interested inpanionship rather than beauty, he was just lucky to have all hispanion being beautiful and elegant women, and with what the goddess of beauty and love just exhibited before Yunan, her chances of bing apanion just hit rock bottom.


    "My name is Venus and i am here to find out what kind of bond you have with your women, it is killing me not knowing how it works" there was some embarrassment in the angry face Venus had on her, however that look changed into a dumbfounded one at Yunan''s answer "it''s not about love, darling, we just want to be together, love would sprout on its own in simple rtionships like ours".


    With that he turned to Hermes and said "your cutie is my cutie now, she is happy and having fun pursuing her passion, she likes being here, she has friends and family, it would make me feel bad for her if she kept praying to you as much as you want, so either ept her happiness has nothing to do with you and there is no longer much reason to pray, or release her from your service and go find a cutie that will worship you instead of being happy, either way is fine by me, and before you ask, even if the wrath of all the gods descended on me i would still keep her close, she is precious to me after all" with that Yunan reclined back on his chair and looked wistfully at the cat in the hands of Hephaestus.


    Around the table were different reactions, Fortuna was proud, Hephaestus seemed more interested in petting the cat, Venus was still mumbling to herself in disbelief trying toe to a reasonable solution to her predicament, there was a way to rece love and she was not happy with it. Kitty was looking at Yunan like he was the king of the world, Ophelia was trying not to smile so brightly while hiding the pink flush on her cheeks while Hermes mischievous smile could make stones start sweating, he was probably thinking of a few pranks to y, but for now he said nothing in return to Yunan.

 Chapter 170: New pet

    Chapter 170: New pet


    After dinner, Fortuna took Venus and Hermes with her leaving behind a few kisses for Yunan, she was quite pleased with how he handled the ascended, for a mortal he did a very good job. After the the other gods left, Yunan sent away his friends and stayed with Hephaestus alone, drinking someva wine and snaking on sulent fruits.


    Hephaestus seemed to be troubled by something and was not able to express his need correctly so Yunan started the conversation for him " If it likes me, it cannstay around and y with Drogon, although i doubt i can take it out now and then since i am doing the underwater floors at this time, ibhave no idea how long it will take to reach the 40th floor, but if ut can wait i do not mind having her join me"


    Hephaestus seemed a bit relieved as he responded " the Lamia spread word about you willing to have her with you if she wanted to roam the dungeon, and it has been a hot topic when i was away from the ind, when i came back yesterday i was told this one here was chosen to apany you and if you are agreeable enough we might have you receive some awakened as guests for a period of time". Yunan just nodded his head silently in agreement, he had nothing to lose and it was not a big responsibility if he could feed them the same as Drogon.


    "We are sentient beings, but we have no contact with the races, even the trades we have are very limited in contact" the cat jumped on the table and walked to Yunan " what we need is getting used to the other sentient races, if you agree to having me here, you basically agree to bing the link between the awakened and the sentient, are you sure you want to do that?".


    Yunan rubbed the cats head gently "i do not want such a troublesome role, i just wanted to have fun with an awakened, my first contact with your kind was not the best and my contact with the Lamia wasn''t that bad, so i thought i would invite her to have some fun if she ever wanted to, that is all i can offer, i have friends from the sentient races and maybe you can find a home for your friends with them, as for me, if you feel like ying around and rxing, then everyone is wee, i do not discriminate much"


    "So you are saying that you are the wrong person to link us with the world" the caty downzily and let Yunan pet her. "Yes, after all i kill your kind all the time, i fight them to get stronger, i eat them to get stronger, i ferment their corpses into wine and fruits to get stronger and i feed them to my armor to get even more powerful, i do not regret it, as for the awakened, i do not quite have any impression on them, if ites to it, i can kill them the same as beasts, monsters and the sentient races, my friends share this view with me, theye by all the time, so you might get to see them soon, as for me being a good guy, i dont know or care about it, i live by my own way and let the world turn its by own way, convinced?"


    "So what is my status if i ever join you, not just a guest, but a full membership what will you offer me?" Asked the cat mid purring, she seemed more rxed by Yunan''s words than she should be. "A pet, just like Drogon here" Yunan telepathically told Drogon to stop beingzy and join the conversation "he should tell you the percs if you take me as your master". Drogonzily leaped into the table and went toy beside the cat "you get food, usually the choicest cut of the day''s kills, every now and then he buys some good things with high levels, he does not call on you unless its too bothersome or too deadly, its not much work either way, and you get toze about and absorb mana directly from him without doing much, oh the cuddles are endless".


    The cat seemed convinced as it also huddled closer to Drogon and both of them took a nap, Yunan and Hephaestusghed heartily at the two sloths, after a while Hephaestus stood up "give her a good name, and take care of her, i''ll keep in touch about the matter with letting the awakened be your guests, as for now, if you do this the right way, both me and the awakened would owe you a big one", "forget owing me, you have already seen my friends and how they are, i think the worst possibility is your awakened bing angry at being the newest toy in the party, as for debts and what not just forget it, we are all having some form of benefits, so there is no need to worry about it".


    Hephaestus left soon after looking much younger and more energetic than ever, as for Yunan he went to find Ophelia, she and kitty were on cuddling duty tonight mostly because Ophelia might lose her god and she might needfort, as for the part about his new cat, well he left that for tomorrow, it was the start of the weekend and the extended family would be present, they can think of a name for her then.


    As expected, Ophelia was feeling a little bit sad but she cheered up upon hearing that Yunan missed cuddling with her, so she happily apanied him for sleeping, Kitty did not seem to mind Ophelia as much as the others, probably because she was the sweetest thing next to Reina, and Ophelia always had kept to herself and didn''t push herself on master Yunan, still, Maybe it was a natural thing like how she followed Yunan simply because he smells good to her.


    After a quiet and peaceful night, the portable home turned private dimension started getting busy and lively with the big family assembling on another stress free weekend, full of happiness and joy and tension relief.

 Chapter 171: Naming the cat

    Chapter 171: Naming the cat


    Smiles always followed Debauchery when they took time to rx, and this week they came battered and bloody evidently straight from a gruesome battlefield, they did not seem bothered by it however.


    It seems that the weekends they have been taking as rests have been a positive influence on their battle strength, usually one needs years to get rid of the battle stress from lower floors simply because most would just fight until there is no will to move before taking a rest, hence the 5 year vacation that Debauchery took and ended up raising the Valyrians as their students.


    ording to the analysis provided by Anne who yed doctor for Debauchery since they first met, stress on the constitution attribute stops one from growing to full potential, hence taking longer and longer to clear floors and even longer vacations to clear the stress resulting in loss of too much time, however with the current set up of weekly rest, Debauchery has been able to exert more time for battle then before, as well as be less mindful of the stress and injuries they incur.


    This was not news to anyone in this household, as the guild has been trying to convince adventurers to take weekly rests and work in smaller parties but who listens to authority? Therefore it has been popr among adventurers to seek safety in numbers and neglect the effects of stress because they simply did not umte too much of it, however as things grew more and more difficult to handle, stress became the biggest cause for death among adventurers, because it either took away their life spans and they died too early, or it sapped their life force like what Yunan has been through costing them their lives in the middle of battle.


    Debauchery has been having a weekend full of rest each week and they used the cleansing pool weekly, leading to the regeneration of life force and the elimination of old stress from the body, for example, ad new adventures the Valyrians have simply restored 95% of their life spans back to track using that routine, factor in the amount of fruits and animals that are being raised in the garden, you could say that if they kept on this path, they could live out very long lives if nothing unforeseen happens.


    The lively atmosphere was as usual starting in the bath, enjoying a good cleansing with tasty food and wine while chatting about the week and whatever news they felt like sharing. The new pet came into the talks while she sat on Drogon back while the dragon had his wings opened and used as floating rafts, it was not the groups first time seeing a talking monster, Drogon had taken that surprise long ago, as for her being an awakened, the party did not even remember that detail at all.


    "So what did you name it?" Asked Fae who was seriously holding onto Reina and Kitty to stop herself from pouncing at the cat and smother it to death by mistake. " I thought we could choose a good name for her together, my naming sense is evident in Drogon, poor baby has to live with that name for ever" to this Drogon perked up his head "hey I like my name, if you dare change it I''ll roast you good".


    "So what kind of good cat names do you guys know" Yunan asked ignoring the tantly obvious death threat, "Kitty is taken, and anything in the vain of other cat homonyms is out of the picture" he made sure to make rules otherwise with how Debauchery minds function, they would just choose any easy name and be done with it.


    "Tama is a good name" said Reina "half the cats in the sun inds are named Tama and they don''t seem to hate it". Lucian took it upon himself to act as a judge "how dare you name a royal Egyptian Mau cat like amon mix breed run of the mill cat! Rejected", Reina just spat out her tongue at Lucian and leaned back onto Fae''s bosom. And them came a storm of names that were either rejected by the cat herself or judge Lucian.


    " Pouncelot?", "I am a female", "how about Persian?", "rejected", "Lioness", "too cheesy", "Prancy", "never!", "Spots", "rejected", "Furball", "how dare you!", "Mittens?", "Rejected with prejudice". Just like this the tug of war kept on and on with more and more names being thrown out and getting rejected almost immediately. Yunan however had another thought going through his mind.


    "What does Egyptian mean?" Yunan asked, he was not as well versed in history as the rest simply because he focused on studying for the dungeon or reading about the current era, therefore such a name was foreign to him.


    "Egyptian is the name of a bygone civilization when the world was still young and humans were still savages in most of the world, it''s a name that survived in the little history we have left from the old era before mana took over the world, many names and words are left for us from the dominantnguage at the time, and most of the names we usee from that era, one of the surviving species was the Egyptian Mau, it''s a very royal and exclusive breed, they are the only naturally spotted breed of domesticated cats, they have an elegant disposition and a friendly vibe, they also make some vocal noises that are exclusive to them, they are very agile hunters and the only cat breed that kept their hunting instinct to this day. Their fur ranges from silver to bronze in color while the eyes are either green or blue and ording to legend, they held the power of the gods"


    Lucian was more than willing to share this bit of knowledge with Yunan and the rest, not many would question the names from the bygone era anymore. He kept on exining. "ording to what we know, the Egyptians had one of the earliest pantheons that took gods seriously instead of worshipping the su and the moon and thend. Before you ask, most of the ascended we know about took their names from pantheons in that era, however we do not know if the ascended have existed so long ago, also ascension does not require power, the oldest of the ascended took that title thanks to the belief of their people", Lucian was very through when teaching, as always he hated misinformation most.

 Chapter 172: A pleasing afternoon

    Chapter 172: A pleasing afternoon


    "did Egyptian civilization have a deity for cats?" asked Yunan timidly "if they had cat royalty there should be some cat deity right? What i mean is look at this cute thing here and tell me they don''t deserve a god".


    "There was one" said Lucian "however if an ascended has taken its name for himself then it may bring their wrath if we name her that". The Valyrians looked at Lucian like he was with holding thest piece of candy on earth "her name was Bast and she was" he was cut off however "boo", "what an ugly name", "i am not naming my cat that hideous name". Lucian was very annoyed by the kids but could not help agree with them, Bast was not a good name for a cat.


    After hours of deliberation the cat was left without name, Lucian was either too strict, or the names were so ridiculously mundane that even the cat rejected them, the group has transferred from the bath to the garden to enjoy the lovely atmosphere filled with colors and flowery smells and tweeting birds. They had stoppeding up with names as the main subject but some suggestions were made here and there. The main subject now was the ms and the pearls they produced, the most interested were Balin and Dustan, one wanted to use the pearls for crafting and the other was thinking of quick money grabbing schemes, therefore Bai was the main consultant on the scheming and Fae was the consultant for beautification of the products.


    Leader sat with Yunan and watched the rest make ns and talk fervently on how to do this or that, Yunan was looking at the starry pearl, the one he found in the crystal m, it had no purpose but look beautiful, and leader was watching him scrutinizing it, Drogon was hanging on the medallion as usual and the cat was curled up in Yunan''sp.


    "A pearl that can project the starry sky" Yunan looked deep in thought "would it be wrong to name this cat something along those lines?". Leader leaned on Yunan and looked up at the blue sky above, it was not real, but it gave the correct feeling one should have under the true sky. "I think she would love any name you give her, no matter what it is, so it doesn''t matter really, just find a name that you like and it will suffice" Leader''s voice did not have its usual allure, it was more gentle and soothing, so much so Yunan felt like he should pet her head too.


    "I guess stargazing pearl should be a popr name for this piece of jewellery, oh, cat how do you like the name Sapphira? It''s because of your blue eyes sparkle like jewels". The cat looked up at Yunan then nodded its head and went back to sleep. "Not even Lucian would have anything to say about that name" said Mary. A memory surfaced in Yunan:s mind, after some thought he made Leader use his thigh as pillow and started grooming her hair silently.


    Every now and then, a member of Debauchery would look up towards Yunan and Leader, look jealous and then turn his head towards themotion they were making. Yunan however took the opportunity while Leader was still closing her eyes to create a choker for her, it was made from different leftover materials from the 29th floor, it was a 3 cm wide band made of silver and gold braided together over some supple ck skin, the band had uniformly spread small egg shells along its length, each egg shell was filled with a colorful eye-catching gem: topaz, ruby, sapphire, emerald, diamond, ga, and the middle egg shell housed the stargazing pearl.


    Yunan gently ced the choker around Leader''s neck, he was surprised how passive she was in this position but he did not dare try anything more, his life was forfeit if he did. "Why does your choker look like a ve cor?", "I never seen one before, but i really thought that it would look good on you". "Does it make me beautiful?", "No, it just felt right to put a choker on you instead of a ne or something like that". "So you are marking me as your ve? That is very bold of you kid"


    Yunan had a smile on his face, he was just spouting what ever came across his mind without filter and the same was going on with Leader, it was rare to hear her so out of control, especially the gentle soothing voice, something that Yunan knew she shared with a handful of people and no more.


    "So? It''s not like you will reject me or anything, besides you are too old to be my ves, don''t tell anyone i said that, they think i prefer older women, but i really don''t care about age". Mary chuckled to herself "first you call me and old hag and then you tell me you can do me anyway, is this a new seduction technique, because i have to say it works rather well". "Oh mary, how much flirting are you bombarded with to say my little brand of flirting actually works".


    The two of them shared augh, and before long the serene atmosphere returned between them " i think that you need some lonely time with daddy, but since the idiot did not call on you, i think i should kidnap him and bring him here, or you can let me pamper you instead, how about it cute little Mary?", Leader was a bit surprised by the offer so she thought to herself for a moment but Yunan did not let her speak "use your ring toe to me whenever you want, for now go to sleep, feel free to drool and snore at will".


    Leader did take him on that and closed her eyes to sleep, as for Yunan, he just leaned back and looked at the sky, the sounds ofughter drifting from where the group was ying around with the pearls and materials seemed much like a luby, urging him to sleep too, he looked down at Mary and saw her smiling beautifully, so he did not move from his ce and gently brushed her hair with his hand.

 Chapter 173: Feared by a shark

    Chapter 173: Feared by a shark


    The first day of the weekend went rather well, Sapphira has gotten her name and was now the new queen of the house, prowling elegantly on tiptoe around the ce andmanding attention.


    As for the newly established jewellery production branch of Debauchery, they have sessfully used the luminous pearl to create a very strange ne, its enchantments uses the luminescent nature of the pearl to shroud the wearer in a halo of light, for females that is literally lighting up the ce when they walked in sparkling like some holy spirit, Yunan knew that all the schemes and plots in Debauchery went to create such a product, as for the pearls with abilities, well Balin did not dare to use any of the first batch mainly because their natural beautyes from their habitat, and he insisted on only using them if the next generation looked better.


    As for the choker Yunan made it was the same as its main pearl, it had no ability or enchantments in it, simple and elegant, and ording to Fae it was a deration of possession, therefore it would sell better than the one they made because all men want to possess their women, and not all women cared about looking like antern at all times.


    Debauchery arranged for an exotic auction to sell their ne, it was a one item auction for a very exclusive product in a new line of jewellery made by level 70 cksmith. Yunan like everyone else was forced into watching the auction, the ce was arranged by the guild and it was teeming with the royalty and the rich, not everyday a level 70 smith would sell an item, let alone jewellery, even though the item was announced to have only one enchantment and nothing else, many came to get their hands on this creation, because of a level 70 smith thought one enchantment was enough who were they to question him.


    The audience was specting about the special item and what enchantment it held, it was a field ripe for gossip and many imed things that are straight out of their imagination, but still those rumours circled, were discussed and new rumours came out from said discussion. The auction started by a demonstration, the ne was made of mithril and looked pearly white instead of the silvery colour most precious metals have, the pearl within was making the whole ne shine and sparkle, after the reveal many looked disappointed however the next scene made everyone gasp and start throwing bids before even the auctioneer could officially start the auction.


    An elegant female assistant, not to pretty nor too attractive, with a well kept form and generally as normal as any woman in the street put the ne on and turned for a passerby you meet thousands of daily to a unique holy goddess shrouded in pearly white light that entuated her entire existence, the wives and concubines and daughters in this hall were begging their men for it, the men were racing to please their women and the auctioneer was almost crushed by the noises made by the crowd.


    By the end of it some unlucky man had paid what is essentially half his wealth to get it, and the difference between the selling price and cost? He did not get the answer to that because only the cksmith knew about it. To make it clear how much profit this scheme brought in, it was 100%, the mithril was left over from the materials Yunan gathered in the 29th floor to evolve the armor, the pearl was found by ident while exploring and the creation of it did not even take a few moments, only the the nning part was long and that was during a vacation. All in all it was a no cost item that sold for a very big profit, as customary with Debauchery , Yuan got 70% as the provider of materials and location, while they got the 30% for making the item.


    After that ne was sold, the guild was bombarded with requests to buy any item that has the same function from that smith, and since the one item was already sold, the prices offered only got higher and higher, therefore Drogon was sent to harvest all the ms near the reef and on the cliff wall all around the beach of the 30th floor. The adventures did not care about the pearls because they had no value before, and most would still ignore them because they have to keep an eye on the sharks and other predatory monsters in the water.


    The second day ended with a very big feast and a rowdy party afterwards, then the group dispersed on the premise of making better jewellery designs for next weekend, before leaving Leader took a moment just to hug Yunan, she promised to keep her choker on all the time and that she would reward him with something when the time is ripe. After everyone left to return to their groups, Yunan took in his girls for a passionate night before resting for the uing morning and the new round of challenges.


    As the sun rose on the surface world Yunan left his home and phase shifted to the ce where he slew the big shark, there he moved forward and looked for the next big thing to hunt, making sure to kill everything in his path. By midday Yunan encountered the second colossal shark this one was 60 meters long, it cast a fear spell on Yunan to paralyse him in hinder his movements as it lunged forward. Yunan who did not expect such an attack teleported unconsciously around the ce avoiding the shark by instinct until he overcame the fear spell, it was a low level one, and very useless on a guarded opponent, maybe that is why Yunan never was affected, but this time he was rxed and they cost him a few minutes of wasted teleportation, while trying to suppress the fear.


    Out of rage Yunanbined ice spear and lighting bolts together to create instant striking spears that did both nerve damage and frost damage as it hit the target, the shark was hit by so many of those it twitched and froze, its skin would split after being frozen thanks to the twitchy muscles underneath, and the freezing effect hindered the blood from flowing to repair the damaged body, and soon it died under the umted injuries.

 Chapter 174: Swimming in pearls

    Chapter 174: Swimming in pearls


    After regaining control over his emotions, Yunan stored the shark and swam forward to try a new idea that popped into his head, if it worked he would not need to use his crossbow anymore.


    Integration was an ability Yunan has forgotten about, what if he made the tip of the ice spear into toxic capsules that would shatter inside the body of the target with the rest of the ice spear, cause both poison and frost damage, if he added lighting and wind attributes, he would cause both nerve damage and guarantee a sessful piercing and delivery of the poison.


    With that Yunan started moving further away from the shoreline at the depth of 1500 meters, here he could train diligently and still survive with his spells if push came to shove. Yunan did not slow down as he encountered more and more sharks, their size and numbers did not matter much since Yunan could aim using echolocation and him using weapons in this ce was not as much of a danger since he could trim the numbers to keep from being overwhelmed.


    As Yunan kept swimming forward he reached the end of floor, he found a wall blocking the way and as he swam up he found himself in another reef that was deeper than the one near the entrance, and had a higher variety of wildlife, Yunan made Drogon swim along the reef with the aid of the genie to scan and collect anything noteworthy, to Yunan''s surprise the reef was a wall that surrounded a big pool the with a radius of 100 kilometers, the pool was half a circle that connected to the walls of the floor, inside that pool was only one thing, a shark of titanic proportions.


    The boss of the floor Yunan thought to himself the shark was titanic it was 500 meters in length and 50 meters wide at the jaw, Yunan stood still as he watched the sonar image of the shark swim gently around its cage while the colossal sharks of up to 100 meters long just floated into its maw, the big ones were split into pieces by the massive triangr saw teeth as the jaws mped shut on the prey, turning the water near it into a cloud of blood and gore denoting the leftover pieces of a once great shark.


    Since Yunan was still over the reef it could not swim to him but it could p its tail at him creating a tsunami that would crush Yunan if he was not d in his armor, Yunan doubted there were records about this ce, because a boss of this scale would be too enticing for the guild and any other organizations, this thing could feed a city for months and it was basically a fish in a barrel, it was just waiting to be killed, and Yunan would never let this chance go without trying something.


    First Yunan got closer to it, and not until he was far away from the reef did he understand his mistake because after a fraction of a second, the bloody maw that looked like a portal to hell greeted Yunan from the depth and swallow him whole, it was too fast for Yunan to teleport, however that made things easier for him. He used his ws to hook himself to the throat of the monster before he could be swallowed into the digestive system, he then made his toxin flow through the ws to the flesh ittched into, Yunan could feel the pulse slow down bit by bit, his poison was not as effective because the size of this thing was beyond what one would think can exist in a dungeon.


    Yunan used his spikes to crawl along the mouth of the shark sending a dose of poison with each handhold or foothold he sank his ws into, it took around 3 hours for Yunan to reach the teeth and another 3 before the shark sumbed to the poison and finally died, with the death of the boss, the smaller sharks dispersed and the ce turned gastly quiet, if not for some luminescent things along the walls of the cage Yunan would have ran away from terror.


    Diving down to the bottom of the cage, Yunan found many treasure chests scattered around the floor, each treasure chest was sitting on top of a giant m that had pearls overflowing from it and the floor beneath was covered a foot deep in pearls. ording to the ck Fate, treasure chests spawn regrly with every new boss, if the boss remains undefeated it would spawn more and more chests, it happens that this boss would spawn a chest on top of a pearl making m as an added reward since the m can be imed and raised, and this cage here had all the types of ms that could be found in all the water floors, this boss cage became a treasure trove since it has never been cleared before.


    Yunan cast enough mage light spells to light up the whole area, although it was not enough to shed light on the whole cage, however the portion under the light was beyond a doubt what Dustan had wet dreams about, Yunan sent a live video to Debauchery asking them "how busy are you?" As he showed the the ce he had shed light and "this is just 1% or less, the pearls you can see are at least 1 foot from the ground" Yunan could see Debauchery change their faces from confusion to doubt and finally there was a unanimous "i want to see it before you pocket it, as it is now, i promise not to touch"


    Yunan chuckled to himself and told thr genie to bring them here, but if anyone dares to touch send them back. As expected Dustan and Bai broke the promise immediately but were sent away the moment they lunged forward, Balin asked for permission to inspect some fist sized pearls while Leader and Fae pulled a Scrooge McDuck and dove into the pearls, as for Lucian he was to take pictures of the two girls as they satisfied their vanity.


    Yunan now had the right to take away all the ms and chests in the cage but one of each so he began the task of using his automated looting at the maximum range of 5 kilometers and madep afterp along the most optimal path indicated by the genie leaving behind Debauchery in the lighted area forst, he then brought the rest of the family to take a look and enjoy without stealing anything.

 Chapter 175: Too much of a good thing

    Chapter 175: Too much of a good thing


    After literally rolling around in pearls, Yunan sent everyone back to the portable home before gathering thest bits of treasure left on the floor of the cage, he opened thest m and emptied it from the pearls inside then opened the final chest since he could not take it with him. Inside the chest he found a full set of armor, a cloak and a staff. Yunan pocketed the items and returned home to the treasury.


    After some deliberation, the genie was to rece all the ms and oysters in the aquarium with 5 of each type of giant m, and the rest were to be used for food and fermentation ofva wine. As for the pearls, they were to be ssified ording to their functions, most of these were to be fed to the Dragonification armor and the rest were used to augment the equipment that Balin has forged before, as for the pearls with only cosmetic purpose, they were to be made into jewellery and be sold for money, as adventurers always required resources and money, it was never a bad idea to have more.


    The ms seemed to be very happy with the higher mana saturation that was provided by the portable home, they were producing pearls faster and the genie spected it would be better quality ones that those in the dungeon, the genie also informed Yunan that after reaching te 40th floor the portable home would be able to fully operate at full capacity with only the mana it draws from Yunan. Usually the extra mana from the natural regeneration would spill out into the outside world, Yunan has told the genie to capture that mana amd use it to operate the house and only take from the stored mana if the operation of the house required it.


    With the whole family gathered together Yunan took out the titanic shark boss for handling, its organs were enough to feed Debauchery for years, even Drogon could not eat that much especially since its flesh was so saturated in mana, Drogon was basically drooling over it. With this shark meat was on the menu for eternity, even the armor was satisfied with only 5% of the beast thanks to its mana saturation, therefore Yunan decided to just ferment all the left overs from one meal but was stopped by the genie, it said that the mana saturation would not allow the attribute points in the meat to be lost after the one hour time limit like all other monsters, and that if preserved correctly Yunan could gain attribute points until he reaches level 40.


    Yunan let the genie handle the storage and just took small bits from its major organs to make a meal, the meal was so filling that the whole party just couldn''t move after eating and had to stay still until they digested the whole thing. Drogon and Sapphira had eaten enough to bloat their bellies visibly, although they ate a bit more than the rest, they did not eat as much as what Drogon used to have per meal, Yunan thought if he could feed his pets this way he could forget about high level corpses for a few years at least.


    After a full 12 hours ofzing about, Yunan sent his friends back to their respective organisation or the location he took them from. He then went to the treasury to open the chests he gathered, the number was too big for Yunan to even try to count, one chest every 10 meter in a half circle with a radius of 100 km, the short answers is too many, the genie could not open the chest since only Yunan could as the one who killed the boss. It took Yunan the rest of the week only emptying chest after chest without a wink of sleep and being hand fed his meals to open all of them.


    After a night of sleep he woke up to the excited faces of the extended Debauchery family staring him down, he wanted to sleep more but was dragged to the treasury, where a literal hills of items was waiting to be appraised by ck Fate, the mountain was split by type of item as follows: books, gloves and gauntlets, arm guards, boots and shoes, leg guards, shoulder pads, chest pieces, joint guards, trousers, shirts, helmets, belts, masks, cloaks, hats, daggers, swords, magical staffs, polearms, bows and crossbows, shields, darts And finally materials, jewellery and ingots.


    This was a market where Yunan would appraise an item, if one wants it they have to pay the price proimed by Dustan, if not the item would be fed to the armor, items can be exchanged and any returned item will be put up for sale, if no one wants it then it would be fed to the armor, the start was with the books, and materials, and then to the armors and weapons. It took a week for the mess to end, after finishing everything, Debauchery slept for the next weekend as if they had been the ones doing the appraisal.


    Everyone got their hands on some fancy items, since most of them catered to the all rounder, you could see for example Reina wearing a pdin armor set that boosted both magic and physical body, the assassin raiments Leol got were light armor that worked the same way, and the same was for the rest, although level 40 armors were not good enough for level 70 adventurer they could be used as molds for level 70 items therefore even Debauchery took some of these overpowered items, Yunan only sold duplicate books, and kept the unique ones for himself, as for the materials he gave Balin what remained from feeding the armor, in exchange for using it only for the family.


    With this over with Yunan had a sudden idea that tranted into an unconscious question "did anyone ever kill a bods in the underwater floors?". "Not that i know of , no, there are no bosses near the exits of the underwater floors". The question and answer hung in the air for a bit before Yunan dropped backwards t on the ground, Balin and Fae were cheering like toddlers, Dustan and Bai were drooling too much for a daydream and Leader chuckled to herself. There was excitement in the air, but it was interrupted by Lucian " this is our own treasure trove, do not tell anybody and do not buy for your organisation, this is private wealth and if we can not use it we can store it and then sell itter on but by bit, any leak of information and I will personally hunt the leaker to the ends of the earth".

 Chapter 176: 31st floor

    Chapter 176: 31st floor


    A threat from the silent Lucian may seem like any ordinary threat you hear in a bar fight or a street brawl, but if we factor in the gentle manners of Lucian and his scarce precious words, that threat bes more terrifying than the god of death himself.


    Yunan was grateful for Lucian, although he knew that his family would not betray him, the point of betrayal is that it is always unexpected, if you expect it then it bes treason. Moving this out of his mind Yunan was very d for thest week, he consulted the ck Fate about his new status.


    "All attributes: 4600, skills: plenty, spells: plenty, notes: that is some good growth, don''t burn out too fast. Armor: evolutionary (6th evolution), new abilities: sound attack (focused sound waves from echolocation), symbiosis (armour and user are now connected on a higher level, each empowering the other), mana immunity (thanks to the mana saturated flesh of the titanic shark, the armour now is able to use pure mana to shield from all spells, the full saturation takes time to achieve and part of it would be shaved off with each blocked spell).pets: Drogon and Sapphira are full of vitality and can be summoned to fight any monster up to level 50 without any trouble. Notes: the obedient gentle cat and the adolescent dragon can be a good team."


    "Exin symbiosis please!" Yunan ordered ck Fate, "the user sacrifices 10% of your mana pool at all times to be used by the armour, the armour can use that mana to operate at maximum capacity and store the rest of the mana in cooperation with the genie from the private dimension, the armour would be able to cast spells instead of the user and the user would be able to use all of the armour abilities without invoking the power of the armour. The user will have reinforced growth and ability while the armour would get enough mana to evolve to its next phase without relying on unpurified mana."


    It was hard not to like these new abilities he got, but the thing that got him worried was the probability that the symbiosis with the armour would lead to some sort ofplications or side effects that can result in some unfortunate events, but for now, it was beneficial so he let it slide.


    In the treasury, Yunan looked at the mountain of empty chests and the mountain of pearls beside it, he made the genie put them away in a storage room to be essed onlyter on, before he left, Yunan made 4 more stargazer chokers each unique in their look, he sent one that was made fully from stargazer pearls to Fortuna.


    He sent Reina one that was made from the skin of a white snake and a ck pearl, a white pearl, a sky blue pearl and a blood pearl surrounding a stargazer pearl. Lili got a choker made of polished coral and a stargazer pearl at each direction thest one went to Fae, it was made from elder wood, carved into the shape of a climbing vine with different coloured pearls like hanging fruits and the stargazer pearl as its origin.


    As for Ophelia and Kitty, he still didn''t know what would look good on them, in his eyes that is, so he postponed making something for them until he had that image in mind.


    After leaving the house, Yunan headed for the guild to buy a map for the next floors and ask about the bosses of underwater floors, he was surprised to find the map denoting only the descent route and nothing else, as for the boss, they said that there was a group that killed a 100 meter long shark but there was no chest in the location as for the map who would want to roam shark-infested waters.


    Yunan wanted tough, if a 100-meter shark was a boss, then this floor would have an endless number of bosses, the same for the other floors, the biggest thing they fought was only a few miles away from shore and not far enough to reach the boss cage.


    Yunan thought for a bit then headed to the 31st floor, on the way there he met Sarah and her friends struggling against a 30 meter long shark, they again asked for some help reaching the 39th floor where one does not need to fight to gain attribute points, ording to them, but Yunan was busy and he only killed the shark with a well ced a lightning ice spear into its forehead before proceeding to leave the floor, the 31st floor had much lowernd mass than the 30th and was popted solely with adventurers camping there, the ce was arge cave with a small pool that works as an entrance to the floor, the stairway down was across the small pool.


    Yunan dove into the pool after activating his echolocation and the detect danger new functionality added thanks to the pearls, diving down slowly with the help of his tail and wings as rudder and pedals. After leaving the cave system Yunan swam upward to the surface where he found the floor fully submerged with no signs of shallow water life like the previous floor, and he only encountered his first target by going to further away from the entrance location.


    The first monster was a killer whale, an orca, a ck and white mammal that is the best hunter of the seas, the floor also had some variety ofrge prey fish like tuna that served as a spice for those relying on the dungeon for food. The orca Yunan found was a 10 meter long and was not aggressive, so Yunan left it alone, however, it still attacked after Yunan turned his back, fortunately, he was prepared for this and fought off the monster and killed it using his swords.


    Not long after the orca was killed, a pack of them surrounded and attacked Yunan, most likely because the orca were pack animals and always lived in groups except when hunting. Although they had a better experience in hunting underwater, Yunan could still limit their numbers to keep them in the challenging spectrum.

 Chapter 177: Falling into routine

    Chapter 177: Falling into routine


    Fighting alone with orcas was not the same as fighting sharks, sharks relied on their strength to drive one into a corner, orcas used their brains, not all of them attacked some just swam around threateningly while making a few sudden moves to upy a part of one''s attention, and as soon as one rxed they would pounce from your blind spot.


    Orcas were smarter than sharks and they used that to call in reinforcement, figure out the limits where Yunan would use instant kill attacks and just only sent attackers within that limit while keeping the rest as threats and ambushers. As Yunan was unknowingly pushed towards the deeper waters and away from the shoreline the size of the orcas kept getting bigger while the smaller ones either changed targets or stayed as a distraction, there was subsonicmunication between the orcas, Yunan could see it disturbing his echolocation map.


    Finding himself getting more and more overwhelmed, Yunan was not feeling too bad, as he was able to gain much more experience thanks to the organisation skills of orcas and the space they gave him to be used to fighting, however once the size of orcas became longer than 80 meters, their strategy has changed, now they would do sudden shockwave attacks using their tails aimed at Yunan. The shock waves would turn Yunan into mush if he kept getting hit, simply because it was a not a brute force external damage attack, it was targeted at his internal organs. The orcas borrowed the water''s ability to pass on waves to hit Yunan from far away, the attacks would only feel like a wave crashing on the skin but with the amount of force exerted and the water pressure at this depth, this method would cause Yunan''s organs to shift, even if the organs did not change their location, a small shift could lead to torn blood vessels, internal bleeding and organ failure leading to death.


    Thanks to the armour those tremors felt like massage taps on Yunan instead of doing the intended damage, however the most dangerous thing about tremor type attacks is that it umtes and then by surprise one finds himself in a bad position. Therefore Yunan went out of his way to clean up this group and head back to rest before the day was over and got himself checked for any hidden damage.


    Once with Ophelia in the infirmary, Yunan was inspired by the twin snake staff on her back and thought of a design for Ophelia''s choker: two mithril snake on opposite ends holding the stargazer pearl on the tips of their noses, using the tails as a lock, he worked on it while she checked him and any damage to his internal organs, thankfully there was nothing more than mild contusions and he only needed to bath in honey for an hour or so.


    Ophelia had tears streaming down her face when she saw the choker, she wanted to say something but Yunan put his finger on her lips before putting the choker on her then hugging her and whispering "it''s not your fault you have such a bad behaving god, as I said, I will always believe in you, so don''t be said like that again". Ophelia cried her heart out after those words, she knew her god was making some kind of move against the disrespectful Yunan and she was specifically told she would not be part of it, however, all those scrapped ns of attack were shared with her, who even if she decided to abandon her god cannot save the guy who treasures her.


    Yunan was not aware of what was going on, but he thought it was mostly the god torturing his believer for letting an outsider disrespectfully talk to her god and address him like a street beggar, and being happy to hear his words nheless, as for Hermes, well he almost forgot about the incidence after leaving, his priests, however, did not tolerate that, and somehow made things reach this point without the consent or the care from their god.


    That night Yunan asked what kitty wanted to have attached to her own stargazer pearl and she immediately went for a bell, she thought it would be cute if she could jingle every time she made a move, Yunan could not help but agree, so he made a cor for her it was a thick and soft spider silk cor adorned with two silver bells inside each one was a stargazer pearl instead of a silver bead, the chimes they made was almost musical and hypnotic as kitty swayed her head this way and that to y around with the new toy. As for Lina and Nina declined the idea of any neckwear so Yunan made gold earrings for them instead, before heading to sleep.


    The next two months were the same as today, fighting until Yunan was ufortable with the number of internal injuries and then returning home, making jewellery with Balin and Fae as designers and then letting Dustan handle selling the merchandise, there was one thing that the family agreed on, stargazers were exclusive to the family and can only be gifted, and never sold, and to test how the nobility would react to them they were given to the Reina''s parents and Leol''s grandparents, they were told to use a slight amount of mana to stimte the jewellery while they were with other nobility, and the projected gxy of stars almost drove some nobles to try stealing them.


    When asked about the origin, the nobles trembled at the thought of a level 70 cksmith, and then they were deted with the rules that stated that those stargazers are only gifted, and anyone who is seen with one such piece of jewellery that was not gifted personally by the cksmith himself would be killed on the spot and any attempt in selling or gifting them leads to the loss of the item, the only way for the item to change hands is through inheritance.


    Making those rules up, was the way Debauchery choose to protect Reina''s parents and Leol''s grandparents as thanks for being the first testers. After the acimed reception of the jewellery, the nobles were informed that there is there will be auctions to sell such jewellery by the same cksmith.


    Yunan also made sure to send a jewellery set with stargazer as the main theme for his mother andter on to all the girls around him because they got jealous, the jewellery set was made fully from pearls, even the parts that looked like woven threads of metal were, in fact, pearl shavings, Yunan made the sets full of vibrant colours and patterns, his mother almost thought Yunan had stolen it, because ordinary adventurers don''t usually send home things other than money, asionally, while her son was by all means covering all the spending needed for the whole orphanage and made them some savings.


    The pope got himself a cane with a crown of pearls because Lili wanted to get his attention and guild leader Martin got a fountain pen made from ck pearls, simply because he was a hard-working man who was thinking about others more than himself and had left a good impression on Debauchery.

 Chapter 178: Killer whale boss fight

    Chapter 178: Killer whale boss fight


    After two months of constant fighting, Yunan has reached a point where he could repel the onught from ten 200 meters sized killer whale simultaneously, and thus he thought maybe it was about prime time to try his hand on the boss orca.


    Yunan flew above the surface of the water and headed for the opposite side of the ocean simply because it was faster that way, after reaching the other wall, he dove down and looked for the boss cage, as expected he found it had the same proportions like the first cage. It was half circle with a radius of 100 kilometres, the boss was there, like a shadow lurking beneath the waves, it was 1000 meters long and had the presence of a mountain.


    It did not eat its kin like the shark boss, it was feeding on the fish schools herded into the cage by the other killer whales, it was the matriarch, the one that was inmand of the bigmunity. And unlike the shark it did not ambush Yunan nor did it try to attack him, he just looked too fragile for it, what came after Yunan was a pack of smaller orcas who were dispatched with ease, the boss made a screeching sound that made Yunan grit his teeth as he braced for impact.


    The killer whale used the same tail tremor attack but it was at point-nk range, Yunan was amazed at how something that big could move faster than his perception andnd an attack, given that the boss was angry it put some power into the strike sending Yunan hurtling for miles, he could feel his bones about to shatter as he coughed up a mouthful of blood, that attack did a number on his body.


    Yunan activated his healings and took a few swigs of honey, he then activated the all stats buffs to the maximum 300% and started concentrating mana on very thin 10 meters long ice spear, he added lighting, wind and poison effects, he coated it with spider silk to make sure it does not umte more ice while it is travelling through water. The first spear sessfully enraged the boss who now has decided to make sure Yunan dies this time.


    Yunan used teleportation to get away from the path of the boss and sent 10 such ice spears with each teleport, and by the time the boss has changed direction Yunan was already teleporting away and preparing for the next wave of ice spears, this continued for 5 hours where Yunan had to push his body using food and drinks, casting through the armour when he ran out of mana and his healings was using up most of the regenerated mana, eventually borrowing mana from the stores he had kept aside for rainy days.


    The boss died from blood loss and not from the effects of the poison, for some reason its constitution was resisting the poison sessfully, another point was that it did not get into contact with the same amount of poison as the shark because Yunan did not want toe in contact with it. This boss was able to cast a tremor spell and use it on its tail, it was within reason that it could use it anywhere in its body, making the n of getting close to it an unrefutable failure, therefore Yunan took the trouble to cast such mana consuming attacks and try to outlive the boss.


    With the boss dead, the surrounding killer whales split into different groups and floated away offering a sad song of mourning for theirte boss, the sound was sad and it even had a touch of pain and loss attached to it, Yunan quickly stored the corpse and went down to collect the treasures that were all over the floor of the cage, this time what Yunan found was something different, the ms had shells of different metals, and the pearls they produced were beads of the same metals their shells were made out of. After scanning a m with the ck Fate he got his answer, these ms were using the same method used by Tartarus to make mana into tangible items and these ms were creating metallic beads.


    Yunan suddenly had an idea, since thest floor had all the types of pearl ms in the boss cage, did that mean that Yunan now got his hands on every metal Tartarus knew how to make, a shiver ran down Yunan''s spine as he thought about the implications of having every single metal in Tartarus produced in his own home.


    Yunan shook his head and put that thought in the back of his head, it was time for another week of sorting and dealing with items, Yunan told the genie to transport 5 of each m to the aquarium and keep them well fed, as for the rest, the metals were to be separated into a hidden room and for the rest of the ms to be disposed of ordingly, their metallic shells to the hidden room of metals and the meat inside to the fermentation pit.


    Yunan did not announce his gains this time, and just quietly dealt with everything, it took a full week but when he was done it was worth it, the chests from the killer whale boss all contained forging materials of extreme rarity, things that Hephaestus called grade 5 items, Yunan didn''t carelessly feed the armour any of those materials but made the ck Fate extend an invitation to Hephaestus, he also contacted Fortuna and asked her to bring Hephaestus home if she could.


    Hephaestus dide by and was asked by Yunan to review his collection, after telling him about the current situation and how he got his hands on them and asked about what will happen if he kept feeding the armour and it kept evolving beyond him. Hephaestus was mostly unconcerned and only promised Yunan one thing "if you could defeat every single boss until the 39th, you will get a very nice surprise, as for your armour, if you worry that much then wait until you be strong enough, and for now only feed it monsters".


    Yunan thanked Hephaestus for his advice and took him to see the newest addition to the house, the aquarium, Hephaestus was very pleased about the way it was made and the creatures inside it, he told Yunan that it would be a good idea if he could find some things that exude mana naturally and add them to the house, since the only thing limiting the evolution of this house and the genie was the amount of mana, and the current reserves were for Yunan''s use, it would be great to make the house self-sufficient.

 Chapter 179: Understanding love

    Chapter 179: Understanding love


    Although Yunan wanted to take a small vacation in order to visit his mother and rx by her side for a few days, he was approached by Fortuna and Venus for a task.


    As the goddess of love, Venus had control over all forms of love that was gained from close proximity and interaction, for example, siblings love, motherly love and so one. What she had control over was what she had experienced in her own life, like all the ascended, they could only control what they knew, and something that Venus did not know about in her lifetime was the love most refer to as friendship.


    The feelings of friendship and friends love are different, simply put, friendship is a state where being with someone can make you feelfortable and friends love is beingforted even by the thought of being with that person, the two things are very different, most people who experience friends love refer to it as tonic love, the purest form of love in this world. You experience all the emotions you would experience in an ordinary rtionship but there is no lust nor is there any such possessive feelings, although you want your friend by your side you don''t mind letting them be with others, and you just love them because loving them makes you feelfortable.


    Contrary to tonic love, other forms of love that depends on close proximity have a drop of lust and possession in them, and they depend on the proximity to extend the range of love, for example, siblings love would die slowly after bing an adult because simply there is not enough proximity anymore, the same for parental love, and even marriage and ordinary love, take the proximity away and you can feel the love dissipating.


    However friendshipsts longer with minimal proximity, and tonic lovests forever, for example, soldiers drafted in the army are more likely to think about their pets orfortable friends than to think about their families in order to stave off the loneliness.


    Reciprocated tonic love will always blossom into a proximity love sooner orter, and that was why no matter how many love strings Venus cut off between Fortuna and Yunan she could not eliminate the love between them. And that is what Venus wanted from Yunan, she wanted to understand the feeling of tonic love and for that, she needed to watch Yunan and his interactions with those he ims to have an unbreakable love with.


    This was what Debauchery ssifies as a headache and would kill to keep this kind of thing far far away, and Yunan was no different, he told her toe by on weekends if she wanted to observe, otherwise, he refused to have a spy watching over his shoulder all the time. Yunan did not even exin what the feeling was to Venus because watching it was the only way to understand it, and if she could not understand by simply watching then there was no hope even if he exined it word by word to her a million times, it was something you feel not something you are told.


    Yunan took the chance to steal Fortuna on a date even if he had a third wheel tagging along, and although Yunan was blissfully ignorant about Venus and her beauty, he still did not fully ignore her when she was with them, he asked her about what she liked when there was something that had personal preference, for example what kind of y she enjoyed watching, what kind of snacks she wanted when they were shopping, or what rides she wanted to go to in the theme park, however, he would prioritize what he and Fortuna wanted simply because this was a date and she was the third wheel, her demands are not above the couple''s wants.


    What drove Venus halfway to insanity was that the lust they had for each other would be satisfied with simply holding hands or leaning against each other, simple things were satisfying something she thought was too strong for them to keep from bedding each other on sight. When she voiced her mind Yunan told her that she should not look into his other rtionships if this one almost drove her to madness.


    That weekend Venus arrived with Fortuna to the family meeting, and was extremely angry that other than Balin and Leol who were drooling over her the rest was just thinking "another goddess, oh well, not like she can be as lovely as Hephaestus and Fortuna anyway". And what shook her most was that between all the members here was a rtionship that was on par or stronger then what Yunan and Fortuna had, even between males and she could not help but feel empty for not understanding a form of love that was meant to be her domain, Venus left the houseter on after confirming why she was not the only and ultimate goddess of love and beauty, there was a lot that she did not experience in her life and after bing an ascended she had a hard timeprehending something that she did not recognize as a form of love for an eternity.


    When asked about the reason why Venus came to visit he simply stated " because we are so abnormal she could not understand how we love each other, well she came by to understand and got herself nothing but frustration, she is a goddess of love and beauty and only the perverted ones appreciated her beauty, the rest didn''t care, she wasn''t ready for that kind of feeling yet"


    After that Yunan took a week to step out of the dungeon and go see his mother, who was now a most revered character in the city of Mar Sara simply because she was gifted the illusive stargazer jewellery and since she was a humble and nice woman she was already popr with the poption. Yunan stole her away from the orphanage and took her away so that he could act as spoiled as he wanted, it has been a long time since they met and mother was the same as always, with love flooding out from every look and move she made.

 Chapter 180: Marine cuisine

    Chapter 180: Marine cuisine


    After having a good rest with his mother, Yunan descended to the 32nd floor and found it full of people, the scene was what you would see in a sunny beach in the heart of summer, the only difference is the fact that war cries and magic reced the sunbathing beauties and the ogling men.


    The enemies in this floor were crabs, not the ones you find in restaurant these ones were as tall as a person and as hardy as a battle tank, with huge pincers capable of splitting a man in half like wet paper, they were a menace to those careless and a boon to those who try to grow stronger. As far as Yunan could see there were enough crabs to keep each party upied, most of the parties ganged up on a single crab, making Yunan feel like they were being toozy, however upon closer inspection each party had its hands full with a single crab.


    Yunan stood there and watched but was pushed from behind by someone in hurry yelling at their teammates "we have to kill at least 2 crabs before the tidees, we only have until dusk before this ce turns into hell". Looking around him Yunan could tell that every party was thinking the same thing, so after thinking about it for a moment Yunan walked towards the wet sands trying to find a crab to engage with.


    Crabs, like all armoured creatures, had weak joints so he chose to approach with a dagger and dismantling as a strategy, the first crab toe was promptly turned into a limbless body, it frothed at the mouth and cast a jet of pressurised water at Yunan, it kept sending jet after jet until Yunan got close and shoved his dagger into its mouth releasing a lightning discharge, summarily killing the crab.


    Yunan could hear gasps and feel looks on his back, the firstplete word he heard was "suicidal", then he heard things like "never try things like that, he must be mad, if he is alone he can do as he pleases but your party will suffer if you fight like that". Yunan was just trying his hand at the crab and was called a madman so he changed his style to something that is truly for madmen.


    The next crab got a fist jammed into body breaking the armour like it was ss and then Yunan ripped out its organs, he stored the crab and went for the next one, he used an ice ball to freeze the crab to death, and he kept using overkill methods one after the other, including using the tremor skill of the orcas to blow a crab to bits, while loudlymenting how the crabs were too weak to even survive a gentle bump. Yunan kept the spectacle up, all shy and exaggerated.


    After taking down the 100th crab he sat down and took some shark meat to make some soup with crab and m meats, the pot he cooked in wasrge enough to feed 30 and the smell that came out of it kept drawing more and more crabs, those also were killed and either added to the giant soup pot or fed to the armour, some were sent home for the girls to feast on.


    When the stew was cooked Yunan put out the fire and sat down to eat as if he was in his own backyard, not in the freaking dungeon were death was literally a few feet away from him. A group that was close by and had just finished dealing with their crab came forward and sat down beside Yunan and scooped a bowl each, they ate silently and watched as Yunan emptied one bowl after another.


    A man stood up and reignited the fire, he ushered to Yunan to step closer to the pot and Yunan got up and stood beside the man. "Listen here, the shark meat has too much mana and nutrition, it does not go well with the soft crab and m meats, although you are the first I have seen attempt to eat the m meat in this dungeon, either way, the meat is too ipatible, and you adding some vegetables and condiments is not going to make it any better, therefore you have to use other kinds of meats to bridge the gap between the two, I would rmend something stringy and flexible, not too tough and not too supple, what kinds do you have?".


    Yunan seriously replied "Does orca work? Although it has the same problem as the shark, too much mana, I found a ce were the oldest ones live and hunted so many of them, if that is not enough I have corpses from every floor up to this one all well preserved and can be used immediately, anything in mind?" Yunan took out arge slice of the killer whale matriarch and gave it to the man.


    After some examination the man gave it a passing grade " it will do just fine, now do you have anything that can make the broth thick and creamy as well as something to absorb the harsh taste of the shark meat?" Yunan silently presented a jar of honey and a bottle ofva wine, upon tasting both the man poured half a ss ofva wine and two spoons of honey into the pot then he looked at Yunan solemnly "every chef in this world would kill to get a spoon full of this stuff please be careful, I don''t know how you got them but you better keep them to yourself".


    Yunanughed hard at those words before filling his bawl again, "then let me tell you a secret, those can both be found in the twentieth floor aplenty, you can only find them by luck, I only stumbled on the location in a drunken stupor so I stocked on a few rings full and I will never go back again". The man did not ask about it anymore but started teaching Yunan about the culinary arts while adding this and that making the broth tastier with each addition.

 Chapter 181: Empty boss room

    Chapter 181: Empty boss room


    "my, my, you learn quickly, you can call me chef Ro, sorry for eating from your pot earlier, we thought you were having an open invitation, I did not know you can eat that much alone". The man who has been teaching Yunan about the culinary arts for a while now introduced himself.


    "I am used to my teachers and party barging in like you did, at least you taught me so much in exchange thus I have nothing toin about" Yunan answered while still stuffing his face full of food. The soup he started with has be a broth and then it became a hot pot then just a really good blend of food.


    "So how can you eat that much without even getting a bulge on your tummy? I feel like all women in the world would love to know that secret" said on of chef Ro''spanions, who have warmed up to Yunan thanks to his simple personality. "Its a side effect of my armour, it makes my body use up energy much faster than most, but I think I started eating too much when training under my teachers, they made us use up so much energy, we needed to eat all the time to just be able to keep up with them, so my body is trained to digest as fast as possible to get as much energy from anything that I stuff in my mouth, it''s very convenient but it is also troublesome, because I need to eat food full of mana to even feel full, so I do not rmend such an eating habit".


    Another member stuck her head out "so you say that you have been killing those huge sharks and killer whales beforeing to this floor simply because you needed more food?". "Technically that is true, but I think fighting those monsters alone only gave me higher expectations of this floor but s, these crabs are too weak"


    "Why don''t you stay after the tide rises at night? I heard others say that stronger crabs as big as mountainse out at that time" another man said to Yunan before voicing a question "howe you know less than you should about this floor?" However, Yunan''s answer left him dumbstruck. "My teachers told me to just face the unknown, and learn all I can about my opponent during a fight and not before, simply because the information might be wrong, so far they were right about that method of clearing the dungeon"


    "What about your party? Why are you alone?" Another question was asked, this party seemed quite interested in Yunan especially since chef Ro was teaching him without restraint. "We meet every weekend to have some fun together, but each of them has an organisation and another party they belong to, meanwhile I became a lone wolf, I also do mercenary work now and then, but most of my dungeon clearing is me by myself".


    After sharing a good meal, chef Ro and his party departed from 32nd floor and soon after everyone else except Yunan left the floor, with him being the only soul in the beach he used earth shift make a small room for himself and lie there in ambush for whatever came out of the ocean. A little bit after the lighting of the floor changed Yunan''s detection map went berserk, it was filled with enemies, a lot more than when he was on the rat floor. The red dots moved in the shape of a whirlpool and countless numbers of them passed by in hurry.


    Yunan activated his mana Syphon at maximum range and let the genie store the mana tide forter use, since the reserves were only dwindling, a chance to restock was like rain in the middle of a parched desert and with the numbers that were passing by, Yunan only had to let the mana syphon run endlessly while he slept in the hole he made. He let the girls know he would not be returning home and then went to a half sleep state where he was just alert enough to escape danger.


    The tide of crabs returned to the see with the arrival of dawn, leaving behind only a small number of crabs to guard the beach. Yunan woke up and watched all those crabs retreat to the deepest end of the shore. After the light of day filled the floor Yunan got out of his hole and made himself some breakfast, some highly nutritious sandwiches and some ck coffee to wake his brain up, not that he needed it, but it was a good thing to keep to mundane routines when one is living alone.


    After breakfast Yunan dove into the water to see if he could find some interesting things, but he was disappointed to find nothing but crabs and seaweeds underwater, this kept driving him towards the further end of the floor, until he came upon a cliff that seemed to be from a sword strike that cut the floor in half, at the root of this cliff Yunan found what he was looking for, the cave built into the cliff, it was a very spacious ce and kept growing bigger andrger as Yunan waded in killing every crab that dared try to approach him or was close enough to make Yuan feel pressured.


    After walking for half the morning Yunan reached the boss room, it was full of chests but no boss, the hidden boss could even escape the search of the sonar, the heat vision and life detection, an idea hit Yunan, if the boss was to only show its face during the night for meal time, then those crabs invading the beach were just trying to feed their ancestor.


    Yunan killed his way back to the surface, where he found chef Ro and his party dealing with a crab so he dispatched it for them by sending an ice spear into its mouth and then detonating it dealing lethal damage to the innards of the crab. "What are we gonna cook today chef Ro?" Hord Yunan nonchntly as he sat on the corpse of the downed crab. " I will do the cooking", answered chef Ro "but I need you to do something for me, I have a restaurant that deals only in cooking monster meat, and after eating whatever we ended up with yesterday I want to add in crab meat to the menu, so I need at least 100 of them, for trial cooking and any more will be paid for with the same price, how about that for a job? The only requirement is the bodies must be intact".


    Yuanan nodded his head "Alright then, how many can your rings keep in storage?", "About 1000 give or take a dozen, why?" Yunan did not respond but used his detection to iste 1000 crabs and used his voice maniption to only taunt those ones, he then roared out his draconic taunt identally stunning everyone in the vicinity, even the crabs, and within a moment, a tide of crabs rushed towards Yunan from all sides. Yunan used integration to turn drops of the paralytic poison into hair-breadth ice needles that were sent out like a fog into the iing horde, each crab would fall as soon as it reached close enough to touch Yunan with its pincers before falling down and stop moving, and like this a hill was created around Yunan within minutes, after waiting ten minutes for the sake of safety Yunan told chef Ro to collect his bounty.

 Chapter 182: Defeating the craby boss

    Chapter 182: Defeating the craby boss


    Chef Ro was impressed by the speed and efficiency Yunan disyed, out of safety he asked about how Yunan did it and thought the answer was too sinister for the simple Yunan. "I made a paralytic toxin that causes death within seconds of exposure, it dposes automatically after 5 minutes and it can be ineffective if the body to dose ratio is too low, I use it when I need to capture intact bodies for cooking, I got the idea from the snake floor and the spider floor, snakes use venom to paralyse their prey and kill it with asphyxiation or heart failure while the digestive poison of the spiders breaks down on its own after a certain period of time, that is the basis of my toxin, its fast acting and unstable ".


    Chef Ro was stunned to hear such an idea was formed simply by passing through the same floors like everyone else but stopping to take inspiration from his fights, proving he did not use the information provided by the guild to clear each floor like most of the rest did. "Alright I will send you your moneyter through the guild''s bank, what is your ount number", "I have many so I don''t remember, but if you are serious about the bank transfer just tell the employee to send it to the wise prowler Yunan from the Valyrians, subsidiary of Debauchery party, they will know what to do".


    With that Yunan used his ring and teleported back home to the infirmary for the usual after battle checkup, he found that Ophelia has taken the girls and were now with Reina fighting in the 30th floor so he simply took a dip in the cleansing pool and then went to sleep and set up the rm for an hour before dusk.


    Chef Ro was very impressed, he did not feel Yunan use mana when he saw him disappear in a blink thinking that he used some camouge method to hid his presence. So he ordered his party to store all the crabs and even went to give away some to the surrounding parties for fear they would get greedy and make trouble for him, he would rather lose a dozen corpse than his life andrades. And he did not forget to spread the word about how one man roared taunting exactly 1000 crabs and killing all of them within 10 minutes.


    Those rumours being shared between adventurers gave rise to a wave of eyewitnesses who have seen the man solo a hidden boss in the 25th floor, some said they have seen him with a dragon burning down the boss room in the 29th floor like dry grass, some imed that a party from their organization was carried by him from the 20th to the 25th floor in 4 days. All those rumours had one thing inmon, the guy had a draconic armour that was unique, the ck and scarlet colouring, the scales, the pointy and sharp edges, the only difference was whether there was a tail, wings or both present in the armour.


    Such a rise in poprity was inevitable for someone who did not shy away from disying his powers or even try hiding them, it was as if everyone else in the universe had the same power and it was not unique to him, on the other hand, Yunan just did not care much about who knew about his power because they can do nothing about it, in and simple.


    After some good refreshing sleep, Yunan returned to the 32nd floor ready to start the boss hunt, but he was surprised to find chef Ro waiting for him alone on the beach sitting by the stairs and looking at the horizon with nk-eyed. Yunan called out to Ro asking what is he doing there, it seems that the crab meat was a hit at his restaurant in the 30th floor and was the most popr item in the menu at the moment, so he asked Yunan for more and if he could make a daily delivery of 1000 crabs worth of meet as long as this crab meat craze is still going. Yunan epted the job and walked away into the water towards the boss room.


    He arrived early there and climbed to the ceiling where he made a makeshift hammock with spider threads andy on it while chowing down on some fruits and meats the girls had made for him as dinner. Soon enough the boss drilled out of the wall of the room like a rock golem, it looked at its children starting to pile up see weeds and fishes just outside the perimeter of the boss room as if they knew there was an outsider and tried not give the opportunity to steal the food they worked hard to collect.


    The boss looked up at Yunan who was swinging happily in his hammock and sent him a few jets of high-pressure water that sliced through the wall cleanly, unlike the other crabs, this one was more inclined to use its spells instead of just snapping mindlessly and endlessly. It hardened its own armour to block a punch from the falling Yunan who bounced off without leaving a scratch, it too was an old monster and it was truly capable one too. Yunan decided on the incapacitate approach where he used mud mires and frozen pits to halt the boss in its tracks and the climb along its back up to its mouth and there he poured 10 caskets worth of paralysis toxin, the boss was enraged enough to roll around and try to swat Yunan away but to no avail, sadly those actions only let to the toxin acting faster and rendered the boss immobile.


    Feeling like death was on the door it attempted to self-destruct but failed miserably because there was no mana left in its core, even if its flesh and armour were saturated with mana it was no longer usable and the boss died soon after and with its death the children it had all attacked Yunan. Yunan used the same frozen toxic needle tactics to end all their lives without using too much mana, and the storing the corpses within his home.


    Yunan told the genie to separate 50 thousand of those corpses he collected for selling to chef Ro and deal with the rest the usual way, feeding the armour, feeding the cat and the dragon, then saving some to feed the guests and finally store the rest with the "to be fermented" pile

 Chapter 183: Fraud?

    Chapter 183: Fraud?


    After dealing with the crab boss faster than expected, Yunan decided to move to the 33rd floor simply because there was very little gain from the 32nd floor anymore, maybe some spare change in return for hunting crab but what Yunan needed was a higher challenge, and so the 33rd floor might have what he was looking for.


    Before Yunan could descend to the 33rd floor he was tasked by debauchery to do a mercenary job they thought he was best suited for, there was a client, seemingly an alchemist or a pharmacist that required intact corpsed from both sharks and orcas, he was offering a hefty sum per corpse, his only requirement is that there were no death wounds on the body and there were no damages to the organs of the monsters.


    Yunan thought about it for a while and came up with a surprisingly childish idea, he could put the paralytic toxin in a ball of mana that gets absorbed by the body once it enters the digestive tract, allowing the toxin to spread unhindered to the body without the need for a puncture wound, and also allowed Yunan to control the amount of toxin to be the minimum effective dose instead of just sending many ice spears or having to manually stab the target.


    Yunan spent the next week umting 100 specimen of each size starting from the smallest at 10 meters long to thergest at 200 meters long. Yunan thought that should be enough to get whatever results were needed, if not he could always catch a few hundred more to fulfil the needs of the clients. Unfortunately, Yunan had forgotten something, no matter how advanced aboratory was or how skilled the alchemist they did not have the infirmary made by Hephaestus where almost anything is possible with only mana required, thus the ability to handle crates worth of anything was out of the question.


    When Yunan went to the guild to submit the quest he was told to meet up directly with the client, so he just went to the man''s house and identified himself as a mercenary who hase for the reward posted in the guild. Yunan was led by an ageing butler who eyed Yunan with extreme suspicion, he looked too young to be a merc of any capacity.


    They arrived at a spaciousboratory by some standards, it was filled with all kinds of items that Yunan did not recognise or look at too much he just cleared his throat and said to the man behind the desk "I have with me some intact corpses, both sharks and orcas, all without damage, and I would like it if you confirm the condition of the corpses and pay me if the work is done to your liking". The man behind the desk nodded and stood up, "alright just take out the biggest corpses you have and let''s check on them".


    Yunan looked around and found that even though there was lots of space in theb it would never amodate the 200 meter long monsters so he scratched his head in embarrassment "there is not enough space here for the biggest ones I have, maybe we should start with the smaller ones, like maybe the 10 meter long ones or the 20 meters long, I would rmend you to get a bigger space to work with if you want to work on the biggest ones".


    The man behind the desk thought the biggest ones that could be found are the 20 meter long ones but he now heard that they were considered small by this absurd Young man, so he decided to humour Yunan on a whim, not every day can a man like himself be subject to cheating or deception. "Alright let''s go to my warehouse, it should be big enough to amodate all your merchandise" however he was cut off by Yunan "if you don''t have anything that is at least 1 cubic kilometre in volume let''s not bother with all my merchandise, it seems I over hunted".


    Yunan put one of each size from the 10 meters long to the 200 meters long inside his biggest storage ring and flicked it to the man " I have 100 of each size, perfectly preserved and all intact, the cause of death, heart failure or brain death. If you think you have a ce where to store them then let''s do that, otherwise lets only fill your warehouse". As the alchemist looked inside the ring he had to make sure he was not dreaming, 20 pairs of corpses each pair was a shark and orca of the same size, he looked again and again not being able to believe those huge corpses that were as big as hillsying there for him to watch.


    "How much? You said you have 100 of each? How did you kill them, where did you find them, is this even possible, not even monsters should be able to grow this big" the man droned on and on asking endless questions from Yunan without allowing him to answer, Yunan waited until the man calmed down "they grow in size the further away you get from shore and they stop at 200 meters as for how I killed them, that, I cannot answer"


    The man looked around himself for a moment before half dragging Yunan back to the guild for an appraiser because he thought that this must be a most borate scam and that the corpses inside the ring were faked. Inside the guild, the man used his privilege as an alchemist to bring out the highest level appraiser in the guild, a level 85 old monster. And did not forget to use Yunan with forgery and deceit, and trying to cheat his way into aplishing a quest.


    Yunan simply followed by and said nothing, he would pay the man back hard for this and he would certainly make him suffer, he just needed to wait for the acimed appraiser to clear his name and then it was time to make the man despair.

 Chapter 184: So unlucky

    Chapter 184: So unlucky


    The old man appraiser arrived a few hourster, he was visibly angry and disturbed at the thought of being called to authenticate monster corpses for an alchemist brat that was screaming fraud in the guild.


    The old man looked at Yunan before looking at the man pestering the guild employee about why was a rare alchemist like himself waiting for an appraiser for this long. He then looked at Yunan who lowered his head a bit in respectful greeting. The old man returned the same nod towards Yunan with gleaming eyes, before he announced his presence, he walked to the guild employee and asked why was he needed here.


    Once the old man looked at the ring he gave it back to the alchemist "they are real, there is no mistake about it, I wonder who caught such pristine specimen" the alchemist cut him off "what do you mean? is this a conspiracy to scam me out of my money, who do you think you are not doing anything and im there is nothing wrong with these things". The old appraiser turned livid but calmed himself down "do you think you can afford my fees? If you do not behave yourself I will ban you from receiving appraisal in the guild without paying for it".


    The old man then turned around and faced Yunan "that is an amazing armour you have there, can I appraise it? I would pay you if you took money", Yunan took off his medallion and gave it to the old man " please, no need for money, it''s just numbers anyway". The old man scrunched up his brows and kept his eyes and hands on the medallion for a few minutes before giving up "the only thing I can read into this is the draconic nature, it is a marvel I would say, mind selling it to me for 6 middle sized kingdoms, on second thought make that 4rge size kingdoms and the merchant empire that funds them". Yunan simply shook his head and sighed "sorry about that, even if I wanted to sell it won''t leave my side, it''s basically bound to myself otherwise it''s a dead medallion that can never be used".


    The old man could feel the medallion bing ethereal and slipping through his fingers and floating back to Yunan "shame, well it''s not like you would even look at my measly 4 kingdoms with an armour like that, if you ever find the materials to make another, the payment is still the same, now tell me did you kill the big ones?" Yunan looked at the old man for a moment before nodding the old man chuckled and asked if he could see the ones he got, so Yunan used the ck Fate to send an image from the storage room were the three bossesy side by side and beside them were Lina and Nina who were teleported there by Yunan to provide a perspective.


    "Want toe to my ce and have some fish old man? I have some good wine you might like" Yunan extended an invitation to the old man simply because he thought the old man was waiting all this time for someone to kill the boss, so maybe having him over was not a terribly wrong idea. The old man nodded an came closer to Yunan, however, Yunan asked him to wait for a bit and walked to the alchemist who was now panicking.


    "Now that they are authentic, I want my ring back, I wantpensation for wasted time, ndering and rejecting apleted quest without valid reason, I have taken a week out of my life doing this stupid quest and hunted 400 extremely dangerous monsters at risk of death and injury and was used of Fraud, pay up!" The old man had a brilliant smile on his face, he seriously felt relieved when he heard Yunan give the alchemist a piece of his mind, he would have found it a shame that a young capable man would just cower at the mention of an alchemist.


    The alchemist was befuddled, he never thought he would be treated like a street hoodlum when he was only being cautious and diligent about what materials he should ept, but the tone Yunan used was not asking, he was threatening him and that as more outrageous, he looked at the guild employee behind the counter but before he could speak Yunan took the lead "I will require mister employee here to be a witness, I am hereby applying for payment for a job that I did, but I am being denied, I am sure mister appraiser would not mind making a tally of how much mister alchemist owes me, it is 4000 corpses I have here with me toplete the quest, if I remember correctly there was no limit to the number of submissions and the consumer would take all the ones that fit the criteria, please bring me a judge, i want justice".


    A case with an alchemist being used of refusing toplete the payment for a quest affected the guild more than the alchemist, and add in the fact that he had already called in for an appraiser that had authenticated the merchandise, not to mention using an adventurer of fraud because hecked information was a great insult to the guild.


    The alchemist''s misfortunes had just started because there was a judge on site that was on his way out of the dungeon and stopped to rest, when informed about the situation the judge almost ran to the reception hall to find the alchemist trying to weasel his way out of this by using sweet words and his status as an alchemist, the judge did not waste time and simply asked for the security recordings, he also talked to the old appraiser and asked him to appraise the quality of the corpses Yunan brought and if they conformed to the quest requirements.


    The old appraiser patiently looked at all the corpses one by one and came to a conclusion, the cheapest corpse was a perfect specimen that conformed to the requirements and with a higher quality and would be worth more than what was offered in the quest, as for therger corpses, ording to the danger and risk involved and the amount of trouble to catch such high quality goods the price skyrocketed with each increase in length.


    However that was not the worst of it, as the judge had proimed that Yunan was entitled to full payment and if the alchemist was to not pay he would lose his privileges at the guild and would be penalised, the astronomical sum was pocket change to Yunan but was almost all of the funds in the alchemist''s ount, and just as he finished payment his butler came running into the guild informing the man that the experiment he was doing has gone haywire and the whole house was turned to dust, nothing was left, even the servants and ves, he only survived because he was in the garden at the time. And before he could even mourne all of his items, came a judging from the guild, the man had been disrespectful to an esteemed appraiser who he had demanded himself, and was to be stripped from all his privileges and is to immediately pay back his debts or be taken in for forcedbour as payment immediately. "So unlucky" Yunan left those words as he teleported to his home with the old appraiser.

 Chapter 185: Crocodiles

    Chapter 185: Crocodiles


    The old appraiser was a very tactful man, he never asked Yunan the hows and whats and whys about the so many mysteries that Yunan was capable of, he just followed behind and ate the served food and drank the served wine, he even rejected a bottle ofva wine simply because he would get addicted to such a good taste, so leaving it as a good memory was the best option.


    After returning the old man to the guild hall Yunan departed to the 33rd floor, it was a shallow water marsh, filled with crocodiles lying in ambush for any type of fish beasts passing by, as well as any adventurers who are careless enough to pass by with their guard down, further away from the stairway one can find that the crocodiles would have longer limbs and then they would be able to stand and finally be lizardmen.


    Yunan killed a few samples of crocodiles as he went along further and further away from the stairway, simply out of habit, after 1 kilometre he was alone in the midst of crocs, with adventurers not needing to move far away from the stairway they got used to it and just trained in the first band of the floor with the ordinary crocs.


    The crocodiles had two specialist spells, first was cold blood, it allowed them to escape the heat vision and life vision to some extent, the second was razor scales, it used its own scaled body as sharp razors to slice and dice an enemy they could not tear up with their jaws or had no opportunity to do so. There must have been more spells because Yunan thought only two special spells were not enough and there should be at least one more.


    As Yunan kept advancing he took on more and more damage, he also got to see the newer version of crocodiles that slowly evolved into lizardmen. The fight with the lizardmen was what Yunan had been waiting for, a fight where he could use his battle skill and not just dodge and use magic, a most boring thing for Yunan.


    With the lizardmen being armed and armoured in addition to the natural armour they were born with, Yunan used his battle skills sluggishly at first before reaching his old level, although he didn''t use the armour''s effects to boost himself he was able to hold against 3 of them, but he could barely feel when the duel was over, 600 points of difference was too sharp and Yunan surviving that assault was a testament to the advent of his skills and his great foresight into himself and his enemies.


    Yunan decided to fight in this ce until he caught up to the attribute points needed to challenge the boss, although this would be increasing the amount of stress it would also reduce the time needed to advance forward. Upon returning home Yunan was healed by Ophelia and then left alone to soak in the honey pool, he was told he was needed home daily from that point onwards for dinner every time and not juste and go as he pleases.


    The girls were concerned about Yunan, he was not the type to forget the state of his body but he was the kind that endures too much, therefore umting more and more stress and risk mental exhaustion and subsequently be more careless and even possibly lose his life.


    The girls also made sure to make Yunan was well rested after every fight to make sure he had a better chance of returning, they even reduced their intimate time significantly to allow their man to return alive and well. Yunan was thankful for his girls, although the best he could do was be passionate with them since they never said they wanted anything else, even Ophelia was satisfied with the asional hug and the shared sleeping time.


    With Yunan feeling like he was treated with more care and love, he grew more determined and turned the intensity of each encounter into a slugfest, going barehanded and armourless against as many lizards as he could, and his advancement was marvellously fast, since he didn''t kill any of his sparring mates he always found the same group waiting at the same spot, but as he grew stronger and stronger over the span of half a year there were many that woulde and watch the fight and cheer on the fighters, the one vs three has be something of a one vs ten by the end of those months.


    What Yunan was most curious about was that this species was smart, had amunity and were certainly sentient and individual beings, howe they were not chosen to leave this floor like the rest of the awakened and his answer came at the end of his training time with the lizardmen. On hisst fight, he had fully defeated the 10 fighters opposing him without taking damage or getting injured, so the next day the weing party was only one member who walked away when Yunan arrived making a follow gesture.


    Yunan was led to meet the boss of the floor, unlike the two-meter tall lizardmen he was fighting all along the boss was 3 meters tall and packed enough muscles for 5 men, it was waiting in an arena with Spectators surrounding the fighting pit from all sides. The tribe was numerous and this event was a very important one to them, Yunan deliberated if he should throw the match for them or he should fight it like usual and if it leads to a war he could turn this sacred and religious disy into a genocide if there was a threat.


    The fightsted for approximately 9 hours before the boss fell back due to exhaustion, he took too much damage from Yunan but was unable to deliver any serious damage that Yunan did not allow to reach him, Yunan was still barehanded and armourless while the boss was in fullbat gear, Yunan mixed speed and hard-hitting as his style, he would simply dodge and slip away from the boss while delivering small jabs, and when the boss rxed he would sneak in a heavy punch strong enough to throw back the hard-hitting.

 Chapter 186: Meeting the scaly tail tribe

    Chapter 186: Meeting the scaly tail tribe


    Yunan did not take the monopoly oven the initiative in the fight between him and the boss, he took it sometimes and with dropped it other times.


    This exchange of initiative was usually Yunan regenerating stamina while running away, or him making the boss struggle to see what is even happening. Yunan yed a counterattack style where he would get in close with the boss and exchange punches and hits before stepping away and resting a bit, his best moves were mostly grappling and wrestling where he was always too close forfort for both him and the boss.


    It took too much concentration to evade sessfully and still deal considerable damage to the boss so hebined his hard-hitting attacks with the tremor skill allowing him to deal much more damage, even going to extreme lengths like sticking to the base of the tail to make the boss pause for a moment giving Yunan a split-second to formte the next path in his strategy.


    Although Yunan won simply by the amount of damage the umted on the boss he still won bloody, dirty and with a "worth it" smile on his face, although Yunan did not copse immediately he was taken into care by the lizardmen and was cleaned and treated inside one of their homes, even a meal was provided, Yunan did not reject and ate heartily. He was feeling that familiar giddiness he experienced with Debauchery whenever he was about to be the new toy or was the most notable subject that moment.


    The servants were mostly female, or maidens most likely, although Yunan did not understand a word they said he could understand their emotional state and they were just like those tribal girls who had never seen an outsider and were chosen to care for him, they would smile brightly while a proud look resided in their eyes, however after an old man with a chest walked inside the room, all the giddy girls turned solemn and left with a most respectful attitude.


    Yunan opened the chest offered to him and he found anguage book, after opening the book Yunan could faintly hear the words outside his room and make sense of them then after a moment he found himself epting and understanding the words fully like it was themon tongue.


    The old man said solemnly "you are the first adventurer to arrive in many years, I wee you to the scaly tail tribe". Yunan wanted to reply and found the words fluidly left his mouth just like themon tongue. "My pleasure esteemed elder, I hope that by winning the fight I did not ruin your religious festival" Yunan answered humbly, this old lizard did not act hostile and was polite with his words so Yunan had nothing against returning the courtesy, after all, Debauchery only taught him to return hostility with hostility but never let him get away with being rude to those who were curt and well spoken.


    "Do you not fear us or would like to kill us?" Asked the old man, Yunan replied with the same tone of voice from earlier " there is no malice from your people, although there was some hostility 6 months ago, it has disappeared by now, if your people have no malice towards me then I will not act maliciously against them, even if you are monsters" you are old man had a smile on his face " then if you can walk let me lead you to your spoils, you have won them in fairbat" the old man stood up and started walking away, Yunan followed behind him wondering if defeating the boss without killing them was a viable option or maybe it was an exception.


    He was led under the curious gazes of the lizardmen, women and children to a big building made of mud and seaweeds, like all the other buildings in this ce, t was crude but efficient, inside he found the boss enjoying the care of some shy maiden who seemed to be very happy doing this job. Upon taking notice of Yunan who was already walking on his own the bossughed and waved at Yunan asking if he could share some of the food he has eaten to heal so fast.


    Yunan, on the other hand, asked the girls nursing the boss if he should heal him or add a few injuries, he was met with same response "you don''t have to heal him, just don''t add more injuries" Yunan chuckled to himself as he passed a jar of honey to the nurses telling them to feed him some and daub the rest on his wounds, and he would be more energetic than 10 men. Beauty loved the hero, that was aw of the world that could never change.


    After that Yunan arrived at what seemed to be an arena and was now an endless library, thousands of golden booksy on the shelves waiting to be opened, the old man started talking after Yunan gathered his wit about him " we are tasked as keepers of this library, every chest the was born in this room had a nk golden book in it, and we the scaly tail tribe have been storing them for the one who was able to defeat our champion however it has been countless years without a challenger, we almost lost our cause a few time but were returned to the right path by the awakened ones, this library is now yours, please im your reward".


    Yunan hesitated for a moment before asking "the chest you gave me was the first ever chest right?" The old man nodded without saying anything, therefore Yunan walked inside the room and use his automated looting to pick up and store all the books then ordered the armor to feed on all of them while he returned to the old lizard''s side "I am grateful esteemed elder, however, do you mind if I ask someone questions over a meal, I would like to invite some of my friends for a feast with your people , there will be no harm done and I will provide the food and drink for the evening and we can speak without so much attention by then".


    The old man looked at Yunan solemnly "if your friends are as agreeable as you are and would not harm my people then return with them after 12 days, this tribe has a festival that evening, as for the offer of food and drink we will take you on that offer". Yunan immediately pulled a space storage ring and filled it with all kinds of meats he had in his inventory, he taught the old lizard how to use the ring and offered to use the opened chests that contained the books and make storage rings from them but was declined by the old man, such things were not necessarily good for a tribe like theirs who does not have much to treasure. After agreeing to meet at ater date, Yunan teleported to his home and shared this adventure with the rest of Debauchery and giving them urgent lizardnguage lessons before the feast.

 Chapter 187: Festival

    Chapter 187: Festival


    Why would Debauchery, Anne and the Valyrians learn a newnguage that is possibly only useful for one event? Because it''s a secret and securemunications method that can be used publicly without the need to worry about others who know the samenguage.


    Therefore even though thenguage was strange and vocally challenging, they did not stop practising and learning, it was a sign of how much they were looking forward to the feast and ultimately how bored they were. Twelve days passed like a dream, on the morning of the 12th day, Yunan teleported to the outside of the vige, his sudden appearance alerted some of the guards but they turned from hostile to weing and jubnt like a flip of a switch, Yunan passed each of them a bottle ofva wine as thanks for working hard even in the day of the festival.


    Yunan was immediately led to the old lizard who seemed to be the leader of the vige because even the boss was polite to him, there, after offering his greetings and well wishes, Yunan obtained permission to bring out his friends and family, once Debauchery was brought out they immediately integrated with the surrounding crowd, even going as far as challenging the boss for some arm wrestling and asking the old lizard to a drinking contest.


    Usually it is impossible to attack any monster that is 10 floors lower than the current level of an adventurer, however there was an exception, if there was no malice between both they were able to touch and wrestle without any damage dealt, however, the only way most adventurers could experience such a thing was in the rest floors with the animals in there, since those animals are rather easy going and had no hostility against the adventures.


    And with that Debauchery took the full attention of the scaly tail tribe, sharing their food and drink, performing their rituals and ying with their kids, Fae and Lucian used all the magic in their inventory to create beautiful spectacles, Dustan and Balin were taking turns arm wrestling the boss and deliberately losing while seducing the maidens watching them by making poses and talking big and boasting, Bai found some old men to y a chess-like game with them wagering shiny things like jewellery and pearls, while Leader had Lili, Ophelia and Reina by her side within a ball of maidens chattering about this and that. Leol and Muscles were recruiting a new ve for Leol sessfully getting turned down every time, while Lina and Nina found the kitchens and started exchanging housekeeping tips, as for Yunan he was left alone with the old lizard to talk peacefully. Kitty, on the other hand, joined the kids watching the magical spectacle conjured up by Fae and Lucian with wide eyes and a silly smile.


    "Lively bunch, we should join them soon, also make sure they do not leave the vige perimeter, it is hard for me to keep the repulsive effect of the mothend from taking effect outside of the vige" Yunan nodded and sent the message through themunication rings "my apologies, I was inconsiderate by bringing them all here, please if there is anything I can do I am willing to do it". The old lizard shook his head "this festival will be recounted with the happiest of our memories, it is worth a slight difort to some old bag of bones". There was appreciation in Yunan''s eyes.


    "I came here to ask, howe beings like yourself who are sentient and individual can be considered not awakened and still stay here for such a long time?". The old man sighed "our tribe was brought in from the outside based on the request of our chieftains at the time, ording to the man whoes to take the awakened ones, we were brought here to make sure our tribe survives and thrives, as for the awakened from us it is those who have unlocked the ability to use themon tongue. Many beast-ling tribes have done the same, you may have met some of them, all the tribes are entrusted to a role given to them by the builder of this ce, and we as descendants of our chieftains understand their motives, even if there have been no war in this tribe for millennia we are still a warring tribe and even if the world epted this fact, it would be hard for us not to fight for the sake of war, something our chieftains of old have decided can be best used in training the adventurers who would pass by this ce, but it seems we have not been able to y that role since no one passes by this vige".


    Yunan thought solemnly for a minute before asking the old man "why not send your warriors to where the humans fight, I am sure a worthy foe is a weed sight, but I fear that showing yourselves to the world may cause this vige to be under attack, maybe we can discuss with the guild and see if we can arrange some protection for the women and children in case of arge-scale invasion".


    The old manughed heartily at the words Yunan spoke before rifying "this vige is protected by the builder, only those invited here maye inside and only those who were invited I be able to fight our champion, sometimes the champions arena can be projected into the world if we were to think we may have some challenges that are worthy to fight him, but otherwise, only those who step foot in this vige can find it again, even if they lead others,ter on, they would reach this vige alone, therefore we will keep to our tradition, and maybe we can seek for war now and then".


    Yunan made a sigh of relief, at least the vige was in no danger even if the warriors were discovered. "If that is the case, then I have noints and have answers to all my questions, how about we join the fun outside?" he stood up and offered the old man his hand to help him up, the old man took the offered hand and led Yunan into the festival while talking jubntly about the meaning and the rituals involved, they passed by the new factions created under the effect of Debauchery, who seemed to be having too much fun for Yunan''s liking.

 Chapter 188: Fooling the naive ones

    Chapter 188: Fooling the naive ones


    The festival started in earnest with the arrivals of Yunan and the elder who has led the official and ceremonial start to the festival, everyone was present watching the old man perform the rites and recites the sacred words, the atmosphere was solemn until the eldermanded the festival to begin.


    A bonfire fueled by bones of dead monsters was lit up, males and females danced around it while kids ran around between the dancing couples, there was meat for roasting, some other newly introduced things like marshmallow and caramelized corn, and other snacks, there was food and drink passed around and shared, there was strange music that fit a battlefield, there were fights and quarrelling, there was mating, outward affection and all sort of things one can expect from a warring tribe.


    They were honest people who stuck to their values and didn''t care about hiding or shame if they loved they did not care about hiding it and if they had conflict they fought it over and forgot it by the time the fight was over, Yunan really appreciated such people. As the first guests in the history of the tribe, Debauchery was given the best wines, treated with the utmost passion and even got a few indecent proposals, the locals seemed to find this odd family to their liking especially the part were they just enjoyed doing everything.


    As the luckiest guy in the ce, Yunan was the centre of attention and got the most passionate wee in the festival, with maidens and wives and olddies bringing over food and drink, some even fought with Reina and Lili over the apparent monopoly they had on Yunan, although Yunan was not the type to drink alcohol or enjoy it like the rest of the adults, he still drank until he could no longer think, and just went along to whichever thing he was led to, mostly changing dancing partners as he spun and spun around the bonfire.


    Not all the lizardmen were happy seeing their cuties flocking over to the same guy, he may have defeated the champion but he already had 6 girls taking turns in keeping guard and warding off the advances of the lizard girls. And so started an event that only Debauchery knew its cause, mainly it was a series of unfortunate events that helped brighten up the mood of the festival.


    It all started with a male trying to trip Yunan while he was dancing with a partner, resulting in himself stepping on a mug, slipping and falling butt first and taking a knee to the face from his gentle partner, then a few other couples tumbling on him as they danced around the pyre.


    The next guy attempted to outright disrupt a dance when a wild flying mug spilt the alcoholic drink inside all over the male resulting in a brilliant whoosh as fire engulfed the man, in an effort to save him he was pushed to the ground and trampled and doused with water, he too left the scene under theughter of the crowd.


    Now it has be apparent that Yunan could not be attacked sneakily, and so the unsatisfied group decided to try just once more for the sake of confirmation. The next victim was not as lucky as the other two since he had a knife in hand that he nned to scare Yunan with, at this point in the festival, Yunan was barely aware of what he was doing let alone be on guard, and so the crowd watched as a man drunkenly swaggered to Yunan and his dancing partner, produced a knife that swung in a perfect arc to stab into a chunk of meat and lift it from a passing te, put the meat over the fire and plunge in there while trying to get the meat closer to the mes.


    Those who did not know the ongoing scheme were thinking that these guys were so overjoyed from having guests livening up the festival that they drink too much and got themselves into such a hrious event trying to show their gratitude. After thisst urrence the dissenting group was giving up on the thought of going against such a man until Bai and Balin popped up from behind them along with the roaring cry of an orcfilled the vige "stop hogging all the beautiful cuties you bastard, I want a cute one to dance with me too".


    That cry made the dissenting group change their minds and before they started to even think about the next n they heard the voices of Bai and Balin "drunkenly" talk with great indignation.


    "He is going to bed all of them again, isn''t he, this happens every time we take him somewhere,st time he defiled 60 dwarven maidens in the time between midnight and sunrise". "Remember that time he got half the royalty to put on the green hats in the imperial city, I found out it was not just one city". "s, what do you expect from a man who got 6 girls to volunteer to be his sex ves, the man is a beast in human skin", "I think you were working on thest feast we had, he actually seduceddy luck anddy love, ording to what they were saying, they blessed him with a lovable presence and endless luck, it was a shock to find the bastard can never be harmed and will always get a lucky save and that he can even fart and get half a market to beg for his seed".


    "Oh is that why those poor men got into such idents, my heart melts for this tribe, his offspring will fill this vige a year from now, I only wanted a maiden to cuddle with, even our party members,dies older than trees are in his grasp". "Tsk tsk, if only there was someone brave enough to try the only way to stop him, but I fear if I stopped him today I will never lust for a woman again, thest one killed himself because he spent two days away from him, such a method is only for the bravest souls, I heard fromdy love that his spell can only be broken by a man''s kiss, however the man will bear the full power of the spell and be eternally enchanted by the bastard".


    Bai and Balin stoked the fire in the lizardmen by making outrageous ims anding up with secrets that would put a stop to such ungodly beast. And the poor naive men believed each word.

 Chapter 189: Kissing festival

    Chapter 189: Kissing festival


    After the fertilization of the naive minds of the dissenting lizardmen, Bai and Balin rejoined the rest of Debauchery to enjoy the scenery that is about to ur, each of them had now somehow convinced some females to join them for a bit of cuddling andughter.


    Understandably, the deceived men were now talking about who among them was ready to do the sacrifice or the ones who could not do it due to other reasons, "if what those two have said is the truth, we cannot allow such a thing to happen to our tribe", "well who do you think can do the deed? Most of us here are those who cannot die simply because we have families", "I Have no family and I can always just follow the man to the human settlements and let them kill me there", "we can not allow that, this was your chance to be a true man, is there another?".


    The conversation went on for half an hour before finally deciding on a person, who marched like a dead man walking into the surrounded Debauchery and nted his face on Yunan''s, causing silence all over the ce. as soon as he pulled back he sensed something was wrong and heard drunken words leaving Yunan''s mouth who should not be able to even think let alone talk. "Mary love, we have a kisser over here, bring the others for him to taste the races".


    Leader and Fae had sparkles floating around them as these words travelled around the ce, Dustan, Balin and bai, felt a long forgotten shiver while Lucian cked out immediately, however that did not matter, because the order came before they could hide or even ckoutpletely, "kissing time boys, kiss him until he forgets his name, This time we must record much better material thanst time, Fae, get the recording medium with the highest picture rity"


    Dustan was swinging a hammer like fists at Balin and Bai who were trying to actively get knocked out by the hammers while cursing their loud mouths and meddling habits. The only survivor of what would happen next was Lucian, the only one who was not part of the n and was promptly spared by Leader because kissing a passed out man was not very good for recording.


    And that was how the kissing portion of the festival was added in theter versions, it was said that all single ones must kiss between each other and those who got a certain feeling from kissing would end up the next couples, this was due to the fact that after recording the kissing session with the boys and seeing them retch and cry bloody tears, Leader and Fae thought it would be a great recording for all maidens to kiss Yunan and see how his drunken self-reacts to each one, that included herself and Fae for some reason.


    The recording of the three men kissing the poor lizardman and retching on all fours, not three steps away waster used as viewing materials for those dull days when Debauchery was bored.


    Starting the recording that waster named the man who kissed all the girls, Leader gave Yunan an order "kiss every girl thates close to you for 3 seconds" before she could finish her words she felt Yunan nt a kiss on her cheek and pat her head while saying "good girls must not be so perverted, only this once, okay?" Then grabbed the nearest lizard girl and started a series of pecks on either the lips, the forehead or the cheeks by the time he was done, half the maidens had run away to hide behind someone or just slumped on the ground grinning from ear to ear


    Next came Lina and Nina who got ten-second kisses each, kitty got herself a minute long one because she did not want to let him go. The surprise came when it was time for a blushing Ophelia, a giddy Lili and a very ready Reina, as they got close they got a group hug and a very deadlyment "there is not enough time to kiss you as much as I want, so, for now, have this hug instead", Anne was nowhere to be found so Yunan targeted Fae next and instead of kissing her he left a bite mark on her shoulder " this should be more than enough for a kiss right?".as he turned around and left Fae almost passed out herself from blushing. After that, he grabbed Leader sat her in hisp and leaned on her shoulder then fell asleep momentster.


    With the main star out of the picture, the lizardmen and girls changed targets to the waking one in Debauchery, forcing them to drink and dance and kiss for the rest of the evening and night, all the way to morning. When Yunan woke up, he was nursing a major headache that was enough to keep him in the midst of the flesh heap that surrounded him, he lifted his head to see the town za has be a sleeping ground, he could see groups sleeping with each other, couples hugging or singles sprawled alone beside the now dead bonfire.


    Yunan gulped some honey andva wine in an attempt to relieve the hangover, swearing he would never drink alcohol again especially after he started to remember the things he did and saidst night in drunken stupor, Yunan wanted to teleport everyone back but decided against it when he found half of Debauchery were in some heaps of flesh themselves, apparently they taught the locals about some new adult only things that would help spice up their lives until the next festival.


    Once everyone started waking up, Yunan made sure to sneakily kiss the three girls he left out earlier on and after a good breakfast, Yunan and Debauchery said their farewells and teleported to the portable home, where they collectively returned to bed and cast sleeping spells on each other to sleep away the hangover they built upst night. When they woke up two dayster, the first order of business was to watch and appreciate the technique and artistic look of the kissing recordings that were takenst night.


    That day, three grown men swore to never meddle with the lucky bastard, but they knew that with his luck, they will break that vow sooner orter.

 Chapter 190: Aquarium decoration

    Chapter 190: Aquarium decoration


    After a few days of rest, Yunan descended to the 34th floor, it was again a deep sea floor with naga as the resident monsters.


    Naga are curious creatures, half man half fish, they have webbed hands and fight using tridents and lightning spells, they also use ice field spell and have a fear-inducing warcry. They fought in groups of four and were around 3 meters long from head to tail, the naga are the origin of the merfolk species, although they do not gain legs if their tails get dry, they can slither on drynd if need be to return to the water.


    The naga did not have lungs, they breathed through gills and could not survive more than a few minutes in the open air, Yunan being the explorer he is, he did not stop only after a few meters like the rest but instead went ahead and left the safest ce for the achieving better loot and evolving faster.


    The naga he encountered were basically the same, they were all hostile and if Yunan allowed one to live it would bring reinforcements, and he would be overwhelmed by the sheer number thates after him for retaliation.


    The nagas were Dexterity and strength creatures, although they knew a few spells they were very dumb and would fall to friendly fire or simple obvious traps set by the adventurers. They also were amunity monster but it was a barbaric and cruelmunity, there were many viges across the ocean floor but none of them helped when Yunan was being the bad guy destroying homes and families.


    Yunan found his first vige by following a naga he let live on purpose, after arriving at the vige he noticed theck of something, and that led to those viges feeling like the nests he destroyed before instead of a proper vige like the ones the lizardmen had. And so when Yunan started indiscriminately bombarding the nest of the naga by ice spears, they either fled or stupidly charged at him.


    Each nest had its own boss and once he killed that boss the inhabitants of the nest would simply surrender and submit, some even went as far as attaching themselves to Yunan as his trophies, Yunan sent a few good looking ones into the aquarium and told the genie to create a new aquarium for the captives that submitted, he figured a naga would be something rare in the market, and many would love toy their hands on them, but he would have to get the guild''s permission so he decided to sell them directly to the guild and let them deal with selling them or whatever. As for the ones in his aquarium, they would be the decore fish, albeit being big they would not be too outstanding in the aquarium that has been home to many variants and colourful creatures under it''s waves.


    Yunan spent the next 5 months trying to find the boss of the floor, however, it was not at the outskirts of the floor but at the centre. In there was a big nest carved from a reef, as usual, Yunan started bombarding the city like nest to flush out the cute and pretty naga to add to his collection while dealing with the ones who attack him, Yunan was quite disappointed to find that the most visually pleasing naga was the floor boss, it was a female that had a silver crown and azure green scales on its body, its bosom was adorned with some kind of markings and its face was almost human indicating it was the most evolved being on this floor.


    Its hair reached to the waist and was golden yellow with its eyes as red as ga, Yunan did not stop bombarding the city behind it as it approached Yunan with the arrogance of an empress, it had one thing in her eyes and that was Yunan who was destroying its home like he was dealing with insects, without the slightest emotional attachment to the havoc he is causing.


    The naga queen did not look back at the nest but she wavered when Yunan''s gaze caught a small group trying to flee away from the range of his ice spears, there two adolescent naga that looked the same as the queen, very enchanting, sadly Yunan''s detection range was greater than how far he could see.


    The naga queen was enraged and attacked Yunan using a trident made out of lightning, she could make the trident change size and it packed quite a punch when it made contact, Yunan was simply dodging when he could while his ice spears still rained down on the town at a pace of 25 spears per second, the maximum number that was still within the mana regeneration.


    Yunan would direct a spear at the naga queen now and then when she was vulnerable, although the spears did some damage and added smallcerations to the scales of the naga queen it was not something that would end the fight anytime soon. Yunan started using tremor skill when he shed with the boss to add internal injuries to the external ones, he even added the sonic attack so that it would hit at the same moment the Duo shed.


    Yunan opted to use his mace as a weapon and used it to bash at the naga queen until he could see her scales peeling off, thebination of blunt force and tremor was a very pleasant crunch when each hitnded, by the second hour of the exchange the princesses were out of range of Detection so Yunan sent Drogon to keep them under surveince, there was no way Yunan would miss out on a good decorative piece like a naga princess in his aquarium.


    The naga queen screamed and used her spells with reckless abandon while Yunan would bait her into activating her spells and skills and then teleport away, finally when the fight started to sway in Yunan''s direction and he decided to finish the job, the marking that covered the chest of the boss started glowing like burning blood and she began expanding in size, however, Yunan was not nice enough to let her finish a transformation and miss such a crucial opening.


    Yunan teleported an inch away from the naga and shoved her mouth full of his signature paralysis toxin then sped her forehead and started discharging as much lightning as he could into her brain, luckily before the transformationpleted the naga queen was dead. Yunan wasted no time in storing her body and chasing after Drogon to find the runaway princesses when he caught up he killed their guard and showed them their mother''s dead body, they immediately attached themselves to Yunan who directly sent them to the aquarium to make it look more vibrant.

 Chapter 191: Hunting down Lucian

    Chapter 191: Hunting down Lucian


    Having dealt with the princesses, Yunan returned to the city carved in a reef, there he found an underground storage room with chests stacked inside without many ces left, Yunan picked every single one and searched for the throne room and found the original chest. The chests on this floor were full of magic items with many different types, shapes, sizes.


    Yunan spent the next week sorting out the items before taking Fortuna to honey week in the outside world, although she had been tailed by Venus and could not help but fail to try to evade her until Yunan used spatial shift to throw Venus off their tracks.


    After a week of passion, Yunan returned to the dungeon, he visited the restaurant chef Ro made and sold him some crabs and m meat that was overpopting the aquarium, and got himself a 5-star meal, he even got a few lessons in cooking after the meal as thanks for the meat delivery.


    Afterwards Yunan looked into the mercenary jobs in the 30th floors and the only mission avable was to provide different kinds of ms and pearls but it seemed the pay was too low to be worth the hustle and no one even cared about it, and Yunan did not think that doing a quest with underpayment would benefit him in any way especially one without any challenge in it. So he decided to speed up the exploration to reach the 40th floors and maybe get some mercenary work done. He contacted Debauchery about some training and they sent him Lucian who took him to the twentieth floor for their lesson.


    "You are to stop using all spells and your armour and all the skill you learned so far, you have only one objective, finding me using only your natural senses, as in sight, smell and hearing, maybe a sixth sense if you had one" as always Lucian was straightforward, he was giving Yunan an almost impassable task of finding a ranger in a forest.


    Yunan had to identify the route Lucian took by using anything he knew how to, he looked for the tiniest signs that were deliberately left behind by Lucian as a small aid for Yunan. The trail was found and lost many times, but Yunan was getting better at following such trails and was getting better at handling the heightened senses that were now capturing too much information simply because he has never been in such a heightened awareness state.


    Lucian was always watching Yunan, and he would send corrections to make Yunan better, although Yunan knew that Lucian was a stone''s throw away he did not use his spells or skills to find him and relied on his senses and awareness but soon found something was wrong, his senses were not reliable and could be tricked, especially when he found contradictions within the trail.


    That was the second part of the lesson, if you trust blindly in something, no matter how reliable it was it can be used against you someday when Yunan was finally stuck he broke the rules and started using his other spells and skills to try and sessfully find Lucian. He was praised for changing his modus operandi when he was stuck and was also berated for waiting until he was stuck to change his way.


    "In this game you are the hunter, and your objective was to find your prey with all means at hand, if your prey knew what methods you are using, they would build traps designed to slow you down and throw you off the trail, but if they didn''t know, they would keep changing hiding methods making easier for you to find them and flush them out and eventually capture your prey without losing too much time or effort"


    "The second objective of the training was to elevate the use of your natural senses, your constitution should allow dark sight and enhanced hearing as well as other sensitivities that were not possible 4 years ago, they are now possible with just a bit of focus, so spare some of your mental faculties to your natural senses and don''t fully rely on them. Use your natural senses to find the clues I leave behind unconsciously, no matter how good a person is at hiding and controlling their bodies, there are things beyond their control, for example shedding hair or fur, leaving a trace of scent while having unintended contact with foliage, a crushed leaf or a broken de of grass"


    "No matter how careful one can be they must leave a trace, least of all is scent and most obscure is mana, there are ways to detect a person simply by the natural mana they ooze out, however that method is still too far away from you, for now, continue trying to find me, however, this time use everything that you can, it''s not cheating if you use your own power to its fullest". The lecture Lucian gave Yunan opened his eyes and led him to a new way of thinking and nning, he used hismunication ring to find where Lucian was but did not expose him immediately instead he practised all gis tracking methods to find the way, although he still failed miserably for a month, he left the usage of the ring as ast resources simply because not everyone could have amunication ring so he tried locating storage spaces, something that everyone used after a certain level.


    Unfortunately Yunan needed better scanning features and detection to be added to the scanning ability of the armour, if he could track someone because they had magic items or storage artefacts or something along those lines, it was possible to find any person in this world but only with mana tracking could he find everything in this world.


    After a two month long hunting session that ended with expected failure, Yunan returned to the portable home to take a rest and get pampered a bit before heading to the 35th floor, he wanted to reach the 40th floor fast so that he could get some work as a mercenary and join parties temporarily, for now at least the current floors were not very conducive to growth.

 Chapter 192: New limbs

    Chapter 192: New limbs


    The 35th floor was a somewhat empty floor, the cave that worked as a rest site and transfer location was big enough to fit a few hundred people but was otherwise empty, save for a few people who were travelling to or from the 36th floor.


    Yunan dived in the pool leading to the rest of the floor and finally knew why adventurers just skipped this floor, Yunan would have done the same but the promise made by Hephaestus that collecting the loot from every boss will be rewarding.


    The floor was full of squids and all kinds of jellyfish that were from the size of fingers to the titanic size of 200 meters long, and since there were no natural predators for the squids and jellyfish their numbers were intimidating, to say the least.


    As for attacks, the jellyfish would use their feelers as electrodes to shock their prey to death using lighting, as for the squids they used a hypnotic movements skill and then used their tentacles totch onto the prey and devour it at leisure thereafter. Yunan had to find out the hard way, because the moment he got out of the cave he was already tangled in feelers, thankfully his armour had resistance to lighting and an istion effect that shielded Yunan from most of the damage, but the relief onlysted until a few dozen tentaclestched onto the armour and tried to devour it piece by piece.


    Yunan could only retaliate with counting himself in draconic hellfire to burn away the monsters and free himself, next, was killing the offending monsters by use of fire, because that was the only way to get rid of such abominable beings in Yunan''s eyes. It didn''t go as nned, simply because the moment he got into the open water, every monster that was in the vicinity was drawn to him, thus the best he could do was drain as much mana as possible and making the draconic hellfire into a field effect that made a death zone of anything within 5 meters from Yunan.


    With that in mind Yunan decided to clear the location and try to get a look around so he used his voice maniption and taunt to its maximum range, and to Yunan''s disbelief, the number of monsters did not thin out, there were more and more filling up the detection range as more and more rushed to die in the hellfire death zone surrounding Yunan, even those that were not affected by the taunt kept being pushed into the death zone and even though the hellfire consumed everything within seconds, with the huge number of monsters bumping into him Yunan started getting damaged by sheer force of impact and pressure from the monsters pushing each other, so he changed to the deadly maelstrom made out of lightning and wind and raging mana, this time however he expanded the range to the current maximum range of automated looting a whopping 500 meters of radius.


    Yunan immediately let the armour feed on the monsters around and Yunan sent Ophelia to the guild to sell them as many as they can buy, and buy herself and kitty some of the skill books and magic items that were on sale in the guild, he even made the genie expand the fermentation pool as well, still there were too many, the armour had its fill within two hours, and had acquired a new ability and parts.


    The armour now had 4 more tentacles that worked as extra limbs that Yunan could repurpose into anything he required, from extra hands and feet to needles injecting venom or ropes to pin and tie an opponent, another ability it acquired was the ability to create feelers that can be used as sensory organs, deliver powerful electrical shock or venom depending on what Yunan desired.


    Yunan felt like his brain was too small to handle the amount of information sent by the feelers and the tentacles that sprouted from his back, so he immediately stopped them and started with trying toprehend the way to use only one tentacle with the extra mental capacity that has been idle and needed to be trained recently.


    At first, moving the tentacle to the desired location was hard enough that Yunan had to use most of his mental capacity, the parts that were not focusing on keeping the maelstrom well fed with mana and the auto looting from stopping, it was a hurdle to move an arm that was not there before. Just like the tail, however, it only needed time to get used to.


    When he was trying out his new limb, Ophelia asked how he wanted to handle such a big amount of corpses because the guild did not seem keen on taking all the different sizes "just sell them at weight, reduce 30% of the price they offer and tell them if they buy more you can give them up to 60% discount, and tell them all the funds would be used to buy books and items from the guild so they will buy more, also if they run out of space, by all the mineral and materials you can exchange for, it does not matter the level and the price, just use this opportunity to get as much as we can from the guild, if they keep buying the corpses keep buying items from them"


    Ophelia thought Yunan was really good to the guild, especially because he could have used all those corpses to ferment wine or for food, but as she started making the transaction and got into agreement with the guild employee, she finally knew why Yunan was so generous, there were too many in his storage space, it was enough to make a mountain and soon the guild employee was getting flustered because he kept buying this endless supply of dead squids and jellyfish. Even if the guild had use for these things he was most curious how such freshly killed monsters made it to his hands, the corpses were still wet and vibrant as they were stored, even the resident appraiser was feeling anxious about the quality of the merchandise and when he asked, the answer was "we have a man on the 35th floor killing them as we speak and sending the items here".


    Ultimately Yunan had to return home after 6 hours because all his storage space was full, the guild had bought enough to give Yunan another 10% discount on his future purchases, after calling the whole gag for a solution, and they all agreed on one thing, reach out to every orphanage in a city with a teleporter and give them as much as they can store safely,and then find the pope and make him take a portion to the orphanages on ces that have no teleporter and do a good deed for the orphans.

 Chapter 193: Dealing with the tentacle monster

    Chapter 193: Dealing with the tentacle monster


    Thanks to the fact that Yunan needed to kill his way to the 35 floor boss, that is if he wished to find the boss in the first ce, therefore it was decided that Yunan would create a new storage room and make it as big as possible while the rest of the gang would leave the dungeon to deliver the contents of this room to any organisation that cares for the unfortunate.


    Yunan, therefore, added an automated system in the new storage room that would clean and separate the edible parts and use the rest to create fertilizer for the garden, he even sent a message to Hephaestus about his current predicament and the and the answer was "use your brain". Yunan was already trying to find a better solution but until he could find a way to repel all the monsters without repelling the boss it was not worth the time to research something that may or may not work, besides, doing charity work was not a bad thing to do no matter how you look at it.


    Yunan tried to move away from the entrance as fast as possible and to the furthest part away from there, the further away he got the bigger the monsters and their invasive tentacles became and the more pressure that was put on Yunan and the armour thanks to the sheer weight and size of the monsters trying to squeeze him into a pulp, luckily the maelstrom was operating at maximum capacity and killing the offender''s before they could deal any noticeable damage.


    While on the outside, Debauchery party and the Valyrians were giving away some hefty amounts of meat to any charitable organization that they caught a whiff of, starting by orphanages and the church to animal shelters, hospitals, and more, in only six hours, they have solved the food problems for most of the orphans in big cities and made the church''s legion work as porters and delivery men and women to care for the locations without teleportation portals. As for Yunan he finally found the boss in its own cage.


    Yunan returned home and brought back his friends to celebrate the end of the floor of torment, the boss was located and dealing with it would not take too long, therefore he thought it would be funny if he invited them to a feast mainly made by squid flesh, as expected there was dissent among them but that was forgotten when Yunan brought out the new library he bought from the guild for them to choose from, everyone liked free stuff no matter who they were.


    The morning after, Yunan confronted the boss with his usual weapon: venom, simply because he wanted it intact to preserve it next to the other bosses he got. The boss was a giant squid with a length of 1000 meters its tentacles behaved like jellyfish feelers, as in there were dozens of them and they could electrocute when attached to a body. The boss was a hybrid with a ring weak point visible to Yunan, its mouth was too big to shred Yunan to pieces and it could only swallow him whole.


    And that is what Yunan wanted, the moment he got into contact with the boss, he let himself be caught and swallowed up by the boss, there he started syphoning mana from the boss and turning all that mana into his own venom, flooding the simple digestive tract and then into the very flesh of the monster, it did not take long before Yunan had poured a few cubic meters worth of venom into the boss and who died peacefully after half an hour.


    Yunan stored the boss and collected all the treasury behind, it was full of preserved body parts that would make any smith drool at the idea of seeing them, and would solemnly refuse to touch or work with these things because they had no ability to bring out their potential. Yunan had now gained many things from the underwater floors and was looking forward to the next prize. But the next floor had to wait for a few days because Ophelia had a crisis to deal with.


    Lately Ophelia was breaking under the pressure from knowing all kinds of plots the devoted of Hermes were making to use against Yunan for disrespecting their god, Hermes himself was not even paying attention to the things being done in his name, therefore, Ophelia as a devotee herself, could not tell Yunan about something that wasmunicated through the link that bonded her with her god, as a result, she finally could not take it and got into a fight with the priests of Hermes and insulted them and Hermes himself for being a deceitful and negligent god.


    That did not sit well with the priests whobelled her as a heretic and a turncoat and in the name of Hermes, they decided she is to be imprisoned and tortured until repentance or death, and from their tones, death was the goal here not repentance. After failing to hear from her god even after praying so much, Ophelia went ahead and forsaken the faith in Hermes. Which brought Hermes back into the picture, because it is notmon to lose a devotee after the amount of prayer that Ophelia had offered himtely.


    And so this time Hermes arrived with an oracle and a few priests led by Hephaestus who came here to enjoy the new fragrance ofva wine and the freshest taste of lotus fruits, as well as the old neighbour treatment he was having here. Ophelia and Anne were required to arrive at the meeting as well, and then all hell broke loose.


    First thing Yunan did as he entered the guest room was to give a respectful greeting to Hephaestus and then with a look of iparable arrogance looked at Hermes " I told you I will take her away from you if you fail her, why are you here now?". The proud priests of Hermes did not take kindly to Yunan''s words and tried to attack him, one but their tongue and suffered a spell rebound, knocking into the guy next to him and changing the target of his spell to the oracle who was in the middle of an incantation as she suffered a good bit of damage and a rebound causing her to faint, the rest of them had simr idents, targeting and ally, having their staff break and waste the channelled mana, all in all not a single spell made it past the group of priests.


    Yunan, however, was not as merciful as he was before, he simply sprouted his feelers and wrapped them around those who were behind Hermes and electrocuted them to a half-dead state, he then looked back at Hermes again with the same contempt he did before "why are you here again?".

 Chapter 194: Fooling a god

    Chapter 194: Fooling a god


    " I am here to take her back" Hermes still had that mischievous smile on his face as if he was defying the whole world, however, there wasn''t a sliver of care for his half-dead subordinates who just suffered while trying to protect his honour.


    "Not a chance, Ophelia would never have forsaken you if you did not abandon her first, therefore, you can just leave knowing it''s your own fault" although Yunan seriously wanted to cast Hermes and hisckeys out of the house, he still had enough respect for someone who has ascended from being a mere mortal. Ophelia was silently hiding beside Yunan with a shadow of a smile on her lips, she felt safe beside this man and it made her happy.


    Hermes kept his eyes on Ophelia with his smile still making both her and Yunan feel like they were trapped in something they could notprehend. "Would you forsake me because I don''t involve myself in the affairs of mortals, even if you pray to me, am I obliged to manage my children like they were chess pieces, at least let me know why you chose a mortal over me, the god you willingly swore yourself to".


    "Because this mortal dared offend a god for me a woman he does not expect anything from, while my god ignored my prayers to reign in his followers simply because it''s boring to do that while expecting my unwavering devotion" there was disappointment in Ophelia''s voice, she did not rage or hate, she just felt she had made the wrongmitment to the wrong person.


    "It would have been fun to see how he can deal with my worshipers, however you could not hold on for a few days to let me enjoy the scene of a single man burning my temples and killing my devout followers for your sake" Hermes did not deny his way of thinking he even unveiled his expectations for the face-off between Yunan and the priests. "Thanks to you being unable to handle some mental torture, I had to make do with this little uneventful sh that was over within a blink of an eye, that is why I came here, I came for mypensation, you are mine and that is the consequence of taking away my anticipated fun".


    Yunan could not help but smile when he heard the requirements of Hermes, if the value of Ophelia, was some amusement then that can be arranged for easily "if all you seek is amusement how about you watch me clear 4 bosses in 4 weeks, I''ll even let you watch my every moment during that time, the suspense should be enough to pay for what Ophelia owes you and pay for an apology to her, does that sound good?".


    A light shed in the scheming eyes of Hermes "which floors? And what kind of bosses are they?". "From the 36th through the 39th, I have not been in those floors so I have no idea about what is in there, Hephaestus can confirm, as for the power level I am sure the 39th boss is at least 1500 attribute points ahead of me so there will be some suspense in me trying to clear each boss within one week".


    " Fine, but you will not use any spells and have to rely on your own skills, and Hephaestus himself will be the judge, of course, I reserve the right to watch and broadcast your time in the dungeon to my own discretion". Hermes was getting interested and that was his fatal mistake. " And in case I win, I will gain all the bets made against me, if you''re interested then it''s a deal". "Deal". said Hermes with haste, he was afraid that Yunan would change his mind.


    "It''s a deal then, we start next week, I have been working hard and I need a few days to rx, and you can promote our little deal better in the time of 5 days, now take yourckeys and leave this ce, I need to rest, and don''t even think about staying for a meal or a drink, I do not want you in my house". Hermes made a pout but still could not contain his excitement as he teleported his half-dead subordinates and disappeared from the guest room.


    Yunan sat down and called Sapphira to sit on hisp as he conversed with Hephaestus about this and that. "You cheated him," said Hephaestus after a while, "he is an old man with the personality of a bored toddler, besides that, he really wanted to see me do something he considers impossible, I hope the gods and not all like him". Hephaestus smiled at Yunan " I also wish to see how will you clear the next floors without spells, it would be fascinating". Yunan smiled and said nothing, his win would be based on a technicality, something that even the gods could not refute.


    After Hephaestus left, Yunan took Ophelia to the bath for a rxing soak and a round of therapeutic massage to help her rx and loosen up a bit of the stress she had been exposed totely, he knew very well that the source of her pain was none other than himself, and she chose him over her own beliefs, therefore he decided to pamper her as much as he could and bring back her radiant smile once again.


    Ophelia was much more rxed now that Hermes was going to leave them alone, as for his followers, they just had the shock of a lifetime and would not consider attacking anytime soon, as for why she thought Hermes was leaving them alone was because she had confidence in Yunan, at least he would make the bet as exciting as possible. That was the core of the trick Yunan yed on Hermes, he would let go of Ophelia''s debt if the bet was exciting enough, even of Yunan did not win Hermes only had to enjoy watching Yunan for the bet to be fulfilled as for the fact that he would gain so much from winning and there was nothing to lose, that one must have been Hermes''s reward for Yunan because he could trick him into such a situation.

 Chapter 195: Fast and Furious

    Chapter 195: Fast and Furious


    After a rather pleasing weekend full ofughter and pleasure, Yunan headed down to the 36th floor, he immediately ignored all life forms and dove to the deepest an furthest point of the floor, where he found the boss he wanted to kill.


    The floor was full of whales, all kinds of them, blue whales, sperm whales, and shark whales, they were full of mana and gave Yunan quite the harvest, however thanks to their extremelyrge sizes there were very few of them, but still the number few only meant one whale each 50 to 100 meters. Yunan swam past them and located the first boss, a colossal being that made the 100km radius cage look a bit cramped, it was 10km long with a fat body of 1km width and height.


    The boss knew tremor attack, sonic attack, and thick skin for defence, unlike the previous bosses it didn''t try to swallow Yunan upon first contact but instead used its attacks on him to weaken him and then feed on him, Yunan pretended to be weakened but he was still bombarded with tremors and sonic sts until he thought he was really dying, and when he was about to retaliate the boss sped up and swallowed him, Yunan used his tentacle as a tube and stuck it under the tongue of the boss directly in a blood vessel then started pumping venom into the boss while syphoning mana and use it to boost his innate regeneration as well as produce as much poison as possible, it took about 10 cubic meters of toxin to make the boss fall asleep and another 50 to make its heart start to beat irregrly, and not until the 100th cubic meter of toxin did the boss find it agreeable to die, a full 3 days worth of exposure to the deadliest toxin Yunan could provide at the moment.


    Yunan collected all the treasure chests scattered throughout the cage before moving on to the next boss. The 37th floor was full of dolphins and their humanoid counterpart, these, however, were very aggressive and destructive, they used sonic sts and wide variety of ice spells, and water spells, as well as current maniption, however against Yunan they could only use their own bodily strength which Yunan was more than happy to counter with his own melee weapons. The boss was also a humanoid dolphin, it was 5 meters in height and 3 meters in width, it had it own cave in a coral reef where Yunan fought it.


    Yunan used its strength for training, and spent the next 9 days fighting it without delivering a fatal blow yet the boss still fell face first on the 10th day ofbat, after some examination, Ophelia concluded it died from exhaustion, it was not made to fight lengthy battles and it had used all the possible ways it could to end the fight but the tenacious Yunan kept the fight going on and on until it died on its own. Yunan collected his trophies and took two days of rest at home where he enjoyed being berated and nagged by Ophelia for his stupid and stubborn behaviour.


    Before reaching the 38th floor, Yunan received a message from Hephaestus saying that Ophelia was now free and Yunan had sessfully reduced the lifespans of a few dozen gods who spent ten days on the edges of their seats with their hearts stopping with each and every sh with the dolphin boss, the things he won from this round of betting was much more than what he earned in thest one.


    Yunan happily passed the information to Ophelia who cried while kissing Yunan as if her life depended on it, Yunan stayed with her until she rxed and fallen to sleep before heading to the 38th floor.


    The 38th floor was home to strange mammals, they looked like fat turtles without shells adorned with four flippers and a smooth body, it had a snout for a mouth unlike most of the deep water creatures he met, its snout was full of sharp teeth and it could elerate faster than a boss from the previous floors, it was resistant to Yunan''s toxin and the only way to kill it was to use brute force. Although its body looked sturdy, it was, in fact, it was very malleable and could neglect the effect of tremor.


    Yunan had his hands full of them because his short swords could not simply dig deep enough to injure it in any critical way, prompting Yunan to use his own ws to dive inside its body to literally rip the heart out. This monster wasrge, as the smallest ones were about 50 meters tall, and it was resilient beyond any of the previous floors bosses, it waspletely a defensive monster that would win its fight by ousting its enemies. Well that was until they met a berserk Yunan who would use their own speed against them by stabbing both his swords under its neck as it passes by and use its own momentum to slice open its belly where it will die out of shock because the salt water invading its internal structure and the pressure of the deep crushing the organs into paste.


    The boss was the most defence oriented monster in the floor, it actually had a turtle shell that was tougher than it looked, even Yunan''s armour felt like paperpared to it, the boss was around 800 meters long and 200 wide, thus it was hard for it to shake off Yunan once he lodged his ws under one of the flippers and started digging his way inside its body. Once inside Yunan wasted no time in using his short swords to clear a path to its heart, while he was there it was a good idea to let the armour absorb the blood that was flowing from the wounds Yunan had opened. There were asions where Yunan almost got crushed by a being caught between two muscles that contracted at his presence, and he had to rip them apart to survive.


    The boss was dead by the time Yunan made it to the heart, it had died from exsanguination, the amount of blood it lost in the path Yunan carved was too much for it, and it died while Yunan was struggling to find his way in the maze inside the body of the boss. Feeling a bit better for having killed this nuisance Yunan walked back out the way he came and stored the boss and its treasure trove, he made the armour feed on the shell and took a day of rest after such traumatic event. There was exactly one week left for Yunan to deal with the 39th floor.

 Chapter 196: Bounty

    Chapter 196: Bounty


    During the past 3 weeks, Yunan had performed what could only be called a miracle, he had cleared 3 floors, albeit missing out on fighting the ordinary monsters, but still a feat worthy of entertaining the gods.


    After a day of rest and recuperation Yunan descended to the 39th floor, it was home to water drakes, snake-like limbless bodies with rough scales and the heads of dragons, know as flood dragons, a sub-species of dragons and are a very aggressive and mindless beasts who lust after plunder, destruction and sowing their seeds on any creature that was at hand during heat.


    Drogonzily stirred when he caught a whiff of the water drakes and looked at Yunan as if asking for permission, And Yunan told him to do as he pleases as long as he doesn''t harm himself, after all, Drogon was not all-powerful and might get overwhelmed if he bit more than he could chew. As for Yunan, he tried to find the boss as soon as possible and while in the way he did not mind grabbing the water drakes that barred his way.


    Just like the crocodiles, the water drakes seemed to have an evolutionary chain, where there were multiple shapes and sizes of water drakes that Yunan met in his quest for the boss cage. The first change Yunan noticed was upper arms andter on almost humanoid upper halves, and the boss followed this trend. The boss itself was a humanoid with a tail and drakes head and horns. It looked to Yunan like an emperor of the seas, something majestic and unapproachable but Yunan could not shake the feeling that he was not supposed to fight this lord of the sea.


    It approached Yunan who seemed to be in a daze not knowing what kind of action to take, there was no hint of danger in the boss, there was no rage nor bloodlust, it was just observing Yunan, well that was what Yunan felt until he heard the roar of Drogon. The moment the roar reached Yunan he snapped out of his trance, he was under a mind spell, something that he waspletely unaware of, and totally defenceless against. However, before Yunan could do anything to retaliate Drogon was by his side making a most threatening aura flood from his body.


    To Yunan, it felt like an oppressive force that was telling him to bow and beg for dear life. Yet he could still resist the force after a moment he knew that it was only thanks to the armour that he could feel this force. "Its called Dragon''s might, an innate aura only true dragons have to influence dragonkin and inferior species with draconic blood" the voice of Drogon rang in the ear of Yunan "an old savage like this one can resist it to some extent simply because I have yet to fully mature".


    "Let me have him, I am sure it is much more than age that helps him resist a Valyrian like this". With that Yunan activated his buff, a full 300% increase in all stats, Drogon retreated to his old position and the water drake hybrid charged forward with the intent to kill, the sudden rise of Yunan''s power level did not go unnoticed and it though that it can kill Yunan before the new power took effect.


    Yunan did not usually forgive a slight especially one that was aimed at his life, so he decided he would toy with this boss for a while and drive it to the depths of despair. Inside the cage of the boss, Yunan activated the most painful enchantments in the armour to make this boss pay. Wind and lightning coating, poison touch with a poison that would cause searing pain upon contact but nothing more, from now on every time the boss got close to Yunan ut would get its skin split by wind, its nerves overloaded with lightning and unbearable pain from the poison.


    Yunan went with an unarmed fight against the boss, he took care not to make it look too easy, but he still made every hit he sent connect dealing damage while the boss would barely connect with Yunan''s armour and still get damaged anyway, in less than an hour the mighty boss that was ying emperor was now grovelling at Yunan''s feet begging for mercy, either killing it or letting it live would be a mercy in the boss''s eyes.


    Yunan used his dagger to remove its head from its shoulders and went to collect his bounty. After dealing with the treasury Yunan went ahead and started killing the water drakes to feed his armour, and then he did the same for all the other floors, when all was over and done with Yunan returned home to find a congrattion party already has started without him, so he simply joined the festivities, it was not like Debauchery to wait for fun to arrive.


    Hephaestus joined them a few hoursterden with gifts for Yunan, it seemed only Fortuna was smart enough to bet on him among the gods who were watching thepetition between him and Hermes, there was even a written letter of apology for Ophelia with the gifts that arrived. During the celebration, someone said something about winnings and treasures and so Yunan had to promise to show all the items he gained in his adventures from the 30th floor to the 39th.


    From the 30th floor he gained all manner of different materials and items as well as books, on the 31st floor he got the metal ms that could provide all the metals in Tartarus, the 32nd floor provided medicinal herbs and nt materials, the 33rd provided a library, the 34th provided body parts, the 35th gave him enchanted items of all shapes and sizes,the 36th yielded precious rocks like the spirit stones and jewels and jade and other non mineral resources, the 37th treasure was the eggs of monster pets, the 38th was an assortment of fruits and vegetables and other highly nutritious nts, as for the 39th the treasure was bodies and hearts of actual dragons, the treasury in Yunan''s house was marvellously full of precious items.

 Chapter 197: New body

    Chapter 197: New body


    With the such a treasure house at his disposal, it was hard for Yunan not to think about the results of feeding all of it to the armour, but he had to wait for a little bit before finding out. First was to set up the things he wants to keep.


    The list of things he wanted to keep and make avable for the future was rather big, he made the genie start with the nts, put one or two of each in the garden to grow and develop them into a private, ever-growing stash. Second were the earthly materials that are not metals, like the spirit stones, mana stones, jewels and so on, Yunan made the genie make a minable vein of each one, as for the mana stone vein, he wanted it to be an exposed vein. The genie made a mountain inside the garden that housed all the different veins and it also included metal veins taken from the exuberant amount of metallic pearls that wasying around with no purpose.


    Lastly was dealing with the eggs of monster pets, most of them were dead and therefore fed to the armour, as for the 50 or so that were still alive only two eggs quickened after making contact with blood from all the members of the extended Debauchery family, from both a blue wolfling was borne a male and a female, both were born in response to Yunan''s luck imbued blood, as in blood imbued with the power of luck, although they had tried to use ordinary blood no egg would quicken, even after the lucky blood only 2 out of more than 50 quickened. The wolflings were creatures that would disperse digested mana into the world or refine the ambient mana into something much purer simply by breathing, and best of all, they ate everything that had mana in it.


    As for the rest, Yunan just started by making the armour feed on as many of the items as he could, starting by the treasure chests and enchanted items, then the body parts, and left the dragon bodies forst, everything that the armour didn''t feed on was left for the genie to find a ce for and use if necessary. After feeding on the dragon bodies and hearts provided by the 39th floor, the armour started evolving, it absorbed all the mana stored in the portable home and the reserves of the ck fate and Yunan''s core. Yunan felt that something was going beyond his control but before he could find out he cked out.


    Upon waking up Yunan found himself in his bed surrounded by worried faced, he felt changed, he eyes now could see more than just the shapes and colours, he could see blood pulsing through veins, he could hear heartbeats and the sobsing from outside the room, he could feel the life force of those around him and those beyond the room, however the greatest shock to him was what was hidden under his skin.


    Yunan could feel the wings, ws and tail of the armour hiding under his skin, they were waiting for his orders to appear and act ording to his will, his skin felt thicker and more resistant, his muscles were leaner and stronger, his bones were harder and sturdier, and even his viscera felt like it had its own strength and protection in his torso and abdomen, his senses were sharper and overall he had be something new, better, faster and stronger, he did not need to check his status to know that at least.


    Yunan could feel Drogon sleeping on his chest, not through touch but something deeper, something that can only be shared by kin, he could feel how majestic it was, this being that preferred to sleep by his side like an essory, than to go around or explore and hunt, even if he has given it free reign. Yunan could now feel strongly the bond between him and Drogon, the bond made by Drogon back when it took Yunan to be its master, Yunan could feel its nature more distinctively.


    Taking a deep breath, Yunan made his mind to first take away the worry his family was feeling for him, he seemed to have slept for too long while he was evolving along his armour, as for what happened and why, that would need to wait for a better time, now was the time to get beaten up for making his family worry about him, so he slowly untangled himself from the girls beside him.


    Fae and Ophelia were both sleeping with their backs to the bed with their hands gripping their staves, kitty and Sapphira were curled up by his feet while Reina and Lili were hugging him tightly providing him with mana little by little. Outside the room were a sobbing Lina and Nina, who wereining about Fortuna not doing anything despite being his wife, Hephaestus was sipping with a slight smile that made Fortuna both relieved and annoyed with him, Leader was cooking with Lucian, while Bai and Dustan were discussing who would inherit the fortunes left behind if the kid chose to die, while Balin was busy in the armoury making something.


    Yunan used telekinesis to bring the girls sleeping on the ground inside the bed then sent a message to Leader asking about where Leol was, what he received was an aggrieved voice message: "do it again and I will kill you with my own hands before you die from your own handy work, the boy is outside cating the different organizations to allow the girls to stay here without trouble, thank him when he is back, get back to sleep and rest a bit more".


    Yunan decided to take the advice and sleep some more, from what he could tell he had been running empty on mana, and his mana core was still empty even with the amount of mana in the room that he was absorbing. Yunan went back to sleep after asking Leader to make sure that when he woke up next time he would find smiling faces instead of sad ones.


    Before closing his eyes he took a moment to apply a pacification spell on each of them, dragging away the wariness and mental stress, he even discretely left messages that said he was fine and would wake up soon, he hugged his girls closer and closed his eyes to sleep. Out of curiosity, he asked himself "what am I now" it took a moment before the ck Fate answered his query.


    "Name: Yunan the wise prowler. Race: Dragonborn. Species: Valyrian (evolved bloodline). Note: truly an unpredictable twist of fate, I like the way you grow."

 Chapter 198: Life resumes

    Chapter 198: Life resumes


    Yunan woke upter on with a well-rested feeling as if everything in his body decided to sit in just the right position. He was alone when he woke up but he could tell that he was not alone for very long, he could also tell that his family was having a meal in the kitchen and were noticeably in a better mood from the way their voices sounded.


    Yunan stood up from his bed and took a shower before putting on some clothes, even if he was cleaned up daily, a shower after waking up was his habit and it was hard to build good habits, so he stuck with it as long as he could. Afterwards he rejoined his family to the weing arms or fists depending on personality, however, all of them were happy to see him up and running.


    " I am sorry, I made you worry about me needlessly." Yunan bowed and apologized for having his family worry about him, he was happy that he had such a nice and bright family that held him in high regards. "Oh shut up ande eat with us, you must be famished" Leader was the first to answer him just to keep the others from asking about what happened, somethings should not be shared, even if they were as close as Debauchery, however, even though Yunan agreed he still provided a small exnation as he sat down and started stuffing his face.


    "This was all thanks to the armour levelling up, it needed a lot of mana and thanks to our symbiosis I was the main provider after it consumed all the reserves we had, and to keep me from feeling the effects of the mana drain it knocked me unconscious, I woke up some time ago but I still needed to rest and replenish my mana and recover my optimal conditions, I wonder how much time has passed".


    "A week since you woke up and 2 months since you first fell, and if what you said is true then you should thank the armour, because you were in pain that even healing magic could not relieve, we witnessed your body break and restructure a few times, was that also because of symbiosis?" asked Ophelia. "It should be" replied Yunan "since we have such a rtionship, the armor would try to upgrade my body to a level where I can handle its new powers, even though I don''t feel particrly changed, other than being able to control my tentacles better there is nothing else to worry about" Yunan took out two tentacles and used one to pat Ophelia on the head and the other to feed himself and a third to catch the unidentified flying objects that were sent his way to test his control over the tentacles.


    "What can you do with those tentacles?" The question came from Fae instead of Balin who may have been itching to ask the same thing but thought he was not the correct candidate because of his tendency for perversion. "Pretty much anything I can think of, its an extra limb that I can control and change depending on the situation, if I am correct I can control about 10 of them at the moment, and don''t even think about it, I refuse to use them in any form of entertainment, no arguments".


    Balin looked deted while Yunan took back his tentacles, Sapphira and Drogon came back from the garden andpeted on who could nuzzle at Yunan harder than the other, they were happy to have him back, Yunan could tell that there were some who wanted to do the same thing but it was neither the time nor the ce for showing affection, and following that logic the next ce for the family meeting was the cleansing pool because mild intimacy was not shunned here.


    Here Yunan got to understand how much he was missed in the family, he knew they loved him, all of them, even Dustan who loves money more than himself had found a ce for Yunan in his heart. It was a marvellous feeling that Yunan thought he would never experience from another person other than his mother, still, it was good to have a family that will miss you as much as you miss them.


    It took a few days of effort to make the girls feel much better about letting Yunan out of their field of view, during this period of time Yunan learned about some of the things that happened when he was sleeping, for example, Lili''splete disregard for the legion had earned her a scolding from the pope and risk of expulsion, and even now she is in a bad standing with their members because she left mid-fight to reach out to a stranger, as for Reina her royal family has simply removed her from the list of adventurers belonging to their organization and told her to do what she liked, even going as far as to say that she is no longer required to follow the rules of the family and be the next guardian.


    Hermes has beening over to smooth things with Ophelia because her loyalty was worth more in faith power than most of his priests, devotion was not directly tranted to power but the strength of feeling was the true catalysts for granting a god power from his followers, Kitty has been found by her former owner, who she ran away from when he brought her to the dungeon, when she was out with Lina and Nina for shopping and he was beaten half to death, although he had filedints he had no evidence of legal ownership, thus the guild ignored him, simply because Kitty was registered under Yunan and they would rather anger an illegal ver than bringing cmity on themselves and their families for a ve.


    And finally Lina and Nina were contacted by their former mates who offered to take them away and let them join an organisation dedicated to the aid of former ves and victims of illegal very, they still have not returned any answer, even though they had met said group many times when Yunan was fast asleep, therefore Yunan decided it was time to let the girls go, after all the reason they became his servants was because he was good to them and that was all, that drive must have died a long time ago, since he always treated them delicately and respectfully, as for kitty who seemed to bepeting with Sapphira on who gets to be petted by Yunan, he felt she really wanted to be his pet and the very bond was just her way of pledging herself to him.

 Chapter 199: Leaving unceremoniously

    Chapter 199: Leaving unceremoniously


    What Yunan did not know was that while he was evolving, his master brand was undone, and he had lost his power over his 3 ves, only Kitty would make her pledge every time she could get closer to Yunan ultimately re-establishing the bond before Yunan woke up, that is why he did not feel any different than usual, if we add in the fact that the bond between him and Kitty was far stronger than the mere hint of a bond that he felt from Lina and Nina.


    As for his choice to send the girls away, it was because he thought it was high time they started to depend on themselves and create a living for themselves independently.


    Yunan also did not forget to thank Leol for his role in keeping the girls at a better standing with their organizations, than they otherwise would have been in without his intervention, he asked Leol what he can do for him and Leol just shrugged it off with "get me more jewellery, girls love jewellery" and that was the end of it, Yunan was d that even though Leol was distancing himself from the family, in the end, Leol was still a member at heart and would without hesitation stand and help his fellows at any moment.


    Yunan Also went to check on Balin in the forge where Balin has spent most of his time recently, there was an abundance of materials in the treasury, something that a smith of his calibre was too happy to make use of, forging anything that can be used by Debauchery and with the aid of the enchanted pearls he could basically make any type of enchantment bybining a few of the pearls into any item, therefore he made quite a number of useful gadgets for the family, simply because not everyone was like Yunan and had an armour that could do nearly anything.


    Balin was proud to show off the fruits of hisbours during the time where Yunan was asleep, he even boasted that his smithing has developed into a new height, he gave Yunan the tour of the items he made and both chatted at length about how to change or perfect the items, as a heavenly smith and someone with a very open mind, Yunan''s insight in smithing was of great value to Balin who has been well past the point of being able to look back at his works with a different view.


    Leaving the forge behind him Yunan headed for the kitchen to have a talk with Nina and Lina, he was hoping he didn''t need to have to break the master brand without their consent and force the situation on them, yet the dull mood he felt upon entering the kitchen told him he did not have to do something that extreme. Yunan made his way inside and hugged the girls giving each a small kiss, he could feel like they were under some pressure and so he stood there with his hands around the waists of the girls, he patiently waited for them to speak first.


    After some silence minutes the girls caved in first "we think we should leave, we can not sustain this type of life anymore, the reason we served you is almost gone and with the ve brand gone we are lost in this regard, hopefully you can allow us to go on our way, even though we pledged our lives to you we were not in the right mindset and we think we should have not been so anxious, maybe it was the training talking but we think all our urge to serve was satisfied and we can maybe move on with our lives sooner thanter". The girls looked guilt-ridden, as if they had done a great mistake and Yunan could sense they wanted to pay for it somehow so he said to them with a rxed voice "you are mine, if you want to be free, use your bodies and please me enough times to make me feel it''s alright if I do not seeing you again for a few years.


    Later Yunan told everyone that he needed the house for himself and sent everyone to vi number 5 in the 30th floor where hest anchored a door to his home, and for the rest of the week he was living in a sort of paradise where he did not even need to think, he only needed to enjoy what was offered to him on a te of silver. Yunan had to admit it was a lifestyle that was very addictive if he didn''t have any aspirations he might have indulged in this type of lustful lifestyle as much as he could.


    Lina and Nina left the house unceremoniously, Yunan had to resist the urge to send them away, it was their choice to leave after all, and even though he was told off for it and even got a few insults and sone rather stinging words from the other girls he stayed adamant in letting the girls go without a proper goodbye, it was their wish after all, even though the members of debauchery and the Valyrians wanted to have some time with them before they left, Yunan did not allow it.


    One might ask, why would they listen to Yunan if they wanted to spend time with their friends, one must remember first that the girls are not friends, they were ves that basically forced themselves into the house unlike Kitty who had no ulterior motive in joining the team, the two girls confessed to Yunan that they had a desire to serve him and repay him, a reason that was limited in its scope, ifpared to Kitty who just wanted to be with the group one could say the emotional attachment to Kitty is much stronger then to Lina and Nina.


    After the girls left, Yunan took charge of the next matter at hand, Kitty''s old master, an illegal ver who has been making quite a ruckustely asking for Kitty back, however before starting on such a mission Yunan made Kitty sit down and tell him her story in privacy.

 Chapter 200: A cat story

    Chapter 200: A cat story


    my earliest memory is that of the metallic taste of blood dripping down my chin as I chew on a field mouse that I caught moments earlier, I can still remember the bite of hunger that got only worse by eating such a small meal, I remember the heaviness of my feet as I struggled to walk back to the sorry excuse of a shack my parents proudly called home. They were ferals like me, cast away from society and our own nsmen because we have a tinge more of the beast in us then they do.


    My parents were smarter than half of the vigers and were able to resist the temptations of instinct better than all of them, I have never seen my parents sumb to the hunt or the taste of blood, they never allowed the heat to control them into a mating frenzy like the rest of the vigers every mating season in every month, I know that because I witnessed it countless times, those who called us beasts were behaving more beastly than us.


    My parents worked for each piece of meat, bone and skin they put on the table, my father worked as porter half the day and hunted food for us the other half while my mother would sew and stitch and make some tools and clothing that father could sell for a few copper coins or a scrap of meat. Whenever I returned home stinking of blood and whatever kill I made, my mother would apologize for being so useless that she got herself cast away and my father would brag that none of the vigers my age was half as obedient and independent as I am, none of them could match my body that was turned into a hunting machine by the hard and scarce life we lived.


    My mother taught me how to behave like a wise being while father taught me the ways of the beast, like my parents I too was shunned for having more of the beast in me then the vigers did, they did not notice that neither of my parents nor I have been part of their most beastly moments, a time that even the outcast were weed back to the vige.


    One day I returned home to find my father bound like a criminal while my mother looked like a dead doll as she was mounted by a man in ecstasy I only felt when having a full stomach. On that day I had made my first big kill and caught myself a wild boar, I was so happy to be the one bringing food to the table for once and reducing the burden on my parents. That day I was broken, I watched my parents and their dead eyes as if their souls have left their bodies, while the offending man, upon leaving, threw a few golden coins saying that he enjoyed our hospitality this time too and next time he wanted a taste of something younger.


    Although I was still little I understood what he said and did because I saw it once every month in the vige, however, none of his words struck me as hard as the words he said as he threw the golden coins " this time too", this has happened before, many many times, and now I finally understood why my parents would let me roam in the forest ever since I could walk, they protected me in their own way, and they survived by letting themselves be treated as toys to keep me alive, I understood at that moment what mother said when she told me time and time again "I will do anything to keep a smile on your face".


    Mother and father did not know that I saw everything, in their trance what that man did was like a wisp of smoke, something that can never be real, and in their trance, the world stopped moving forward and nothing that happens would be remembered. I loathed myself for being the cause of such misery to my parents, but I hated that man more, I tracked him and maimed him in the middle of the vige, I told all of them that if they dared mistreat my family again I would hunt down their children, I would burn their homes and make them eat each other, for once in my life both the beast and the wise in me were acting together, and that presence frightened the vigers, for they feared the manner of beast I was, a wise beast, wild with power and instinct and wiser than humans, I had sneaked inside the vige and maimed a man in the middle of the square while both adults and kids watched, and they feared that I would make my threat a reality.


    That man never again returned to our home, and my father and mother started getting fair payment for their work with the vigers, my parents naively believe that it was a waking conscience that swayed the vigers, however, I was more nave in my thinking, threatening alone was not enough and I paid the price for that mistake dearly, because not long after, a ver arrived and captured us with the most profitable part of the vige, I heard one of the vigers cry out that this was not the deal he made, he was promised gold in exchange for a beast-ling family, however he got his wife and kids captured with the rest of us and did not even get a copper coin for his troubles. That night the ver noticed the enmity between me and the captured vigers, so he tortured that information out of them, he then took me away from the rest, took off my shackles, and said to me "go have your revenge, I will be waiting for your return, you will be my most treasured battle ve and I will make sure you and your parents live in luxury if you heed my advice".


    That night I returned to the vige, I killed and maimed and force-fed the adults their own kin, I burned their homes and destroyed their lives, I made good on my threat, however, when I returned to the ver my parents had gone too deep inside their trance refusing to believe I saw their most shameful secret, and so they stayed half dead until they died a few years ago, probably killed by the ver.


    I have to admit that the first ver made good on his word, as long as I trained under his tutge I lived like a queen, even my parents had their own servants, we lived in luxury, one that I earned by fighting like a beast for the entertainment of the rich and powerful, the man who bought my first time made the mistake of sleeping beside my drugged body, I killed him as soon as I got control over my body, and half the people in his home thanks to that mistake, I waster sold as to another ver because the first one feared for his life, and this new one made the mistake of sending me into the dungeon without making me a legal ve, I killed the party he sent to train me in the dungeon and joined that big organisation of beast-lings until I met the man who I was destined for.


    Mother always said, "when the dayes for you to choose a mate, find one that smells more delicious than anything else in the world, if you find that one then just haunt them until they ept you because with them even living in hell would feel like a piece of heaven".

 Chapter 201: Buying a princess

    Chapter 201: Buying a princess


    Yunanid on his bed holding Kitty in his embrace, he did not want to feel that pain again, he tried his best to make Kitty forget that sting and at this moment she was feeling blissful as her ears twitched under his tender touch and her nostrils were drinking in the most delicious smell she had ever known.


    Yunan could not help but ask "if I smell so delicious, does that mean all you want is to eat me?" There was a small happy nod that only he could perceive, she had no words in her vocabry to make known her feelings than to simply act on them, after all, she was feral, more beast than most other beast-lings and Yunan made sure that he would make her smile every time he could after hearing the story she kept locked in her heart.


    Maybe Kitty herself did not know how much she hated the ver that wasing after her, she had just found her slice of heaven and once again a ver came to take it away and that was, ording to Kitty, a big no-no. Yunan kept hold of Kitty all night long, he had watched her fall asleep and purr on his chest content with a stupid grin on her face, one that Yunan could not help but steal a few kisses from now and then.


    After some reconciliation time with both Ophelia, Reina and Lili, it was Decided that both Reina and Lili were going to leave their organizations and would join parties to hunt in the dungeon as frencers, they felt that they have lost a few Debauchery teachings by being treated very well in their old organizations, thus making that decision. It was also decided that Ophelia and Kitty would join them now and then until they reached level 50 and were able to rejoin with Yunan.


    As for Yunan he tracked that ver through the guild, and alongside Kitty, they destroyed his ce and freed all the ves that were there since most of them were illegal, Yunan told them to find the church and ask for help there, it was safer for them than just running away. The ver himself was again beaten up to an inch of his life, and the idea that "going after runaway ves was wrong" was now etched in his brain forever.


    That day Kitty had a spring to her step as she jingled merrily around Yunan like the very sound of happiness, she did not mind the asional show of affection Yunan would give her, she was just happy that day that she did not even notice she was basically pouncing an prancing around and those little affectionate moments was Yunan''s way of holding her still because her happy jingling sound was drawing too much attention.


    Another thing that Yunan did on the outside was visiting an auction he heard some people talk about in the guild headquarters, there was a family that was selling their own daughter; an adventurer, in an auction, the girl in question belonged to a fallen dynasty and her family had been getting back on their feettely, and thest push to re-establish their kingdom was selling their virgin princess, who was a level 30 adventurer for the price of a kingdom.


    Yunan thought about Sarah and decided that if it was her that was on sale he would buy her, he asked Dustan about how much an adventurer who reached the 30th floor was worth, adding in the willingness to be a ve for her family, her mild manners and status as a princess, he was shocked to know it was even less than the price of some of his jewellery that had been sold, so he decided to offer two pieces of jewellery as her price, if it was her granny, they would take the jewellery because it was worth more than money forgetting that those pieces of jewellery were so coveted that without proper status and protection it was a death sentence to get a hold of one.


    Greed was always blinding, and those who were willing to sell their own daughter for money were blind, deaf and cripples. Yunan also asked his family what would be appropriate if he actually bought her, and they just told him to do whatever he wanted with her since she would be, after all, a willing ve. Before attending the auction, Yunan was approached by the guild to join a group of VIPs in inspecting the merchandise, and he felt sad when he saw Sarah sitting in all her dignity and waiting to be inspected by a bunch of strangers, however she faltered when she saw Yunan and kitty enter the room, upon seeing her tears some of the VIPs knew how unwilling she was but she endured for the sake of her family. Each of the VIPs sent a servant to perform the inspection for them and Yunan sent Kitty to wipe away her tears, meanwhile the VIPs started to discuss the price that she was worth and how much more it was possible to pay for her without incurring a loss.


    "I want her, I hope you would allow me to have her" Yunan said after the price was discussed and the potential buyers were revealed, he took out a few pieces of his trademark jewellery and gave one to each one present, "pretty please" he said as thest piece was taken and the others all nodded and left, Yunan stayed until the room only had him, Kitty, the auction aid and Sarah, he gave a magnificent bracelet and a pair of extravagant earrings to the aid "use them as the price to buy her, if anyone is willing to pay that much, feel free to double the value using money". The aid left after making a bow and left the three of them alone.


    Yunan walked close to Sarah and hugged her letting the floodgates open, she cried herself to sleep while Kitty kept trying tofort her. it did not take long for the auction to be settled, and the aid returned with the bracelet and the contract for Sarah, as Yunan had expected the old granny jumped at the earrings the moment they were presented, even though there were still bets of higher value she ended the auction for fear the one who proposed the jewellery would withdraw it and she would lose such a chance at getting one of those most coveted pieces of jewellery.


    "Send the bracelet too to the old granny and make it known to those who arrived at the auction, say something like the buyer thought the earrings were not enough for a price. As for us we will teleport from this room so please give it to us for a few more hours" the aid nodded and left, while Yunan waited patiently for Sarah to wake up before teleporting with her, but after half an hour he decided she might feel better if she woke up somewhere familiar.

 Chapter 202: Apprentice chef

    Chapter 202: Apprentice chef


    When Sarah woke up again she found herself in a familiar room, she could hear the purring Kitty on the other side of the man she herself was holding onto tightly, she had slept for so long after the crying fit and was now feeling much better, she knew that he had bought her, and that he would tear that ownership contract of she hinted that she did not want to be a ve.


    Sarah felt his hand move from the small of her back to her hair and gently brush his fingers through it, she wanted to cry again in his arms, but she held back her tears as she pressed herself against him, it was not her first time sharing his bed but it was her first time feeling like it was her privilege for as long as she lived. As always he was a gentleman, too gentle and generous and caring for his own good, although he could have imed her body endless times in the year they spent together he simply was content with making her part of his family, even if that meant he could not have alone time with his wives.


    She did not know when she drifted off into dreand, and when she woke up she was almost hit by an anxiety attack when she did not find him beside her, however as the room was the same familiar one, she calmed her anxious heart and mind, she checked her body and found nothing out of orders she then stood up and put on a simple bathrobe before leaving the room.


    She found him in the library petting 3 cute pets, an oversized cat content withp pillow, a beautiful and elegant cat that was trampling her oversized mate in an attempt to gain a few scratches under the chin, and a dragon that seemed to enjoy getting the most attention by their master, Ophelia was also in the library pretending to read a book while looking secretly and jealously at the 4 of them.


    As always he was first to notice her, he gave her a smile before the elegant cat decided to jump on his face and cover his eyes, she really did not want his attention to be given to yet another person, she giggled and went to pat Ophelia on the head, she was weed here and it felt like she was never away, she wondered what happened to the two maids but didn''t ask, she wrapped her hands around Ophelia and she too watched with jealous eyes the four at their y.


    Not long after, Debauchery arrived with Anne, they were quite joyful for the number of injuries they had, it seems they have just dealt with the boss that has kept them stuck and were now officially a level 80 adventurers along with Anne who joined as a dedicated healer. As the party was about to start Yunan told them that he knew a good restaurant where they can celebrate, they contacted the rest of the Valyrians and headed for chef Ro in the 30th floor.


    Upon arrival chef Ro came out to greet them and was hit by a strange request, "can you cook our meal separately with our own ingredients", it was an insult to any chef if they heard this in his own restaurant, but Ro knew that Yunan had somethings that were not obtainable for others, or simply were exclusive to him, so his answer was a weird one too, have a feast here and we can go cook with your items in your ce, and I will bring my apprentice to teach him a few lessons on how ingredients differ and how tastes differ as well.


    Yunan went ahead and gave Ro a ring for of the most generic ingredients he had, simply because no one restaurant was able to feed Debauchery if they came unannounced, Ro epted the ingredients and immediately started working on as many dishes as he could as fast as possible, the fastest dishes arrived 10 minutester with a young manining how disrespectful it was to bring ingredients to a restaurant, and worse was having the main chef working on their table like he was working on an order for a few dozens.


    The young man made sure his opinion reached Debauchery who justughed at him for being a country bumpkin who had no business being a chef, his own retaliation was "even if you have the money to buy top-grade ingredients does not mean you have the money to buy the services of a master chef like my master, you are lucky he is just a simple man who loves cooking too much". And with this the young man was officially the toy of this party, he would be teased to death if he stuck around and Debauchery made sure he will.


    "Listen here you little country bumpkin, those are not top grade ingredients, those are the things even the pets refuse to eat, but, since this is a special asion we did not want your restaurant to run out of ingredients and we just had that pile sitting without use so we thought it would be nice if chef Ro can make even those trash taste good we can entrust his hand with the really top grade stuff, now run along, we need more food" Balin was as always great at baiting and enraging people, as you would expect from a shield bearer for Debauchery, neither wise men nor dumb beasts can escape his taunting.


    The young man was shocked on two fronts, first the sheer arrogance of degrading such top-grade ingredients, and the second on how fast and messily they ate, even the most morous Leader was shoving food into mouths licking tes and generally act like there was no one watching, the most elegant eaters were the cat and the lizard who were munching slowly on a meat he could not identify, if he knew that they were only eating slowly because they did not want bloated bellies from eating too fast.


    When the young man told chef Ro about what they said his answer was very rxed and smooth "oh? I can''t wait to handle the good stuff,st time I only got to touch what was needed for the broth, I hope they let me pick on my own this time, and for your information, there is no such a thing as the best ingredients, even these that we would dream about getting are like the rejects you get free from the market in their ce, so here is a lesson, every ingredient is different, and the best ingredients change depending on the dish you are making, a ripe tomato is best for sauce but a solid firm tomato is the best for a sd, and if you have something you consider the best, someone has something better".


    The ruckus Debauchery made turned the ssy restaurant into your average pub, they attracted attention to the restaurant who seemed to have been getting more and more customers as the night went on, although there were no empty tables, the customers would share seats with others in return for a taste of their dish and with so many people the restaurant ran out of ingredients 3 times and the young apprentice had to ask Debauchery for whatever they had because there would be no delivery at this time of day, each time he approached Debauchery he would end up screaming at them before returning red-faced to the kitchen with a new ring full of ingredients.

 Chapter 203: The party members

    Chapter 203: The party members


    I chef Ro closed his restaurant he was teleported to Yunan''s house with his apprentice, when inside, chef Ro asked to see the ingredients first and foremost, he was led by Yunan to see the meat storage room where he could find all kinds of corpses from every floor up to the 39th floor, after browsing through these Yunan took him to where he kept the bosses or their leftovers, chef Ro almost fainted when he saw the collection especially the massive sizes that were on disy, he had to calm down andpose himself before proceeding with examination.


    After examining the meats the next to do was to visit the garden, this time chef Ro fell on his knees in disbelief, he could see a forest, a desert, a mountain and a beach in this garden were all kinds of nts grew and small beasts were ying around, this was beyond a full ecosystem it was a freaking mini in the backyard. Chef Ro asked Yunan to bring his apprentice here and as soon as he finished his words, his apprentice was standing beside him giving both of them a fright.


    The old man took hold of his apprentice and asked if he also could see the garden and the nts inside it, and when he got a positive answer he looked at Yunan with big puppy eyes demanding an exnation. Yunan exined with easy words so they would not misunderstand "this ce is an artefact that runs on mana and is intended for the growth of any kind of nt, if it exists then this ce will create a perfect environment for it to grow, basically everything in this ce is edible, also, put this ring on, it can help you identify the nts and their properties, also there is a poisonous nts ntation somewhere here so make sure to identify the nts before you touch them." Yunan gave chef Ro amunication ring and then left the two to look around the ce.


    Yunan did not show chef Ro the ce where honey andva wine are produced because it would be a big hit to his heart, it took a few days for chef Ro and his apprentice to finally finish looking through the garden and finallye up with a menu that could be called agreeable. Chef Ro kept talking about how he wanted to try cooking with these ingredients for the next few years with the endless possibilities.


    Unfortunately, Yunan only intended for chef Ro toe by only on this sole asion and make a memorable meal to celebrate him conquering the 39th floors, and reaching a milestone in the exploration of the dungeon. Chef Ro and his apprentice delivered on their promise to make a good meal for Yunan and his friends, there were not many that were invited to the party, mainly the only people that Yunan knew to some degree.


    The list contained the 5 members of the Valyrians, the 7 members of Debauchery, the two ves, two gods, Yunan''s mother, Pope Markus and his friend guild master Martin, the two assistants, chef Ro and his apprentice a grand total of 23 people, and it was as boisterous as a party for 100.


    As a reserved nun, Yunan''s mom was not made for such a ruckus, she sat down enjoying a good chat with pope Markus, guild leader Martin, Hephaestus and Fortuna. As seniors they did not need to be very polite to each other and ask names or introduce themselves, they were after all invited to a party because a kid had made it to the 40th floor, it was for the best that they did not introduce themselves in the first ce otherwise thepletely ordinary nun, sister Theresa would find it hard to even breathe audibly around these people, two were the most influential people on Burkan and the other two were gods.


    The banquet proceeded smoothly, dinner was absolutely magnificent, the different kinds of tastes and texture that filled the tablepleted andplemented each other, even the smell lingered to paint a mesmerising picture in the minds of those present, the drinks, made the picture brimming with life and vitality, the food was so well made that they could eat to their heart''s content without worrying about feeling bloated from the mana-rich food, even sister Theresa who was an ordinary human could tell this food was made by experienced hands from unobtainable ingredients.


    After the dinner was served and cleaned up, chef Ro and his apprentice requested to go home because they had to go work on a new menu they were inspired to create during their stay here as for the rest it was the elders watching the youngsters y around. At first mother Theresa thought Fortuna would join the youngsters because that was how she met her and how she perceived her but wh3n Fortuna stayed with the elderly, mother Theresa started smelling something fishy, so as a mother she caught Yunan by the ears and pulled him to a private corner.


    "After you finish ying around you should introduce your guests, I only know some of your friends and teachers and it''s not proper for me to ask for their names because they are your guests, and why are you leaving some of your guests unattended, you did not evene by once to ask us if we needed anything". Yunan being mommy''s good boy nodded his head like a chick pecking grain and darted towards his mates to tell them to restart the game of chess thrones to include the elderly.


    Yunan made some arrangements with the genie then teleported everyone to what looked like one of those war rooms where leaders and generals make strategies and solve problems. The war room was an addition Yunan thought of to make the game of chess thrones more realistic and atmospheric. Inside the room Yunan exined the game to everyone so as to not embarrass those who did not know the rules, he also introduced the new addition a big map noting the territory of each yer, and then the alliances and feuds were assigned randomly based on the territory, and one could only y chess with those with mutual borders, it was more realistic this way because the genie would calcte and disy the results of each match simultaneously while matches kept going on and on.


    After everyone had gotten their territory and found out their friends and enemies, Yunan gave his introduction to the people surrounded the big map in the middle. "Let me make introductions as the host of this event, I am Yunan the wise prowler, adventurers on the 39th floor, a student of Debauchery party and member of the Valyrians party. Next is my pet Drogon, a Valyrian Dragon and the only confirmed dragon on the surface world, besides him is Sapphira, an awakened monster feline and my newest pet she loves hugs and petting and attention so please do not be shy and give her your love."


    "This here is Kitty, a feline beast-ling, and my ve, she too loves being a pet but don''t get to greedy, and before you get angry, mom, she willingly serves me, I have nothing to do with her decision, besides her is Sarah, she joined my group when I was doing some contract and I bought her recently due to some circumstances, so don''t go asking about tragedies. Next is Ophelia, my personal healer and newest member of the Valyrians, she is a former believer in Hermes but know worships me as her lord and saviour, and besides her is her teacher Anne, a devotee of Hermes and the best healer in the dungeon, had always been close to Debauchery which she seems to have joined recently, don''t get fooled by her modest appearance she is a sex demon."


    "Here we have Debauchery member Dustan, a big simpleton of an orc, loves money more than anything if you want anything from him, pay him, next is the perverted cksmith dwarf, Balin, a workaholic and self-proimed biggest fangirl of Hephaestus. Beside him is Bai the most scheming rogue I ever met, and the safest ce is around him, as long as it is a scheme he would do anything to either undo it or join making it. Next is Lucian a big fuzzy cute wolf, he is the warmest and most loyal, never betray while he watches, if he likes you, please feel free to y with his tail and ears, he loves it."


    "Fae is the broken moralpass of the group, and her mood is based on how good her skin looks, she is rather nice and yful, she is an elf and a good magical girl. Last but not least, we have Mary, known affectionately as Leader, big heart, big mind, the warmest person and the most innocent one in the room" the first thing Theresa wanted to ask is howe these people have not killed each other yet, something not even Debauchery could answer.


    "Here we have the first member of the Valyrians, Leol, my first roommate and friend, a noble through and through, next is Reina, a Kitsune, she is the kindest of the Valyrians but the most vocal one, her questions are best answered immediately. Beside her is Lili, a previous nun in training, hot-blooded and more stubborn than a mule, if she like you, you will know it, if she hates you will know it too, painfully."


    "nowes the guests, here is Martin the current strongest mortal alive and the leader of the adventurers guild, he is a good guy who follows the rules and works for the best interest of the whole world. Next to him stands Markus, pope of the church, a lolicon and father to both Mary and Lili, bad father and good leader, overall good guy. Here is the one and only Hephaestus, ascended god and the best smith ever, he is a good friend and really hates being in debt, also very generous and cool dude, he is the one who built this ce for me. And beside him is Luna, my wife, and the ascendeddy luck, also known as Fortuna, she is a fickle woman who hates being in control and just flows with the situation. And finally the most important person in the room my mother, Theresa, a nun in the church and the caretaker of the orphanage in Mar Sara city, she is the best mother ever, and if you dare make her upset not even the gods can save you. Oh and those two are the pope''s assistants, I never knew their names, but I get the impression I should not cross them. Now that introductions are done let y."


    Mother Theresa was stunned by the introduction her son made, and the envious looks she got from those around her, she, a simple nun was introduced as the most important person in the room, not even the pope or the two gods dared to say anything to contradict that statement. Those were people who have so much power it made her dizzy if she wanted to think about it. Yet they still respected her in the same way she showed reverence to them.


    It was a weird party and those who attended were even weirder, only mother Theresa who was nothing but ordinary could be the most important person here, simply because everyone else would protect her first in the unlikely urrence of danger, that and she was mother to the guy who brought this family together, even if they could meet and be acquainted without him, his existence allows them from all walks of life to sit and chat while eating snacks and drinking wine, forgetting their identities at the door, because in this ce this young man has created, status did not matter, personality decided your standing with the rest of the members.

 Chapter 204: Entering the 40th floor

    Chapter 204: Entering the 40th floor


    The party ended on a high note as most parties involving debauchery would, leaving everyone with a smile on their faces as they returned to their homes.


    After the party Yunan, Ophelia and Kitty were on cleaning duty while Sarah was in her own world thinking what she would say to Yunan about the fact that he brought her, although he did introduce her as a ve he has not made any demand or even voiced an opinion about it and that fact alone; that he was not concerned at all about any of it, made her stress levels go higher and higher to the point she did not notice the three running about and taking care of what needed to be done.


    Later that night when she asked Yunan who was about to sleep he stated with a tone that made his statement feel like the obvious truth " you seem to have misunderstood my intention, I did not buy you to be my ve, I bought you to get you out of that situation, I have a good impression of you and I felt like it was the right thing to help you, as for you being my ve that ispletely up to you, you are wee here in whatever capacity you feel is appropriate for you, just like Ophelia and Kitty, they have chosen how to join this family and you have your choice too, anyway, why are you not naked in my bed? As long as you see yourself as my ve you should help me warm my bed, just like cute Kitty here" Yunan put his arms around Kitty and they snuggled up closely to prepare for some sleep.


    Sarah found herself undressing and joining the two under the cover sheet, she wrapped her arms around both of them and said with a soft whisper "as long as I see myself as your ve I can call you master too?", "you can call me whatever you want, it is your choice after all" the response was far from what she wanted to hear, but knowing that for this moment and as long as she wanted she can be his ve, his wife, his concubine or even his pet, as long as she made her choice she can whatever she wanted to be, and that thought made her smile beautifully.


    After a few days of rest, Yunan was ready to step into the 40th floor so he went to defeat the humanoid water drake once again, this time it took only one punch to turn the boss into paste, Yunan did not feel that he exerted too much strength and the oue was too striking for his liking, he always liked to understand his own strength and currently there was a veryrge gap between his understanding and actual power.


    Yunan did not spend too much time mulling over the issue and headed straight to the 40th-floor stairway. After stepping into the 40th floor he saw a small city surrounding the stairway, the stairway ended on a tform on top of a tree, and the city was built between the branches of the giant trees that filled this ce, this base waspletely built on treetops and tree branches.


    The wooden city was nothing but simple and elegant, the houses were cosy and warm and gave a sense of serenity and peace, the guild''s branch building was the first building one notices, there Yunan made the registration and asked about housing, even of Yunan did not need it he still thought that having a ce where he can meet outsiders was never a bad idea, even if his portable home wasmon knowledge he still felt like he should not bring outsiders there unless he had a good reason for it.


    Yunan was told that housing in this area os free of charge, one just has to register the ce he is thinking about using so that neers would not upy another''s residence by mistake. After dealing with the formalities, Yunan ended up choosing a block of 4 units for him and his three residents, although the guild employee was rather sceptical about the abilities of Sarah, Ophelia and Kitty, it was not strange for people who reached this ce to bring their own servants and ves to keep thempany since almost all of the adventurers beyond level 20 stay inside the dungeon, and it is more so for those beyond level 40, thanks to the increased life spans most of them only returns to the 20th floor to pick up new servants when the ones they have, had grown old.


    Before Yunan left, however, he was stopped by the guild employee to rmend a mercenary mission. The 40th floor and lower were mostlynd masses and therefore there were more likely to have mercenary missions. This mission, however, came with a rmended mercenary, the one who made the mission, added a use to the mission that if Yunan was to make it to the 40th floor the guild must show him the quest and give him the chance to participate.


    Yunan found it odd because he never heard about such a thing, the guild employee told him it was rather smallmunity beyond the 40th floor and being outstanding gives one the qualifications to be preferable mercenary to aplish a quest, ording to the employee, many quests that do not have such preferred adventurers go on for years with much attention.


    The quest Yunan got this time was rather strange, it talked about finding a small rat-like beast that is found in the next section of the dungeon, these beasts are fragile and their flesh turns toxic if they are startled before death, the creature wouldmit suicide upon capture and its fur was a must have for female adventurers, the quest requi8 Yunan to capture a living one and showcase it without it dying or killing itself, well it was basically asking for him to tame the beast and show it off and said nothing about giving the tame beast to the one who made the quest.


    Yunan epted the quest before heading to the units he chose for residence to take a look and have a look at the area around it, then he returned home to prepare for the next phase of exploring Tartarus.

 Chapter 205: New status

    Chapter 205: New status


    Yunan was enjoying a dip in the hot pool while checking his new found power, it was much more than he thought, he could feel endless mana flowing through his body, he had the feeling he was blessed with unlimited power as if he could sunder the world and rip the sky apart.


    The armour was dormant, it felt empty and lifeless, the sentience it had was nowhere to be found, Yunan could still feed it and let it grow but I could no longer grow sentient, ording to the ck Fate, the armor choose to merge with Yunan as the ultimate path to grant Yunan its strength and fulfil the objective it was created for. Finally, Yunan could not stand it and asked the ck Fate for his status and it was wonderful to read.


    Name: Yunan the wise prowler


    Title: Lucky bastard


    Attributes : Strength: 10k, Constitution: 10k, Dexterity: 10k, Wisdom: 10k. (k=kilo=1000).


    Skills: Combat mastery: master (epasses de, blunt, shield, archery and unarmed). Heavenly smithing: level 80, Appraisal: level 90, Ranging: level 49, Multi-wielding, Multi-casting, Lucky cover, Tactician, Leader, schr, Invulnerable body (includes all body strengthening skills, reduces all damage taken, grants passive damage buff depending on target), True sight (epasses all ocr skills like dark sight and heat vision, grants immunity to visual illusion), Voice (includes all vocal skills, like persuasion, taunt, intimidation, pacification, voice range maniption and voice frequency maniption), Sound mastery (includes all the skills that make use of sound, like echolocation, sound attacks and muffle), Cooking, Cleaning, Therapeutic massage, Traceless casting, Mapping, Regeneration, Climbing, Water breathing, Flying, Presence (dragon''s dignity), Magical body (includes all skills that deal with mana flow, like mana sensitivity and detect magic), Elemental body (includes all skills that grants elements sensitivity and element resistance), Aerodynamic, Hidden (includes all skills that prevents detection like shadow meld and invisibility), Absorption (includes all skills that allows Yunan to absorb mana, water and materials, without digestion), Shapeshift, Detection (includes all skills that allow detection of enemies and danger sensitivity), Metallurgy (identification and acquisition of all metals), Beast taming, Toxicology (includes all skills that creates, handles and absorbs toxins, grants partial immunity to toxins), Navigation, puppetry, weaving, enhanced senses, riding, artist (includes skills like painting, music and acting), mana maniption, assassination.


    Spells : healing (includes all healing spells) all attribute buff, all attribute debuff, toxin flush, pyrokinesis (includes all me control spells), automated looting, negative status effect application and removal, teleport, spatial shift, spatial lock, cryokinesis (includes all ice and water maniption spells), Electrokinesis (includes all lighting type spells), aerokinesis (includes all wind type spells, Geokinesis (includes all earth type spells), spell break, elemental coating, mana syphon, maelstrom, camouge, invisibility, Illusion, Extra Sensory Perception (includes all psychic spells, like telekinesis, telepathy and mentalmunication), hallowed light(includes all light and holy type spells), twistedher (includes all dark type spells), divination, shape (includes all creation spells like sculpt, create golem and build totem), raise undead, summon (includes all summoning spells like summon spirit, summon daemon, summon elemental).


    Pet: Drogon, Valyrian, 2nd evolution.


    Attributes: Strength: 15k, Constitution: 15k, Dexterity: 15k, Wisdom: 15k.


    Skills: luck bringer, enhancer, lucky cover, shape-shifting, taunting cry, intimidating roar, imposing presence, me control, mana syphon.


    Pet: Sapphira, Egyptian Mau


    Attributes: Strength 11k, Constitution: 13k, Dexterity: 15k, Wisdom: 15k.


    Skills: hiding, sprint, leader, stalker, lighting control


    Armour: Dragonification, level: 80, draconic nature.


    Abilities and enchantments: master mark, self-repair, storage space, camouged, hidden presence, istion, damage reduction, integration.


    Integrated effects: contact sensitivity, elemental cores, elemental cloaking,


    Resistance: elemental, decay, damage, gue, toxin, detection.


    Yunan could barely contain his smile, the number of items he had digested, the spells and skills he got were basically all of them, there were things in there that he did not think he would use, not even in this lifetime, but who knows, it was good to have such things at hand even if he did not know about half of them existing before.


    Next came the question "where did all the powers of my armour go and why did I be level 47 as well as be a Dragonborn?". The ck Fate gave the answer almost immediately "the armour has deemed its existence unnecessary of the user could be granted a power that has disappeared from the world, thus it sacrificed its own sentience to transfer all the powers and effects it had digested so far along with all the benefits from those dragon body parts to create a draconic bloodline in the user, a more natural one than most Dragonborn and dragonkin, it also used the blood of the Valyrianpanion to guide the creation of the bloodline, it is regrettable that you have not be a full dragon with all that power pumped inside your body, the only reason I can think of is that Tartarus deemed you bing a Dragonborn is better than bing a full-fledged dragon".


    "It stands to reason that with that amount of power wreaking havoc in your body that you are granted attribute points equal to the damage received, as for the benefit of being Dragonborn instead of a full dragon, is that you currently have both bloodlines of humans and Valyrian dragons coexisting in your body, unlike previous Dragonborn who have parts of either human genome integrated into their dragon bloodline or dragon genome in their human bloodline, in essence you are both dragon and man, the same as the original Dragonborn who were imitated but never truly replicated".


    "As for the armour its has be an ordinary one that might regain sentience with years of care and high-grade materials, but that is very unlikely, therefore it has transferred all its abilities to you to make sure you would not lose the aid it granted you after its death, and you were lucky to recover all of it, usually there are losses when doing such massive transfer, but it seems that some of the excess power has been redirected to the preservation of the abilities of the armour, so basically you were just lucky like usual".


    Although Yunan was sad to see his armour be a dead object he was nheless happy about what he gained from the whole event, especially the fact that he is now both dragon and human, not half or mixed, he was both at the same time, something noteworthy in the history of Burkan. Yunan was so focused on the ck Fate that he did not notice Kitty who hase to celebrate with him whatever made him happy, she jumped inside the hot pool and wrapped herself around him grinning like a fool "what are you so happy about?"

 Chapter 206: Singing and picnic

    Chapter 206: Singing and pic


    Yunan took a good look at the excited Kitty before patting her hair gently "I just learned that my 2 months of sleep were worth it, now I have be so very strong".


    Yunan enjoyed his interactions with Kitty, especially the part where they didn''t need to exchange words tomunicate, he also liked the way she reacted to his touches, although he could tell it was amplified by the ve brand it was nheless enjoyable for Kitty to be in contact with him.


    "If you are happy about it then I am happy too" stated Kitty as she rubbed her head on his chest like she always did when they were alone, although she was always close to him whenever she could, she would still behave herself when others were around. Yunan found that this cat was growing on himtely, he enjoyed her proximity and liked having a few passionate moments with her, at the same time he felt that he would have a hard time sleeping without her warmth soothing him in bed.


    That idea reminded Yunan of Fortuna who seemed to be not as interested in passion anymore and was happy just watching Yunan live his life from afar, so in a moment of impulse, he teleported Fortuna to the hot bath without notifying her. Fortuna; who didn''t realize anything was wrong until she sshed into the hot pool fully clothed, had a questioning gaze for Yunan who seemed to be in an intimate moment with his personal cat.


    "I missed you, so I brought you here to y around with your body, after all, you said it was mine to do whatever I wanted with it", both Fortuna and Kitty turned red, Kitty was feeling Yunan''s lust while Luna was trying not to punch his head off before reattaching it and kissing him, it truly has been a while since she and Yunan had some quality time together, and his style of straightforward flirting always made her feel dirty for liking it more that way.


    "Why are you even missing me when you are surrounded by pretty girls who would do anything if you ask for it, are you an idiot, I am just an old hag who was toying with you and it''s about time we broke this off, I am getting tired of you after all" all though Luna kept saying things in the same vein, she did not resist when Yunan and Kitty took turns undressing her. "oh shut up, what kind of old hag gives herself to a youngster unconditionally, and stop trying to lie to me, you are very bad at it".


    Luna was just like an innocent maiden when she lost control and Yunan seems to have a knack for taking away her control over the situation, the most troublesome part about him is that he did not shy away from her, he did not hide anything from her, she could see it all, the good the bad and the ugly, and his forward way in approaching her disarmed herpletely, and just like a maiden in love, she would allow him to do whatever he wanted to her, mainly because she knew too well that this steamy moment was his way of telling her to stop watching from afar and just ept her position as his own. Luna knew she would get tired of this someday in the future, but for now, it was the most irresistible attraction in the world, and for once she thought it might be something that she would never get bored of especially if she never regained her control when she was around him.


    A few hours and three satisfied loverster, the tree left the bath for a meal to replenish some energy, Yunan offered to take Luna with him on a pic in the 40th floor but she declined, she had some things to attend to, and she made sure to berate him for bringing her over without telling her beforehand, he just shrugged off and said "what is wrong with calling on my wife when I am aroused and in need of relief?" Although she was a bit angry at the response she still left after giving him and Kitty a kiss each.


    After Fortuna left the house Yunan met with Sarah and Ophelia who seemed to be eager to go on a pic, although Ophelia spent most of her time studying medicinal herbs in the garden she did not deny a pic because thepany always made her feel stress-free. Yunan took all of them to the residential units he registered for them and headed out from there, he cast flying on hispanions, unfurled his own wings and led the three of them to the ground weaving between branches and around the gigantic trunks of the forest trees, tond on the softnd covered by soft soil, grass and moss, with tree roots as big as a cart making hiding ces for the beasts that roamed the floor.


    "First objective of this pic is to spot a silver mouse, next objective is to taste its meat and examine its fur, if we are lucky we might capture one alive, until we meet a silver mouse lets have fun, first order of fun today is group singing, everyone sing with me" Yunan made few changes to his voice before letting out a rather melodic voice from his vocal box and a song started flowing through.


    "On the shoulder of the roadI met a berserker toad...on its back was a prettier load...humming along with the ribbiting abodeshe waved at me with a wink and a court...I walked thither and briskly strode... chugging the mead from my trusty gourd... fondling the pommel of the rusty old sword...she sang to me along the soundhey, master on road...help thine poor yourself aboard...thisdy does what she is told...for a drop from the tasty gourd...for she has no silver neither gold...she will humbly allow the sword...to plough where no young or old...has seen the Eden valley abroad."

 Chapter 207: Taming the silver mouse

    Chapter 207: Taming the silver mouse


    It did not take our party on a pic very long to find the first mouse, abination of luck and a radar system can work much better than ordinary tracking teams.


    Yunan made sure to hide his presence and tried to kill the small critter fast and noiselessly so he activated his hidden skill and disappeared from where he was, the skill was very overwhelming to those with weaker detection. For example, Ophelia and Sarah could never find him, Kitty on the other hand had her feral senses going wild indicating that he was a danger and located his approximate his direction.


    Yunan teleported himself behind the small fist-sized mouse and made sure to kill it immediately, the mouse didn''t even realize it was dead, therefore Yunan made sure not cause any shock to the body as he picked it up softly, he could tell immediately why the mouse was that popr, it was all fur and its real body was not bigger than thumb sized at best.


    Upon further examination, the body of the mouse waspact and full of nutrition, it had a type of flexible and tough tissue to rece bones and support its body structure, and after boiling the little thing in a pot of water, the resulting aroma and taste were beyond delicious, presumably the mouse had an organ that retained high energy reserves and an organ that made sure it did not umte any waste in its flesh, as for the flesh itself, it literally melted like butter in the water leaving behind only the great taste and aroma.


    Next order of business was to lure one out and see how it reacts to the presence of adventurers and how it would react to them either being oblivious or noticing it, for this Yunan found a location that was rather well popted with mice and set up camp, he left a small bit of bait beside himself and made sure the girls were upied enough so as to not notice the mouse that came to take the bait. The first mouse took a piece and ran with it until it was discovered by Kitty''s feral sensor, it yed dead for a moment before actually dying from the stress of being watched.


    The next one died the same way, it seems that they did not hate adventurers or disliked them, the mice just were allergic to attention, one mouse however dauntlessly took both of the dead mice and their bait even though it was found out every time it made an appearance, so Yunan decided to experiment with this one, he left more bait for it and it came again to take it, Yunan found that it was giving it to other scared mice that did not dare even approach.


    After staying for the whole day and night a total of 7 mice that were more tolerant to attention showed up and worked hard as food shuttles and took every piece of bait Yunan prepared for them. By morning Yunan kept his eyes on the most peculiar one, it stayed visible and waited for Yunan to ce the next piece of bait then called another to take it away while it just looked around the camp for where Yunan was hiding all this food.


    The most peculiar one was the target of Yunan''s taming, the first step was already done with, the beast no longer shying away from Yunan and it has established a basic rapport, the rapport being that Yunan was a walking food provider that intended no harm to it or its species. With that Yunan took the next step, talking to the little critter to establish vocal familiarity. The group started moving around the forest in search of anything that would be a good addition to the garden. Yunan made sure to warn the little one from possible danger as it followed behind openly, it even made some squeals demanding some food, Yunan did not oblige it every time it squealed but he still made sure to offer it food now and then, meanwhile he was purposefully walking into dangerous territory where if the mouse followed, it needed to be very close to Yunan and his fellows to escape the predators residing in the forest, 3 dayster the mouse was sitting on Yunan''s shoulder enjoying treats and getting fatter. It has realised very quickly that safety was in being the closest to Yunan because no matter how much killing intent was directed at the man he didn''t even flinch, let alone drop and die, making the little mouse braver in seeking shelter with Yunan even though he was the centre of attention.


    Yunan spent the next week teaching the silver mouse how to recognize vocals signals like hide, ore or eat and wait and other basic signals, and the mouse was very good at learning, by the end of the week Yunan could tell it to sit on the head of a predator the mouse would have died at the mere mention of before this point in time.


    with that Yunan found out that these mice were not cowardly by nature it was only they have evolved into beings that rejected the adrenaline rush, whether it was fear, excitement or anything, these little mice were born to be pacifist and they have been for so long that they would overdose on adrenaline from simple daily encounters, but those who survived a near-death encounter became more tolerant and hence this mouse that could be very well trained, and the obvious results for such brave mice was hunting and capture resulting in the silver mice bing more and more cowardly with each generation because the brave ones are usually hunted by adventurers before they could pass on their brave genes.


    The mouse was currently getting used to Sapphira and Drogon, neither would present any harm and therefore Yunan made the mouse y with them making both of them show off their powers to it by scaring Predators and hunting and gathering food for the cute mouse. As the mouse grew more and more rxed in the group and was integrated well, it was time for Yunan toplete the quest and get his reward, although only two weeks were spent, Yunan being himself wanted to get paid for his hard work even if he was getting a very cute and brave little mouse it was not good for his future as a mercenary if he refused payment for a finished quest.

 Chapter 208: Quest giver

    Chapter 208: Quest giver


    After sending the girls back home, Yunan made his way to the guild branch building with Sapphira sitting on top of his head and the Silva the silver mouse sitting on top of the cat''s head, he told the employee he was here to finish a quest.


    The employee took a look at the quest then looked at Yunan as if she was looking at an idiot, at least he could try to lie better if he wanted to get a freepletion fee, although she has been an employee for the guild for a long time she never see someone as shameless as him walking into the building with a cat on his head and reporting aplishing a quest that is harder to do than arrive at the 40th floor.


    Yunan saw the odd look the employee gave him and wanted to ask about it but then a thought urred to him, she might have missed the silver fur ball sitting on a silver cat and attributed it to a strange breed of exotic cats that had some kind of fur crown on their heads. So he lifted his palm upward and the furball jumped down from Sapphira''s head, the mouse made a squealing noise as it rolled around on the palm. "This is Silva and he is my proof ofpleting the quest, it''s hard to see on the cat so it is normal for you to miss it, now can you please finish the paperwork, I want to get paid".


    The clerk almost jumped out from her skin when she noticed that the furball was actually the coveted silver mouse, she quickly got busy not daring to dy any longer, catching a silver mouse was nothing but easy, however getting to sit on your cat was on the other end of the spectrum, many beast trainers did, in fact, tame the beast but apart from themselves and few others the mice would die if put into contact with outsiders, the silver mice did not live long enough before killing themselves if they were exposed to a high number of people, and they did not live long enough for them to get used to crowded ces, let alone other animals.


    It did not take long before the paperwork was done and the clerk made an appointment with Yunan to return after a week to meet with the quest givers, and fulfil thest requirements of the quest, a public showing. Afterwards, Yunan returned home and called his friends toe over and get Silva used to crowded ces, it was a brave little thing, even if it was scared senseless, it still calmed down itself by running to Yunan or Sapphira and Drogon to rx before bravely exploring the new environment or the new people.


    And as you might guess, Leader and Fae were instantly love-struck, Dustan and Balin wanted to skin the little thing because it looked so soft, Reina and Lucian were ssified as a friend by Sliva soon after introduction as for bai, he was a risk zone that Silva avoided at all costs, even Leol got to touch the mouse while bai was the only one left out, ording to Sapphira, the mouse was not afraid of Bai but being close to Bai was like walking besides the body of a sleeping snake, it might bite and it might not, and Silva was not taking that risk.


    Eventually, after a full week of slow and steady steps Bai got to feed Silva by hand, an achievement for both, but it would take a bit longer for them to actually touch and y together. Bai was so happy about it that he told Yunan it was his turn to teach Yunan and that the lesson was about being a rogue, it was the third special training he got on this dungeon but he feared how far Bai would go, because even holding back, Bai was a monster to deal with.


    Yunan left for his appointment with the quest giver and the showing of the tame silver mouse. He soon arrived at the guild branch to meet a young servant who introduced himself as the representative of the quest giver and was there to verify the existence of the tamed silver mouse, Yunan simply spread open his palm and let Silva step out from his sleeve, he decided it was a bad idea to show off Sapphira or Drogon because they would bring much more attention than Yunan was ready for.


    After taking a closer look and confirming thepletion of the quest, he invited Yunan to meet his master and his master''s guests to showcase the mouse, Yunan nodded asking him to lead the way. It didn''t take the two long as they flew across the established base towards a rather fancy looking ce that was made out of many residential blocks and renovated to look like a hanging pce amidst hanging gardens, it was a picturesque view that gave one the impression they were walking into the gardens of Eden instead of the living ce of a mortal being.


    The servant led Yunan to the inner courtyard, probably the one where the master of the house lived, and contrary to the outer look of the pce this courtyard was humble and simple looking, a 3-meter wall surrounding a pond and small cabin beside the pond. Outside of the pond was a middle-aged woman and a little child in her arms, the woman looked majestic in a simple blue gown that covered her from neck to toe, it did not stick to her body and did not entuate her form, it was as modest as Mother Theresa''s own clothes.


    The child her arms was a five or a six-year-old girl, she looked at the colourful fishes as they swam in the pond with fascination and only spared Yunan a nce before returning her attention to the fishes yfully swimming as if they knew she was watching them, she looked like cute miniature of the woman with twin pigtails and a fluffy pink dress.

 Chapter 209: Taking action

    Chapter 209: Taking action


    The servant left silently after leading Yunan who did not interrupt the silent and gentle atmosphere, so he bowed with the grace drilled into him by Fae, the woman nodded gently and gestured to a sitting pillow beside her, Yunan obliged her and took a seat there.


    After a few silent minutes Yunan brought out both Sapphira and Silva to relieve his boredom, he was a guest and unless the middle-aged woman spoke he would not say a thing, if she was not the master of the house, then he just needed to wait for them to arrive, and for the time being he thought he could pass the time by ying with Silva and Sapphira, who were getting on very well for predator and prey, Yunan also made sure to ask the genie of the house to scan and memorise the fishes in the pond and add them to the aquarium once encountered in the future.


    The little girl soon switched her eyes onto Yunan and his pets who were wrestling with his hand on hisp, although Yunan felt her stare he did not raise his head and kept his eyes on the cat and mouse trying to trap his hand and stop it from petting and cuddling with them. Silva was first to put his attention on the little girl, while Sapphira ignored herpletely, the glint in the little girl''s eyes was like a ma for the mouse, it looked at her with interest but kept its distance, it was not yet ready to y with her yet.


    Yunan telepathically instructed Sapphira to slowly go closer to the little kid and see how she would react to her, and by extension reduce the anxiety of Silva who was now sitting on Yunan''s shoulder and trying not to get too stressed out and die, although it was used to the presence of adults, children were a new concept and they were as stressful as any new being Silva met, so instead of associating the children with adults it treated them as a new creature.


    The woman looked at Yunan with interest as she kept the child in her embrace, although this wordless situation might be suffocating for others, it was good for everyone currently in the room, Silva would be much more stressed if the strangers were talkative and Sapphira was trying to get closer to a child and silence helped the child focus on her and keep from doing sudden actions that might trigger an rming response. It went well and good as Sapphira sessfully got the attention of the little girl and got her to pat her with the most excited look Yunan had ever seen, and he had seen orphans around sweets.


    All that built up atmosphere went down the drain as a servant barged into the courtyard with a frightened expression, that prompted Yunan to immediately send Silva and Sapphira home and cautiously waited for the servant to talk as he was fixed with a deadly re by thedy who then said with a t voice "speak". Yunan could see the frantically beating heart of the servant beat faster after he heard his master in fact it beat so hard that he could not even breath properly let alone say anything, out of pity Yunan cast a calm spell on him that helped him regain hisposure and he finally said "the young master has been brought back with grievous wounds and a festering poison, the healers have all been unable to reverse the damage and they doubt he would survive the night, the healer from the guild arrived with him and gave the same diagnosis, the poison is resistant to magic and it is undoing all the healing, currently they are trying to keep the young master alive as long as possible so that the guild can summon a poison master and non-magical healers, however they rmend master to attend in case they are unsessful".


    Yunan immediately sent out his maximum output scan and then after locking onto a target he sent Drogon like a shadow with one order "bring me some honey", after that he brought out Kitty and Ophelia, and called to Anne to stay in contact he gave Kitty and Sapphira the task of keeping the little girl upied and said with a firm and resolute voice "please lead us there, me and my healer may be able to help, with haste, we have no time to spare", the now calmer servant immediately teleported Yunan, Ophelia and the middle-aged woman to a room full of pungent miasma, the foul nature of the poison had spread to the healers and started affecting them as well.


    Yunan was not the kind of guy who would save someone he had no rtionship with, he might save an outsider on a whim but that was very unlikely, what spurred his actions was the look the middle-aged woman had as she heard the news, it was one Yunan has seen countless times and did not care to see one more time. It was the look of a worried mother that has just thought she would lose her child; he had seen that look too many times for a single lifetime.


    Without dy Yunan used mana shield to iste the section of the house that has been infected and as well as the infected people, he telepathically sent orders to all the infected people in the vicinity to find a room and stay together and wait for their turn to be saved they were told not to use mana because it would only aggravate the poison, at the same time Ophelia started screaming orders at the healers to stop using mana and cease hastening the death of the patient, the poison used mana to multiply and they were feeding it more with each spell they cast to the point it became a miasma, although the healers ignored her, Yunan just held her back and teleported the healers to where the other infected were gathered and cast on them a continuous spell break and mana Syphon to prevent the spread of the poison any more.

 Chapter 210: Magical surgery

    Chapter 210: Magical surgery


    After dealing with everyone in the room Yunan used his toxicology to absorb and store all the poison in the mana shield he had established, all the poison was stored inside Dragonification, the most suitable container since it had the istion effect active as well. After that Yunan proceeded to absorb all the poison out of the young master while Ophelia was checking the wounds along with Anne who was in the midst of a fight along with Debauchery but had enough time to look at the visual feed sent by Yunan and Ophelia.


    "There is a poison nd that is sitting under his heart, although I have sucked away all the mana he has it is taking the regenerated mana before my syphon detects it, do you think it is okay to remove it?" Yunan provided an ultrasound body imaging and another 3-dimensional presentation of the whole body as he could see it, including the wounds and the venom nd.


    Ophelia and Anne talked in Unison "we have to kill him, remove the nd and a piece of the heart before returning him to life within 4 hours", at this point Ophelia stopped talking and started listening, she had the theoretical knowledge but the practical part was left for her master. "First things first, sterilise the room, yourselves and the equipment, next reduce the body temperature below 34 but higher than 30 degrees, open the chest cavity and cause heart failure, best if you use something that will immediately stop the heart without causing nerve or muscle damage"


    "Make sure your patient will not wake up during this part or he will die from shock, this artificial death can be restored at any moment so please take care, anyway, remove the heartpletely and use regeneration to create a new one, the new heart will not start beating thanks to the cold body, so slowly raise the body temperature and wake the new heart with an electric shock. Then close all the wounds after making sure there are no damages to the blood cirction and no organ failure".


    Yunan took the lead and cast an ice field around the young master and used it to keep the body temperature stable at 32 degrees, next Ophelia opened the chest cavity while Yunan directly Froze the heart and the nd attached to it to 100 degrees below zero just in case, he also made sure the young master was under the effect of the sleep spell while he was doing that, next Ophelia generously cut from the blood vessels and tendons keeping the heart in ce, after She removed the heart, Yunan did another scan to confirm there was no more poison in the body, meanwhile Ophelia told the genie to keep this heart in a preserved state for future studies making sure to keep it in a contained environment.


    Yunan then coordinated with Ophelia and regrew a new heart, restarted it made the necessary repairs to the damaged body before sealing the wounds and removing all scar tissue, and then they put the patient inside a honey bath brought back by Drogon to filter out the things they could not manually remove like blood and small remains of the broken flesh.


    "Leave him in this bath for 3 hours, when he wakes up, immediate burn the resulting bath water" Yunan ordered Drogon to keep an eye on the young master to both protect against traitors and the secret of the honey. After that he turned to the middle-aged woman who was in stunned state from witnessing the way Yunan and Ophelia healed her son, Yunan tapped on her shoulder to wake her up and said with aforting voice "he is as good as new, make sure the trains slowly and not push his new heart or he might die from it, now let him rest, you can stay beside him, my familiar will keep you safe".


    Yunan took Ophelia back inside the house for cleaning and a change of clothes before returning to Kitty and Sapphira who were in the middle of making the little girlugh until her breath was short and her face flush red From joy and excitement, Yunan took over the girl and told her to be quieter if she wanted to see the silver mouse, the girl immediately stopped all noise and sat on hisp like an obedient little girl but her heart was beating all the same from excitement and anticipation, Yunan brought out Silva and had him sit on her head, the girl resisted with all your might the urge to move and try to touch the mouse on her head, so to reward her Yunan cast a calm spell on Silva before telling it to change location from her head to her shoulder then to her open palms.


    The girl was squealing from happiness when she saw Silva rolling around on her palm, as it furiously rubbed its fur on the skin only to feel softer than a cloud, as the calm spell started to fade, both the little girl and Silva were getting calmer and gentler in their actions, not long after the girl has fallen asleep in Yunan''s embrace while holding the mouse to her chest like the most precious treasure in the world.


    Yunan stayed in the pond chatting with Kitty and Sapphira until Drogon returned withdy of the house who looked much better than when he left her and had an apologetic look on her face "this is a ce of silence and calm, you happened to arrive in the time I bring my daughter here to teach her to calm her emotions and focus her mental energy, I apologize for not saying anything during your stay, as for thanking you for saving my son, I will leave that to my husband when he returns, he should arrive by nightfall, please excuse our mistake for bringing you here without much information."


    "Don''t bother, it is not like I was busy or anything, besides I think I wasted all the training you have given your daughter, she has yed enough to fall asleep in the arms of a stranger, so call it even" Yunan had a soft spot for sincere people, he always found himself going out of his for them, because they reminded him of his mother and through their sincere actions and words he felt rted to them, although Yunan prided himself on his straightforward personality he never called himself a sincere one, nor will he ever do so, because he simply did not have that kind mindset they have innately in them.

 Chapter 211: Countdown to death

    Chapter 211: Countdown to death


    Yunan sent away Kitty and told Ophelia to carefully start examination of the corrupted heart, he knew something was not right when Anne changed her mind from removing a piece of the heart to fully removing it, therefore he wanted Ophelia to examine the heart, he made sure the genie took all the possible actions to ensure the poison does not spread and keep Ophelia safe while she did her experiments.


    And as a precaution, he kept a visual feed open in his mind so as to keep an eye and see the results, as well as instruct Ophelia to change the path of her experiments if he noticed something or had an idea that might be of help. Thedy of the house had taken her daughter back and was cradling her with sweet tenderness, while she kept silent, Yunan also did not make any noise as he knew this ce was sacred in its own way, it was the ce where the masters of the house came to rx and lose the weight on their shoulders when outside of this courtyard.


    By nightfall a servant came to the courtyard and bowed respectfully, behind him was a middle-aged man, he had a wise aura around him, he arrived with a few others and instead of finding a seat on the building they just sat on the ground around the pond resting for a moment. The first to catch sight of the silver mouse was a youngerdy who gasped before remembering where she was and sped her hands on her mouth.


    The wizened old man sighed and looked at his sleeping little girl "well silence has been broken here today and the calm washed away with yfulughter, I have to say my thanks, that little child doesn''tugh as much as she used to" thedy of the house flushed, thinking she would be considered a failure of a mother by her guests but she certainly didn''t expect that Yunan would fish her out with a few words.


    "It''s that age where kids are curious, if you want her tough more get her to be curious and then give her the object of her curiosity to y with" the present guests nodded in approval while the master of the house chuckle "that is way we old men and women have no business raising children, we barely understand them at all, leaving that aside, you have sessfullypleted your mission, and your mouse is better trained than my highest hopes, truly wonderful, it seems my wife''s intuition is still as good as it was".


    "I just got lucky I found a survivor, luck was all there was to it, as for taming it, well it just joined the family while we were on a pic so nothing I did was of influence" Yunan downyed his involvement in the taming of Silva because he did not want to have a ton of these quest sent to him, not until he makes a few hundred brave mice in his garden that can be sold or gifted.


    "Well luck is part of strength, here is your reward" the master of the house handed Yunan a ring, Yunan did not even check it contents, which gained the approval of the wizened man " I wish to purchase information from you before you leave" he said to Yunan as he sat down beside him "you ask for the price depending on the value of the information to you", Yunan nodded and replied respectfully "please ask, if it is not something too jig I do not mind giving you the information".


    "Tell me about the girl, the poison, and the spells you used during the time you killed my son", "I would like the information about the fishes in the pond in return, all I need is where to find them and how to capture them". "Deal". Yunan took a breath before projecting the scene where Ophelia and Anne were both working on the corrupted heart.


    "Those two are Anne and Ophelia, Anne is thest master of the healing arts before mana took the world and Ophelia is her apprentice, and my personal healer. The spells I used were not veryplicated but integrating them is the hardest part, I used mana shield to iste the locations where the poison had spread to due to carelessness from the healers like blood stains and what not, I used absorb toxin to suck in all the poison into the mana shield and isted it inside a special container, I used teleport and mana syphon to keep the infected from aggravating the issue, luckily there was only a single source and the poison was cleansed from every ce except for your sons heart, it had a venomous nd stuck to it and corrupted it, it absorbed mana from his mana core to keep spreading the poison and the corruption to the rest of the body"


    "I used ice field to lower the temperature of the body so it doesn''t die while the heart is removed, and we froze the heart and the infected area around it effectively killing your son, then we used regeneration to recreate a new functioning heart, then we returned the body to normal and healed the wounds before cleansing the sleeping body in a special solution to remove anything that we missed like dead blood and tissue we are unable to remove manually".


    "How marvelous, killing the heart to heal the body, i fear only those who are insane can think and experiment with such a technique and the fact that it works is beyond myprehension, nheless you have sessfully healed my son and for that you have my thanks, as for your price, those fishes are something I found while in the 47th floor and brought back all of them, I wonder what you need them for". " I have a rather delightful aquarium and they looked like a nice addition, thanks for the information and keep your son from moving too excessively or do any kind of strenuous exercise, until the new heart is used to the body, things like fighting, and anger as well as lust and sex are out of the question for at least 3 months, small exercises that do not lead to fatigue are eptable during that period, after the three months, ease him back into hard exercises"


    As soon as Yunan finished his words a bellow came from outside the courtyard "who do you think you are to tell me what to do and not do" the young master entered the courtyard with fury spilling out of his eyes and his face flushing red Yunan looked at him and simply counted "6, 5, 4, 3,...and now you die from not listening" the young master gripped his chest before turning blue and falling face first

 Chapter 212: Dying thrice

    Chapter 212: Dying thrice


    Yunan sighed and sat there while the other doctors who were following the young master scrambled like headless chicken failing at healing him back to life because his heart had stopped, and 5 minutester, they announced the young master dead.


    After the healers gave up Yunan walked to the body, put his hand on the location of the heart, injected it with a dose of adrenaline he got from Ophelia, and then performed a heart and lungs resuscitation with a bit of magical help, he used telekinesis to make the heart and lungs pump, a periodic electric jolt to revive the heart and finally ayer of healing magic to cover up the mess of multiple spells. With traceless casting, Yunan was very sure no one would sense his spells if he purposely showed a visible healing spell.


    40 secondster the young master woke up from death to hear the words "if you get your heart rate up you are going to die, I only gave this one extra chance in case you didn''t believe me, next time you die, it will be unsalvageable and permanent, this is your second death, and the god of death does not take kindly to dodging death too many times, enjoy your third chance at life" with that Yunan left the young man to his mother and returned to his seat.


    "Can you please let me know why he could not be saved if this happens again before his new heart is strong enough?" The master of the house has skipped the part about apologizing for his son and immediately asked about why he could not be saved which peeved Yunan a little bit, but he still answered calmly. "To rebuild his heart, I had to use a spell that rebuilds lost flesh, and I had the original heart as a temte for the new one, add in the fact that there were two of us who cooperated on creating the heart; both of us have enough knowledge about non magical healing to make it possible, as for why he could not be saved, well he has a new heart that must be treated as the heart of an unborn fetus, and this incident has already damaged it"


    Yunan looked at the young master trying to get a grasp on reality "if by chance the heart of an newborn which has already been pumping for three months get over excited it will stop, how do you think the heart that just started beating less than 4 hours ago will take to stress, therefore I told you to keep him from any amount of stress, but now the new heart is already damaged, it is like your child being born with a defective heart, making the recovery period extend to a full year without stimtion, he also can not take food that is high in mana nor can he walk or stand up for more than 30 minutes per 24 hours".


    Yunan kept the bullshit streaming because he knew there was no expert in the field that knew as much as he did currently so it was his way of revenge. " To put it in a fewer words, he can eat food from above the 10th floor but never below, he cannot stand from bed or walk for more than 30 minutes, he must not hold in his waste or excrements, he must not meet sexual stimtion, he must not talk or enter arguments, he must not do any activity that can raise his heart rate for at least 6 months before starting to walk an hour a day and meet and talk to other people, finally he must start by basic small exercises after the first year for at least 2 more years to avoid any furtherplications, however, if he is continuously stimted, well that only shorten how long his frail heart willst and if he gets into something too stressful, then it bes about whether the heart is still in one piece at the time of death".


    There was a nugget of truth in Yunan''s words and the experts sent by the guild immediately referred to Anne as the only one currently known to be able to rebuild a heart and she was too entric even the guild disliked having contact with her, if it was not for her or death scenarios no adventurer in the 70th floors would ept her treatment. The fact that Yunan was working with the apprentice of Anne was something to be considered a blessing for the household.


    The master of the house asked Yunan to stick around for dinner but he declined, he only asked for his silver mouse and was about to leave when thedy of the house asked if she could contact Yunan and where he lived, Yunan told her that it is almost impossible to get hold of him unless one left a message at the guild, as for emergency contact, it was best to contact Debauchery party through the guild since only they could contact him at all times.


    The poor woman had her worst feare true even before Yunan left; a scream resounded in the pce, lo and behold, the young master did not listen to instructions and vo he was dead, once again, this time before thedy could beg for her son''s life, the master gave Yunan and order "revive him" and that made Yunan feel like it was time to teach both a lesson in thanking your saviour. Yunan obliged but this time he made sure to weaken the already weak heart so that the young master would never live like human again.


    Before leaving the master of the pce gave him a token that can summon him to the pce, however, Yunan said something that made the man shake with rage. "Pay me for saving his life, the first time I saved because I hated the look his mother had, the second time I saved him because he didn''t understand the consequences, the third time was ordered by yourself, therefore you must pay the fee". The man looked livid and said while spitting out his words at Yunan "do you know who I am?".

 Chapter 213: Helping the guild out

    Chapter 213: Helping the guild out


    Yunan didn''t show unsatisfaction nor any negative emotions, he simply looked bored "you are the man that owes me three lives, pay me for the only one you asked for, that should not be too hard right, if you n on not paying then excuse me but I have wasted enough time on this matter already". The man started frothing from the corners of his mouth as his blood boiled, he aimed a strike at Yunan but failed to connect. At that point, Yunan just disappeared from sight leaving behind a few horrible words "I shall return the poisonous heart I got from your sonter on, and you will owe me for three lives, think about paying it soon or you will regret it".


    Yunan returned home and found Kitty already anxiously striding along the living room, he was really annoyed at this family and decided to know about it soon, but for now he went to theboratory to find Ophelia and Anne wrapping up with their experiments, they have produced an antidote and kept the heart in a rather good shape, only the nd was damaged and it was slightlyrger than before, it has reced the tissue taken by the duo from the heart itself.


    Come morning Yunan went to the guild and bought the avable information about the hanging pce. He was a bit surprised by what he read. The pce belongs to a prestigious family that was once highly regarded by adventurers for the aid it gave to those who pass by the 40th floors, it did not take long for self-important people from that family to appear and now, it was a smug family of braggarts who call themselves the royals of the 40th floor and use the past glory to brag some more even though none of thest 6 generations made it to the 50th floor, the current master of the house and the young master were especially drunk on that madness. However, thedy of the pce was a kind woman who by no right should have been part of that family.


    They are also known for shirking payment on quests and other misdeeds against the adventurers they meet in the lower floors, the guild never dealt with them simply because they never made too big of a raucous and never broken too many rules, and they did all their dirty deeds secretly, however, their smug intolerable nature was known to all who took the chance to ask about the 40th floors.


    Since he was already there Yunan made a small chest and cast an istion spell on it and put the corrupted heart inside and sent it back to the hanging pce through the guild, he made sure to exin to the guild employee that this package was dangerous and not to be opened, it had a heart in it as well as a very aggressive mana absorbing poison, he also added a note for the hanging pce telling them it was the heart and that it was dangerous to break the istion spell, he even made the guild employee his witness on the letter and the item on the box.


    Yunan was banking on the hanging pce family''s arrogant and insufferable nature to let them know the pain of being annihted. As for the time being he only had to wait for the urgent summons from the guild, he decided to spend this time redecorating the units he took for residence, simply because it might take a few decades to leave this ce and he needed a ce to get his messages delivered, Yunan also felt like he needed servants and decided he could hire some from the guild or buy from them.


    It didn''t take long for Yunan to be summoned, in fact it took much less time than he expected, whoever it was that received the heart in a chest had not only opened the chest they also broke the istion spell and gave the heart enough mana to spread so much poison he had to be summoned. This time the summon came from the guild in the form of a quest, to iste the spread of the poison, it mentioned nothing about saving lives since Yunan was known to have differences with the family to the point he returned to them the source of the quarrel without finishing the creation of a cure, it said a lot about someone who would stop looking for a cure and send you the poison he himself took the initiative to try dealing with.


    When Yunan arrived the hanging pce was almost in a fog of poisonous miasma, Yunan made his mana shield integrated with istion to keep the poison from feeding off of the mana shield, for the guild employees who were there; the mana shield was too impressive, it even had an ess point where the healers and poison masters coulde and go in their attempts to clear up the poison.


    Since Yunan''s quest was containment he did nothing other than set up the shield and the entry point and it didn''t take long before a new quest was issued for him, remove the miasma, they thought if they asked him to get rid of the poison entirely he would refuse and they were very correct about that assumption, Yunan added absorb toxin to the mana shield and a wind spell to push the miasma towards the shield. It only took Yunan minutes to do what many poison masters could not even start to deal with, thus increasing his review with the guild, next Yunan made a voluntary effort and gave the guild workers some hazmat suits as a gesture of goodwill to the guild, after all, they made two quests just for him, when they could have just made him one quest that said help the guild and abused it. Therefore Yunan was appreciative of the workers who were treating him with extra care and gave him such differential treatment.


    After putting on the hazmat suits the workers went inside to fish out the surviving people in the house, Yunan knew too well that only 5 are left alive, the rest were all dead and festering already, a woman and her little girl, the master and two of his friends, they were all brought up to the entrance point of the shield where they were barred from leaving, Yunan said that all of them were carrying the poison and as it was his job to contain the poison he would not let them leave unless they were clean, that caught the guild workers off guard because the master of the pce imed that none of them were infected, to prove his im Yunan simply sucked some of the poison from their bodies and it was very visible to witness.

 Chapter 214: What is life worth to you

    Chapter 214: What is life worth to you


    With irrefutable evidence, the guild workers immediately distanced themselves from the five, even if they wore the protection of the hazmat suits they didn''t take any chances with a poison as foul as this one.


    Yunan had previously removed the poison from the guild workers as they entered and left the shield so they thought it was a property of the shield, but now that they saw this scene they knew that its true function was to block the poison while it was Yunan who cleansed the crew, therefore they could not by any stretch, ask Yunan to cleanse his enemies especially after all that he suffered from them.


    If the guild asked of Yunan to cleanse them he would do so, but he would pose harsh restrictions for doing the quest, but they did not, the delegate from the guild was torn apart between saving lives and losing the young talented man thanks to a bunch of ungrateful bastards. So they made the only choice they saw can keep the guild in good graces with Yunan and save the lives of the useless family.


    "Sir, you are currently the only one capable of helping them survive, otherwise they would die before the toxicologists from the lowest floors can arrive, we have no right to ask you to save them, but we would like to know what it would take to save them, you can name any and all conditions that you think must be fulfilled, and we will do whatever we can to save as many of them as possible".


    "Thank you but that is not necessary, I only require an answer from them, that is all" the delegate was rather politically savvy, taking into consideration too many factors, although Yunan could be persuaded easily due to his personality, the delegate opted for the best option for everyone. Yunan looked at the 5 and asked the master of the house first "who do you want to live and what are you willing to offer me in return for their lives?".


    "I want all of us to survive, and I can pay any price amoner like you can ask for, whether its beautiful women, riches or evennd and houses, whatever you want I can give you" the answer made Yunan snicker, he was thought of as amoner, therefore, he must ask for whatmoners want most "I want to trade ancestry, from today onwards you can never call yourself part of the hanging pce household and I be the master of the house". The man looked like he was going to erupt from rage but said patiently "That is impossible, however, I can adopt you into the household and that would give you the same benefits".


    "Fine" Yunan nodded and asked the next in line, the female retainer, "what about you?", "I can offer you my body and that of my daughters and granddaughters to use at will for the next year, our household is made of only the most beautiful females with the most enchanting bodied, it is worth the lives of the five of us", "fine" Yunan answered, she was trying to cheat him, she was the only survivor because everyone else was dead, and she wanted to use a technicality to make a fool of him, well such lies were a daily thing when Yunan was training under Debauchery, it was not a lie or any form of deception, it was just a technicality that happens to be cheating.


    The next retainer also made something along the line of offering the pleasures of life, like both of the two who went before him, and Yunan only response was "fine", next was the woman carrying her child and shielding her. "Who do you want to be saved and what can you offer me?". There was no hesitation in the woman, she did not even take a moment to consider.


    "I want to save my daughter, I will offer my life in return" Yunan countered he argument with a rather obvious w "your life is going to be too short, I must save you as well if I wanted to make use of you, so find another price". The woman looked lost for a moment before saying "I can only offer you my gratitude then, my daughter''s life can not be measured by treasure or services if my life is not enough I have nothing but gratitude". Yunan teleported the woman and daughter outside of the shield and cleansed both of them before patting the woman on the head "you did good, truly, you passed the test, life is not measured by valuables" he then gestured to a guild worker toe and care for the woman.


    Thedy of the pce has given up on her husband and his retainers and even he son long ago, she knew they were too far gone in their madness, however her daughter was a gentle kid that has yet to live and be a disappointment, so she chose to give her daughter away, maybe she can grow into something this family has forgotten. When she heard what Yunan said she was very thankful for him, he exchanged two lives with nothing, and she knew it was her personality and sense of worth that got him to rescue both.


    The guild delegate was rather smart and got the gist of it, so he asked Yunan one question "sir, might there be a way to save the three as well?". Yunan nodded "if they sign a binding magical contract that states they would give up all their assets, bank ounts,nds ves, and everything they own; to this gentledy over here, as well as sign another contract to work as aids for the guild in helping the adventurers for the next 100 years, their pay will be given to the guild to support adventurers and they are only entitled to the same meals all other guild employees have, they can not make money nor can they takend during that period, any fortune they make os to be transferred to thisdy and if she does not survive the duration to her daughter and their bloodline, if that contract is signed I will save them."


    The delegate immediately barked his orders to write the magical binding contract, he was willing to save them even at such hard conditions, simply because the guild would benefit from the deal more than any other, this made him also note that the cruel man Yunan was not that cruel after all, if he tormented his enemies for such a long period of time he would rather have them be of use than be his ves, a rather admirable thing to do for an enemy, and what he did for the enemy wife and offspring was not something you might encounter in a lifetime or two.

 Chapter 215: End of the incident

    Chapter 215: End of the incident


    If you ask a rich person who was born in riches and had a high sense of worth, what would their lives be worth, they would give different answers to different people, the answer is always what the questioner values most.


    If however they were asked by someone they deemed as an equal the answer is always the same no matter how many entitled rich sons you ask, nothing can pay for my life, the universe itself is nothing but dustpared to me. That is how self-important people think about their own value, even though they could die to a mosquito bite or a thorn prick, they think they are beyond the concept of worth.


    And when three such people are presented with 100 years of torment; that is what they think offering aid without pay is; they would consider death to be a release, they would hesitate, they would try to bargain, they would even try to kill themselves but in the end they would not be able to help themselves from seeking life for the next opportune moment to rise again and return to their seats of power. However for people in their ages who are going to be doing nothing but menial tasks and be malnourished an mistreated their lifespans gained from extremely high Constitution would dwindle as their Constitution dwindles from the prolongedck of training and challenge, they might even die before the end of the term in the contract if they kept the mental stress from losing their lofty positions and being reduced to daydreaming about how they would rise again, it was a death trap, and the best case scenario is leaving the guild as old men with nothing, they would be weak and cripples before they could make enough money to pay for a nursing home and they will suffer being the kind of poor, dirty and dishevelledmoners they despised the most.


    The delegate of the guild might have seen through the first part of making use of their miserable unsalvageable lives, and he was correct but he did not look deep enough to understand what 100 years of menial service meant, ordinary humans die 50 years earlier from doing the same and they are happy and content and stressless, if the metric was applied with the added stress these three will umte, their life spans of 10 thousand years would reduce to a measly 200 or even less, and if you factor in the degradation in Constitution, well them surviving the next 50 years would make Yunan apud their tenacity.


    Well as expected the three took enough time to start coughing blood from the effects of the poison before they signed the contract, after which they were saved by Yunan and the other healers, and as expected their first action was to attack Yunan who simply dodged them like the gue, while conversing with the delegate "if I make aint about being attacked by servants of the guild what happens?". The delegate thought for a moment then said "you would get apensation depending on the level of difort caused and they would face reduced meals and increases in workload and work time depending on the inconvenience caused by them, so if they actually harm you I would say about 3 years worth of one meal per day and 20 hours of daily work".


    That brought the three to a halt, next they targeted the gentledy and her daughter begging and pleading for her to buy their contract, using their money and whatever else it took, even if she had to sell both her body and her daughter''s, the wrong thing to say to any mother. The gentldy bowed gratefully to Yunan and was about to leave when a silver mouse appeared on her shoulder, she took it and passed it to her still sleeping daughter. As a mother, she would not let her daughter witness the destruction of her n as well as the horrible scene that was left behind inside the pce.


    The delegate asked Yunan if he could deal with the corpses left in this ce and the rest of the contamination, to which Yunan answered affirmatively, he also made a deal with the delegate when everyone was far away, he told him to use his ount to buy the hanging pce from the gentledy because she seemed like she would sell it at the first chance. He made sure to send thedy and her daughter two pieces of Stargazer jewellery as an apology for breaking apart the family, as for the hanging pce, if she sold it to Yunan he wanted the guild to use it as an inn or a service hub where some of the profits would be put into an ount for the little girl, a contingency n to keep her sustained if the mother made some financial mistakes.


    He also paid a hefty sum to remove the stain of the hanging pce from the little girl and her mother, he didn''t want them to be influenced by the bad reputation of the old family, especially since most of them died and the living where in no position to go against the events of today, making it possible for the two to live happy long lives in the bosom of luxury.


    Dealing with this mess brought Yunan back to the world of the living in a very harsh way, he was so focused on the dungeon and getting stronger, that he almost forgot, that there was no danger against him or the ones who were close to him, even the gods could not be counted as a danger because it was beyond his ability no matter what he did, unless he gained the chance to ascend, he is as safe as could be in his private self-sufficient pocket dimension, where he and his family and friends and beloved ones can live for eternity without trouble, this idea brought a sense of loss and purposeless feeling to Yunan.


    That slump onlysted a few days before he heard something from Fae "life is best without purpose, you can make your purpose every moment, and you can fulfil your dreams every day, your dreams can go from something as small as having lunch to as big as ascending, if the dream got too big, change it, you have nothing that would stop you, you make your own purpose in life, the rest is just useless drivel"

 Chapter 216: The 41st floor

    Chapter 216: The 41st floor


    After leaving a slump caused by a sense of worth loss, Yunan was ready to continue the exploration of Tartarus, however, this time his end goal was to simply reach the 100th floor and meet the heart of Tartarus, something that only one other mortal could do since Tartarus was built and its exploration began after the catastrophe.


    First order of business was as always going to the guild branch to look for messages or quests that he could do while he was exploring the floors toe. As soon as he entered the guild reception room Yunan was greeted enthusiastically by the staff members, he was now some kind of heroic celebrity, as the guy who brought an arrogant dynasty to its knees and turned those who treated them like dirt before, into a position that even the ves of the guild were able to order them around. It was some kind of poetic justice for these ordinary employees who had nothing but their dignity and hard work to earn a living.


    The hero was almost immediately taken to meet the guild delegate as a VIP who was better served by the delegate personally, even if Yunan himself thought that dealing with the employees was far more enjoyable than dealing with the delegate. In the office of the delegate, Yunan was being treated better than the delegate himself, refreshments and sweets were brought almost as soon as Yunan sat down, his mail and the relevant quests that were issued for him were brought momentster, there was even an employee who ignored the presence of the delegate so she could massage Yunan''s feet.


    It was too much of a preferential treatment but neither Yunan nor the delegate cared much about saving face, since they both knew that Yunan was not the type to be swayed by such things, thus after taking a look at his messages and quests, Yunan returned all those rted to the silver mouse and rmended they would be sent to the gentledy and her daughter to help them create contacts in the future and fully escape from the shadow of the hanging pce. As for the quests he took; one was issued to him by the guild, a private quest that was only issued to Yunan and it was about finding the source and cure of such foul and troublesome poison, Yunan gave them some of the cure Ophelia and Anne made for him, told them that it was weak to the istion spell and promised he would investigate the origin of the poison. The other quests were about finding something or the other on the next floors.


    Next came the second order of business, buying or renting workers from the guild to help around the house. The delegate immediately told Yunan that it was best to buy ves from the guild directly since it was far safer especially since Yunan had his own private residence, and in the end, they agreed on three points: first, the ves needed were gardeners, cleaners and chefs. Second they would be chosen from those who are willing to live in a private house and only are allowed to leave it when the master allows it, and third they have to be from the younger generation, since most of the residents and the guests of the houses are in their early years, it was a must that the ves would understand the masters and the guests.


    With his business in the guild over and done with Yunan took his leave and made his way to the 41st floor and he was stunned by the empty feeling of the ce, it was a literal desert with nothing but dunes and sand as far as the eye could see, the noon sun was scorching hot, the air felt dry, the sand felt like smouldering coals under his feet and theck of life was devastating to look upon, nothing can feel as empty as a desert, not even the void.


    Yunan scanned his surroundings, the floor was nice and big, with monsters of various sizes and shapes, and all of them were deadly enough, and all of them were underground, Yunan could not understand how the monsters could stand to be in the scorching sands while waiting for prey to stumble upon them. The most prominent monsters were scorpions and manticores.


    These scorpions evolved two additional pincers for greater capture and restraint ability as for the manticores, they were half man half scorpions with two tails that end in venomous nds and a stinger to deliver the poison to its victim, both were specialist in to styles of hunting, other than ambush, the scorpions would look to restrain then sting the pray before devouring it, with the manticores were armed with other weapons and could cast spells, mostly things like sandstorm, sand shift and wind coating, they focused on beating the living daylight out of their prey while only using the stinger Defensively if need be.


    Yunan was kind of happy because he could try to find the source of the poison while ying around with these scorpions and getting used to his new found power, after all, he had only used his strength only once inbat and that was far from being what he needed topletely make this power his own and understand it perfectly.


    First was testing how would his body fare against the scorpions and manticores in unarmed and unarmouredbat, and the results were significantly higher than he expected. Once Yunan manifested his Dragonborn form he could punch holes in the exoskeleton of the scorpions like it was paper, as for his own body, it could withstand the full force of the pincer but not the stab from the stingers, next was making up a strategy to defeat the scorpions and manticores as fast as possible and with least effort, and what he came up with was in addition to mana syphon Yunan would use his tail to stab the scorpions in the head the moment it emerged from hiding.


    As for the manticores, it was much easier to fight them, Yunan simply had to p his wing and literally rip its head apart from its torso achieving insta-kill on the monsters

 Chapter 217: How stupidity annihilated a clan

    Chapter 217: How stupidity annihted a n


    Dealing with as many scorpions and manticores as possible to replenish the mana stores as well as feed the armour and Yunan himself into having the attributes of the scorpions, not forgetting to map out the floor even if it was nothing but shifting sands it was worth keeping the habit.


    During his travels looking for the boss has found a two peculiar things, there was no Queen be on this floor and second there was no Putrid maw either, something that Yunan found even in the underwater floors, so he therefore very curious about what would do that role in this floor, it took him three months to reach that answer, inside a cave with a buried entrance that Yunan found by luck when he activated his sonar out of habit instead of the mana scan.


    After observing the cave for a while Yunan saw a bunch of small scorpions drilling through the buried entrance and swim through sand to the surface and returnter on with their bodies bloated like balloons from overeating, Yunan followed these scorpions and found what he was looking for, it was a sickly looking scorpion that was thrice as big as the rest but not even half as big as the smaller scorpions in the surface.


    The sickly scorpion had a very sinister looking stinger that dripped into a pool, from the pool behind it, the pool was liquid venom and it was where a very healthy looking scorpion swam and yed in tion, Yunan watched as the smaller scorpions would belch out what they had digested in front of the sickly scorpion that ate everything offered to it, while the healthy scorpion seemed to enjoy feeding on the venom pool that the sickly scorpion dripped for it.


    After careful consideration Yunan decided to go outside and look for simr nests if he found 4 more he would exterminate one of them, upon looking for the nests Yunan also came across the boss, it was also buried beneath a dune, it seems like the sands shift in this ce could even make the boss inessible and that caused much dy for many in this ce, knowing earth shift or sand shift was very much a must if one wanted to fight in this ce.


    Leaving the boss aside Yunan found many more nests of the sickly scorpion and choose one of them as his target. Once he was inside, Yunan activated his hiding ability and made sure to be as stealthy as possible, he used his feelers to spread sleeping gas around the underground cave, and every time a scorpion fell asleep he would kill it using his tail, when only the sickly and the healthy scorpions left in the next he attacked with full force killing both like judgement from the grim reaper.


    Yunan made sure to send the dead scorpions in this cave to theb as well as the pool of poison and processed to study them. The stinger of the sickly scorpion had the same nd like the one he encountered at the hanging pce however it did not create poison but instead a highly nutritious milk like drink, its sinister lookes from the fact that it was the result of digesting mostly rotten corpses and left overs left behind by the other scorpions, as for the healthy scorpions, it had no toxin nd in its stinger, even its pincers were week, however, it was full of eggs.


    It seems that the sickly scorpion would act like the worker''s bees and produce honey from the materials brought back by the soldier bees and the healthy scorpion worked like the queen,ying eggs and raising thervae. After looking at and trying a few things Yunan found how the poison nd from the hanging pce was created. It was living and lively flesh and nutrients.


    The sickly scorpion was not sick or dying, it was naturally decaying and with dead body tissues due to the effect of its diet and when Yunan put the nd in a sample of living flesh it started mutating immediately and the highly nutritious milk was now rank and foul poison. Yunan understood what happened to the young master, he must have found such a nest and after finding the effect of the substance created by the sickly scorpion, someone gave him the brilliant idea of imnting that nd into the heart, that way it has ample supply of blood and nutrients to produce the nutritious milk and inject it back directly, however, things have gone south to the point the young master fell to the attack of a scorpion resulting in such hideous wounds.


    All Of those present knew not talk about things like that, although they might attribute the sudden weakness of the young master to the nd absorbing the nutrition from his blood, thus him getting weak without proper food and never thought about such a brilliant idea would be the bane and end of the whole hanging pce. Yunan made his findings know to the guild and noted that the milk itself was still deadly for human consumption and needed filtering and much work to be considered edible, making it not worth the effort.


    The guild issued a warning to all adventurers in the desert floor to be aware of these scorpions and the futility of such action, the warning also included how to find the nests and how to avoid them. When the news reached the newly enved master of the hanging pce and his two retainers he almost went mad with grief, he had to pay this kind of price because his stupid son couldn''t help but do stupid things killing his whole n in the process.


    As part of the same transaction with the guild Yunan gave the guild a substantial amount of antibodies for the scorpion venom on the 41st floor and even though the guild did not need to buy the antidote, they still bought it simply because it was encouraging to the producers of such items to work more and better in the future.

 Chapter 218: 2 bosses 1 Chapter

    Chapter 218: 2 bosses 1 Chapter


    After handling some of the quests at hand, Yunan returned to the 41st floor to deal with the boss still burrowed under the sands.


    The boss had a bit of every monster on this floor, it had 3 scorpion tails, each stinger dripping with venom, its body was two joined entities, a scorpion with menacing pincers and on its back was a 4 armed humanoid upper body, two of its arms had scissor-like pincers while the other two held earth spears made ofpressed sand. As soon as Yunan got within range of the spear throwing the upper body rained the earth spears on him, while the lower half sped up and tried to catch Yunan in itsrge pincers.


    Upon failing this action it backed off and used its stingers to keep Yunan at bay while the upper body kept throwing spears with increased uracy with each spear. Yunan only dodged at first, he wanted to see all the boss had to offer but other than sand shift a specialised spell simr to the earth shift, it had no hidden cards, it could dive in the sand and try to ambush Yunan in a cloud of smoke and dust.


    Yunan saw all he needed and ended up using his wings to rip off the head of the humanoid upper body before diving on the lower half with ten tentacles turned into meat skewers that pinned the boss to the sand and destroyed its internal organs, Yunan used mana shield to keep the stingers from his back while he used his hand to keep the pincers under control.


    After the death of the boss, Yunan opened the chest and within it was a book about interster travelbeled " A hitchhiker''s guide to the gxy" it was a fable with nuggets of wisdom and guidance to navigate the stars and all the random possibilities that may have be reality in the endless reaches of the universe. Yunan had no idea why would he need something about interster travel, however, he still kept it in the library after reading it, he kept it besides the book named Apotheosis.


    Yunan didn''t advance to the 42nd floor because he felt like he did not gain enough from this one yet, and so he took his time hunting and eating scorpions, increasing the level of toxicology skill and gaining a few more things to sell to the guild, after a full 6 months in the desert of the 41st floor Yunan gained 3 changes from eating scorpions.


    Yunan has gained two skills, one is pincer grip, it allows him to use his hands more effectively when gripping and using grappling techniques, the second is a toxin nd that was added by his toxicology, the nd stores and creates any form of toxic chemicals Yunan hade to contact with, it also had the ability to synthesise new toxins based on the current information it has and the requirements of Yunan effectively enhancing the toxic body skill. Lastly, Yunan could turn his tail and tentacles into stingers to be more efficient in the transfer of toxins at better precision.


    After gaining thest piece of strength, Yunan headed for the 42nd floor, the denizens of this floor were all night creatures, a fox-like monster withrge ears slim bodies and wide jaws, they were blessed with wind and sand magic and were extremely fast and sneaky creatures, desert foxes or fennecs is what the ck Fate choose for their name. These creatures would eat smaller beasts like mice, scorpions and moths. The scorpion beasts are much smaller than their monster counterparts much less toxic and very docilepared to their brethren from the 41st floor.


    The fennecs were the main monsters besides the cleaning scorpions and they were extremely territorial, Yunan only had to step inside the borders to be assaulted with full power, it only served to help Yunan make a shorter work of each area and its monsters. With these Yunan used his short swords to deal with them, he was currently allowing the genie to absorb 70% of the mana in his core to store and operate the house, and he did not want to waste any mana.


    This method of training was something only Yunan and those around him can do without any risk, to drain mana from their cores to increase their natural mana capacity and mana regeneration, was a very exhausting thing to do everyday, however, with the aid of the genie there would be very little to no side effects from the constant mana drainage and thus safely growing stronger by doing nothing, therefore, since mana use was not of need inside the house he told the genie to drain all the mana from the Debauchery family, effectively helping them train in return for the mana they were not using.


    Having switched his routine from daytime to night-time, Yunan was getting more harassment for changing his lifestyle especially when it went against the schedule of everyone else, but what else could he do, he needs to finish the floor quickly and go to the next one sooner than he thought.


    Fighting the boss was a bit more trouble than it was worth, therge fennec could use a storm of wind des to protect itself and that in and of itself stirred up a cloud of dust thatter became a sandstorm, so visibility was out of the question and the erosion the sand had on the armour made Yunan call it back and endure the fight with his own skin leading to a rather fearsome looking wounds that were more painful than harmful.


    Sand was a very strong corrosive when paired with strong wind, it would relentlessly hit its target with same force millions of times each second, that is why sand erosion was an endless threat to allnds near a desert. Sand could erode a boulder in a matter of days of continuous exposure, the same would take endless years for water and rain, although skin was too supple to be destroyed by an ordinary sandstorm, what the boss provoked was something that could peel off skin and y a man in minutes. Luckily Yunan had gained a major boost to his defensive power and at worst only patches of skin were sanded off from his arms and chest and face, still, the boss dropped like all the bosses before it and it turned into Yuan''s food and fuel for greater heights.

 Chapter 219: Hunted by a rogue

    Chapter 219: Hunted by a rogue


    Another 6 months were spent on the 42nd-floor dring witch Yunan celebrated his 20th birthday, and his gift from Debauchery was a one on one session with Bai.


    Rogue training was something that Yunan feared most of all, he could take as many beatings by Dustan or Balin as they could dish out, simply because he knew they wereing, however, Bai was different, no matter what you prepare for, he will surprise you, simply because one can not be prepared for everything, and that was why Bai was scariest, he knew which things you would omit and not prepare for and that''s where he will make you suffer from.


    The duo agreed on keeping contact through themunication ring while Bai hunted Yunan in the 40th floor forest, Yunan was to apply all his hiding skills and escape techniques taught to him by Debauchery, as long as Yunan could run away from Bai he would receive information through themunication ring on rogue ss skills, it was a very tempting offer if the hunter was not Bai.


    Something that Bai excelled at was mental torture and that was his approach to hunting Yunan, he would keep him awake, he would stay close and breath down his neck, he would keep Yunan at full alert, stressed and looking over his shoulder at all times and only when he copses would Bai actually catch up and show himself ending Yunan''s misery. Or so thought Bai, a lesser man with any less determination and solidity of mind would let themselves be captured before the week was over, therefore he bet he could catch Yunan only after two weeks.


    Yunan, on the other hand, was focused on one thing; namely detection, he was not sure how he could detect Bai and ended up spending a few nights in this mindset. The running and hiding part was the easiest, the hardest was securing food and water while misleading his hunter as well as get enough rest and make sure the distance between them grew, while Bai kept pouring endless information about surviving a rogue hunt.


    "Do not rest until you know full well that you are safe, if you believe you are safe then you have lost, sleep with half an eye open and always stay alert to your surroundings no matter what. Do not waste timeying traps and misleading your hunter, it will only give them time to reach you faster"


    "Flying will help you keep the traces on the ground to a minimum but will spread your scent into a bigger region, it might be worth it if your hunter uses scent to track but ispletely useless for a hunter using mana detection or other tracking methods"


    "While being hunted do not focus on a distance or destination, focus on making the hunter feel like he can not keep up and make him think that you are not actually trying to evade him"


    "If you sessfully make the hunter think you do not care if caught, they will take more time looking for traps that do not exist, therefore sometimes making a trap now and then could catch the hunter off guard, make one trap and then make a dozen of them, change the number and theyout, make the hunter look twice at every snapped twig and foot imprint, if you make the hunter fear your traps, you can make him slow down"


    "Never fear being caught or being trapped, if you do not have enough cards to escape you will die and if you do have enough cards, being captured alive is another chance to escape after getting rest and food."


    "Never try to reverse the situation, bing the hunter only makes it easier to get caught, you are prey, and being prey is advantageous, lead the hunter to walk in circles, make them scream in frustration as they think they have been tricked into following a loop of trails, the more frustrating you are as prey the longer you survive"


    "There is a limit to how frustrating you can be as prey because there might be a hunter who will burn down a forest to smoke you out, they might sink an ind and boil the sea, so always give the hunter some false hope"


    "Keep the hunter in your detection range, eavesdrop on his conversations and if he is recruiting more hunters, make life hell for all of them, if he rests, make a few traps for him, of he feeds poison his food, if you have the capacity make the hunter sick, and make sure everyone who is recruited by him dies a miserable death"


    "You want to have a rtionship with your hunter, speak to them through clues you leave behind, even messages, know their minds and let them glimpse a bit of yours, remain an enigma that can sometimes be understood and be predictable every now and then".


    Yunan engraved every word Bai said into his memory, maybe it was half-false knowledge but it was useful knowledge nheless, this tidbit of knowledge was meant for ordinary rogues, ones that are not too smart nor too careful, it also worked as a guideline for when he was doing the hunt, and no matter how you slice it, this knowledge was something that came from years of experience and not something to be read in a book.


    Yunan was a very good student, Debauchery had first-hand experience with him and knew that he would shatter their expectations whenever he had a chance, he was learning at speeds that made Debauchery fear for their spots as teachers, because they will run out of things to teach sooner orter especially because how he learns faster when more pressure was ced on him.


    During the next three months Yunan used all his knowledge to escape Bai, and he did rather well, his first trick was to hang a piece of clothing full of sweat and scent on a ball of mana and let it roam around the 40th floor while he hid inside a tree house he made, it was inside one of thoserge trees, it waspletely isted from the outside world. That worked on Bai for only a few days before he caught the mana ball and dispersed it. The next trick was to fly to the ceiling and use spider thread to make a hammock, he used a small wind spell to deliver traces of his scent and mana to the ground without it dispersing too much and spread it in a certain radius.


    The next trick was making earth golems in his image to work and spread his tracks all over the ce, he even assembled a golem on his own body to pass by Bai unnoticed, well it took only one day before Bai was fed up and started indiscriminately destroying golems, then Yunan used earth shift to sit deep underground, even there he was found. It was a learning experience and Yunan grasped at it with both hands. If he could drive Bai to frustration, he could make any other hunter quit following him.

 Chapter 220: Vacation

    Chapter 220: Vacation


    Bai and Lucian were the happiest with the time it took Bai to find Yunan, even if he was going easy on him, Yunan had enough tricks up his sleeve to drive Bai half-mad by the end of the first month.


    Yunan used methods so childish even Bai had to skip thinking about because they were not how adventurers think at all, and that was what dyed the hunt for 3 months, it was a strength only Yunan had, he could look from outside of the room to watch the picture, he didn''t restrain himself or his imagination to a certain way of thinking, escape was not just running away or being unnoticed, sometimes being everywhere was more effective in escaping then being nowhere.


    Yunan used every bit of knowledge he got from Debauchery, starting from mental maniption to the use of the ranger ss, he was getting better at making use of all bits of information he received all his life during the hunt, and that was why Debauchery liked Yunan so much, he was not a jack of all trades, that was nothing but a step forward for him, he was a master of all trades, meaning he made all the specialisation and divergence of the sses into one ss "adventurer" if the was only one ss to master, then the small details can be omitted, an adventurer needed to be good at everything, and explorer was part of a team, a team of explorers can contain adventurers but there was no such thing as team of adventurers because the moment that team was created, specialisation would ur negating the point of the name adventurers.


    Debauchery themselves longed for being adventurers, that is why even though they were specialists they could more or less perform admirably in other sses, and seeing their student take the path they wished to take was like watching him fulfil their dream, and they loved him for it.


    Back to the rogue training, Bai was very happy and sad, not only did Yunan win every bet, he basically made bai use the techniques and power level of a level 60 explorer to find him, that is basically saying Yunan can survive any hunt by anyone below level 60 blindfolded and his hands tied behind his back, while Lucian was just happy he could see ranging used to make a rogue suffer, as for the childish methods Yunan applied, only Balin saw the wisdom in those, because leaving a bag of burning excrements behind you, can lead to so many misunderstandings that the hunter would stop acting while Yunan was working on his next trap and trick, making a golem roast food on the other side of the jungle while you eat fruit on this side is sure to make even Bai have a headache between continue to pursue or double back.


    As for Dustan, he was happy because everyone along with him lost their bets, and that he was the only one who did not bet anything worthwhile. As for Fae and Leader they were just happy seeing Yunan use everything they taught him to perfection, it was a moment of pride that only parents ought to experience.


    After the rogue training, Yunan headed took a break from the dungeon and took his friends with him to a resort beach rmended by a guild employee, who was more than happy to tell Yunan about the best vacation spots that were quiet, away from prying eyes and cost a fortune but was worth all the money. As for why Yunan chose a beach, well obviously because, the sun rays, the blue ocean can only entuate the swimsuits worn by beautifuldies, and how did Yunan who has never been to the beach know that? That would be the fault of the perverted threesome in the midst of Debauchery, who were debating whom among the current known harem of Yunan looked better with a swimsuit on.


    And the answer was a tie between leader and Luna, because mature bodies that have not felt the sting of time were more attractive to men than the young supple bodies of the younger generation, however, the childish maturity had its own sway in a swimsuit, thus Yunan ended up in heaven, although he had no preference in regards to mature body vs freshness of youth, he still enjoyed watching both sides prancing around and ying here and there, and the 5 other males might have been happy to watch too if not for the constant contact thedies had with Yunan who straightforwardly talked about the wonderful view, touched unceremoniously and even got the affectionate kiss now and then.


    It was a bliss to watch swimsuits ying happily in their natural habitat but it was torture watching them hover around the same lecherous guy who for some reason was the focal point of attention, maybe it was the fact he was nonchnt about the whole thing or the fact he was honest about his desire, but every man knew that it was forbidden to pursue a woman while being nonchnt about her beauty and being frank about it, a taboo in the book of finding partners.


    Eventually, the 5 men agreed that it was blind luck, how else could a guy like Yunan who was both nonchnt and frank get so many girls to hover around him like butterflies, it was mind-boggling. The truth of it, however, was that Yunan could project the sincerest emotions through his actions and words, although women tend to ce sincere guys in the friend zone, Yunan was also frank about his desire making it hard for him to stay unnoticed, also lets not forget that women love to things other women have, if a man is married or has a girlfriend, he is automatically mister perfect.


    Well, let''s leave that aside and focus on the story again.


    Yunan who was having the time of his life with his friends and beloved, had this bad feeling in the back of his head nagging on him that something was wrong, so he sneakily took precautions, used divination to see what might be wrong, however the feeling never went away for the duration of the vacation, and it was not long before Yunan was approached by someone he would have never would take the step to converse with him.


    Venus herself made an appearance at the beach to ask Yunan to exin to her about the ways of love she had not experienced in her life before ascending, even if it was toote and she would never have the chance to gain power over the new domains of knowledge, she would still like to understand.


    It was already toote when Yunan found the true reason for her actions, it was toote when Yunan found the too suspicious clues, the first clue was her willingness to ask politely and listen with enthusiasm, the second was that she was using every bit of charm on her body to make him lower his guard, something she exined as her nature: she wanted others to always be rxed and drop their guard around her. When Yunan was exining things like friendship to her he felt the nagging sensation on the back of his head stop, it was then he noticed he was already trapped.

 Chapter 221: Waking up

    Chapter 221: Waking up


    Yunan had fallen for a honey trap at the hand of the sweetest one of them all, a freaking love goddess. it was toote when he noticed that her charm was masking something else that was targeted at him, he felt drowsiness and before he could muster enough strength to break out from the spell he felt the ample bosom of Venus break hisst barrier and he fell into deep sleep.


    It was a moment and an eternity in the darkness of the dream, there was no time nor was there space, just his formless consciousness floating into an endless abyss. In the darkness there was a presence, so familiar yet so distant and mysterious, it was like meeting a new person and feeling familiarity with them upon first nce.


    A sting to Yunan''s arm brought him out of limbo and back to reality, the light was too blinding so he squeezed his eyelids shut and knitted his eyebrows, a hoarse dry groan escaped his throat as another sting made him flinch.


    "Hey girls! Jon doe just woke up, call the doctor asap, easy there, don''t open your eyes yet, let me lower the light intensity, you have been sleeping for almost a week, thanks for waking up now, one hourter and i would have lost the bet" on and on rambled a soft voice beside Yunan''s bed talking about things and saying words that Yunan thought were exclusive to himself, Anne and Ophelia.


    The girl had a gentle touch to her as she tousled his hair and parted his lips, she helped shield his eyes from the intense light in the room, he was naked under a linen cover with soft linen sheets and a veryfortable foam bed under his body. He tried to move his hand to touch the ce of the sting but found he was too weak to even do that, only blinking was with in his power.


    It did not take long before Yunan could fully open his eyes and look at a gentle face that reminded him of Reina, it exudedfort and the soft smile made him feel at ease, it was so contradictory because it was the first time he had his life under the hands of a stranger and he was powerless to even move, he wanted to run, to teleport home but he could not sense his power, the rings ofmunication and the medallion were missing, there was no mana in this ce, and there was no mana in his core.


    As Yunan was trying to close his fist and sense his limbs and other parts of his body, the room was invaded by the over enthusiastic nurses in pink dresses, behind them a doctor was pushing them aside trying to get to Yunan. She first checked for any auditory and visual impairment, she made sure he could feel his toes and fingertips before asking bravely "do you remember what happened to you? Your name? Any information so we can contact your family or friends? Yunan nodded and made a parched noise that passe for a "yes".


    "First, let the nurse give you some water to drink, and wait until morning, then she will join you once more to take your information and then we can take it from there, so take it easy and try to sleep some more it will help with your powerlessness." With that she sent out the nurses and closed the door, the light dimmed behind her and Yunan drifted into sleep, he did not wake up until morning.


    His throat felt much better and he could formte thoughts much easier, this slow thinking speed was almost torture to a guy like him who, could make a n between the time it took a bolt to fly from his crossbow and hit a target 1 meter away, his sense of powerlessness was not there anymore but he felt like when he was mortal, before meeting Debauchery and bing an adventurer. Light was not as blinding as before, and the sunlight through the window felt strangely tame and weak.


    The nurse fromst night came around ten in the morning, Yunan was still having trouble with his muscles and could barely speak, the nurse started rambling about things he did not really understand, however, she gave him two sips of water to ease his thirst, and changed the solution besides his bed, ording to her that solution would keep him from feeling hunger and thirst, what he was feeling was due to a dry throat and had nothing to do with dehydration, Yunan wanted to scoff at her but his facial muscles were not cooperating so it looked like a smile


    "Alright mister handsome lucky charm, thanks to you i don''t have to pay a dime on my next trip with the girls, so as thanks i will let you kiss me on the day you leave the hospital, for now let''s fill this form and contact your friends and rtives, they must be very worried about you". "Anything is okay as long as i get to leave this ce and meet my friends, so ask away"


    "Name?", "Yunan", st name?", "no such a thing, you know that no one had ast name in Burkan since 300 thousand years ago in the first race war". "Are you serious?", "Yes", "give me a moment I need to record this, and get the girls to witness this". The nurse left in a hurry and returned momentster with a camera, and a cackle of giggling nurses.


    "This camera is fitted with a lie detector, if you lie to me it will make a beeping noise, try making a lie to see if it works or not". Yunan was intrigued by the curious device so he humoured thedy "my dragon is named Sapphira". The camera beeped at the name Sapphira not at the mention of a dragon, which brought endless entertainment to the nurses swarming around the bed but they were pushed away by the first nurse, it was time to start again.


    "Name", "Yunan", st name", "none", "age", "20", "hight", "180cm", "weight", "90kg", "address" "i live in my portable home, if you need to send me mail do it through the guild, address it to Yunan the wise prowler member of the Valyrians subsidiary of the Debauchery party". "Which guild?", "the adventurers guild", "living rtives", "adopted mother, she can be found in the orphanage in Mar Sara city, her name is Theresa", "phone number to contact your mother?", "Again with the weird questions! it has been more than 700 thousand years since thest phone was used after the first mana war". "Any friends or closepanion we can contact?", "Just send any mail you have through the guild to any member of the Valyrians or Debauchery party", "any pets?" "Drogon, a Valyrian dragon, and Sapphira a silver Egyptian Mau". "Girlfriends?", " Fortuna, you probably know her asdy luck", "can you specify who are the Valyrians and who Debauchery party are?". "Debauchery party are my teachers and level 80 explorers, there are six, no, seven of them, Mary the human leader and healer, Fae the elf mage, Balin the dwarven smith, Dustan the orcish merchant and berserker, Lucian the lykan ranger and scout, bai the human rogue and assassin,st andtest addition Anne, a quack healer, as for the Valyrians, they are my party members and fellow students, Leol a human noble melee attacker, Lili a human berserker, Reina a kitsune mage and archer, Ophelia a healer and alchemist and me Yunan the wise prowler, a master of all trades".


    Although the answers werepletely nonsensical the camera did not make a single beep all the time it was recording, and that was a very bad thing for Yunan as a patient.

 Chapter 222: Handle with care

    Chapter 222: Handle with care


    The looks Yunan was getting were far from the friendly one he got first, there was fear, disgust and even ridicule. All except for the first nurse, who looked more surprised then anything else but after a moment she returned to her gentle self.


    At this moment the doctor from yesterday came inside followed by a group of trainees in blue scrubs, Yunan finally found his abundant knowledge about non magical healing and pre-mana medical practices useful for once. She had a grim look on her face and there was pity in the eyes of the trainees, the nurses who were here to witness the strange answers fled like mice when faced with a tomcat.


    "Your results havee out and i have some very bad news to give you, i hope you can take it" before the nurse could object Yunan answered hurriedly "give it to me straight doctor, what is wrong with me?". The doctor looked at the uneasy nurse who pointed at the camera, she could not talk about the mental state of the patient in front of this crowd since mental health was a sensitive matter and the patient might sue the hospital if she made that blunder, the doctor picked up the camera and wanted to watch it but the nurse gave her headphones to use, when she heard the honest answers of the man she tucked the camera in her pocket and then faced Yunan seriously.


    "You were brought to us through the police, you were found in a back alley, passed out and not responding to pain or stimtion, we found no history of drug or alcohol use in your system, however, you had major organ failure and extreme muscle degredation, we have dealt with the organ failure but the muscle degredation was too far gone to reverse it so we could only stop it, as for treatment i have to consult with my fellow physicians and we will return to youter today, hopefully with better news".


    The doctor did not wait for Yunan to say anything before she left the room with her entourage making an excuse to them that it was hard news to ept and it was best to let him think about it now before answering questions when he is in a much better mental state. After the door closed Yunan looked weirdly at the nurse before saying "that is nothing a regeneration spell and a growth spell can''t fix howe i am still here, it should take at worst 2 hours to heal for total beginners".


    "I have to tell you something" the nurse answered "this is not Burkan, this is earth, we do not use spells or magic and we have nothing that could heal you at the moment, you might have ended up in the wrong time and wrong ce, but because i know you do not lie i will tell you something, the information you just gave mees from the most famous fable on earth, and you just gave me all the information about the main character, so please bear in mind that you are no longer in your world of magic and spells, this world works on science and technology."


    Yunan did not know if he shouldugh or cry, he just looked at the blue sky dotted with clouds outside his window, if this nurse was telling it true, then that goddess had gotten him good, this was a trap he could not return from, not the way he is now, no mana and no power. "When i was brought here, what was i wearing and did i have any items on me?". The nurse was now sitting at the edge of the bed with a mncholic look on her face " T-Shirt, jeans, and boxers, no items nor wallet or shoes, you are just like him, that Yunan, you don''t stick to small details and past events".


    "There is no point in thinking about it, its a waste of mental energy, in my world non magical healing has mostly been forgotten, but i have learned about it, i think the closest logical reasoning about my condition is psychological trauma that led to a split personality disorder, this personality protects my original self from the impact of something big enough to ruin my body but leave my mind intact and in a good condition. Additionally since this personality is still active even after the trauma is over, there is a possibility that i may never regain my memory, furthermore, this personality knows nothing about this world or how to live in it, so i will have to turn to you, please help me".


    "Why me?" Asked the nurse, she was taken aback by how straight forward Yunan was, even if he was delusional or schizophrenic, he still had enough grasp of reality and better emotional handling than most adults. "Because even as my fantastic answers filled your sheet, you just kept writing with surprise at worse and that makes you the best candidate, you have no prejudgement and no prejudice, i think i will be treated as mentally ill and my intellect will be taken as a sign of psychopathology or sociopathic tendencies, it would be correct for you to assume i am dangerous and can not be trusted, but if i want my sanity back i will have to depend on someone like you"


    "Call me Jesseca, i think i know what to do and as you yourself said it, its going to be hard to get you back on track, so never lie, if you are always honest, it is better for you when ites to things like treating mental illness, when ites to the others please don''t mind their reactions, it''s just that we see too many liars in this ce, having an honest one is seriously something rare, and unbelievable to some extent" the nurse checked the solution in Yunan''s arm one more time then giving him some water to sip on before leaving the room.


    The room was quiet until evening where a few doctors entered and had Yunan go through a psychological assessment and made sure to ask as many questions and even used multiple lie detectors to make sure he was telling the truth, by the end of the session at midnight, Yunan was diagnosed as having split personality disorder caused by post traumatic stress disorder and was rmended to stay hospitalised for the time being, he was also deemed as dangerous and to be handled with care. they added extreme honesty as a potential side effect and the mild manners was considered as a defence mechanism to keep away investigative eyes.

 Chapter 223: Retaliation

    Chapter 223: Retaliation


    Taking a few days in bed in the care of the hospital, Yunan was able to get better, at least he was not aching anymore even if he was still as limp as a wet sock.


    Jesseca the nurse read the fable to Yunan over a few days, until he was able to hold the device that substituted for a book in this world, he read it over and over again but never liked or agreed with how his life turned out in the fable, ever since the day he was tricked by the goddess Venus. ording to the book, the goddess took him into a dream world where he can never escape unless he loves her, he lived in that ce for centuries hating the goddess for taking away his life from him for a whimsical reason like loving her.


    Eventually, his hatred grew so strong he killed her over and over and over again, he killed her so many times in the most brutal of deaths. she used all the methods to torture him mentally and brainwash him while he took it out on her by killing her, eventually his rejection to her and this reality grew so strong not even the dream god could keep that dream stable enough, resulting in him escaping from the dream and killing Venus as soon as she appeared before him, he then hunted and killed every single ascended and god he couldy hands on.


    His hatred for Venus has festered in that span of time to the point he hated everything, in the tale, he turned from the kind man who epted all and rejected only those that dared cause harm, to a murderous menace that killed every one that watched harm and did nothing about it, his tyranny and madness burned so hot that he turned Burkan into his own private world, it was a beautiful world where hatred was only directed at him, he, who did not flinch when he used his own hands to murder his own friends and family because they, just like everyone else in the world, has looked away from a scene where harm was dealt to an innocent.


    Although Yunan was sure about his mentality, he could never say how a century of missing his friends and loneliness in the world would change his heart, especially if the cause of it all wanted nothing but subjugation, and all he had to do was submit to her whims, Yunan knew that even with his personality, there was no telling what a period of extended time would do to him, and if that mentality left the dream with him, he would be a changed man.


    Then he thought he found a clue, rejection, if this was a dream world than only rejection can break it, but if he has truly transmigrated then he would have to live a cripple''s life and wallow in loneliness and istion for he was never part of this world and he would never have the body nor the mentality to live in this strange world.


    When a nurse came to check on him the next time, he asked her "what are the rules to escape this world?" The nurse did not even lift her head from her work and recited in a mechanical way "prove the strength of your will and be rewarded by the gods", "anything else?" He asked her again " the gods watch with anticipation how long it will take for you to break" she answered.


    "Will, huh?" Yunan said to himself, so this is a test, a game if you will, it seems not even the god of dreams can make each and every character in the game "real", but if only "will" was what needed to be proven then it was rather easy to break out of this ce.


    It was a test of will, meaning that it can be manifested in this ce, and if it could be manifested then it was easier to win this game with the gods, break the board.


    With that thought in mind Yunan willed his body to heal, and to his surprise, he only had to focus a little bit before he could see his emaciated body grow to its healthy lustre and original form, he then experimented with moving objects and changing the pattern of behaviour of the characters in the dream.


    After two weeks of trial and error, he found the correct way to get out of here, and end this month-long dream that he was forced into. First was willing his former Dragonification armour to appear, he then used its 300% buff to push his mental powers to a higher level, then he willed his status to return back to the peak, then he applied a 1000% all attributes buff. With this, his status has be too strong for a mortal, but Yunan was not done yet, he converted all his attributes to Wisdom effectively making his mental powers almost unmatched.


    Once his mental power had reached such height, manifesting his will became as easy as thought, so, he made the dream world around him disintegrate leaving behind nothing but the nurse Jesseca and a gentleman in formal well fitted clothes. "so what gave it up?" Said the man as he put his arm around the waist of the nurse " I thought my honey trap could keep you in here for a few decades at least, she was made with you in mind, the one to rope you into the family life.


    "The exaggerated story made it easier, and the clue about rejection was a good thing but the mechanical nurses were your only mistake" Yunan waved his hand and Jesseca too turned into dust and floated away "you sure have made a bigger mistake though" said Yunan as he started willing his mental power to grow infinitely "giving me a world where I can overpower the creator is not something you should have done, now you and all those who are watching are my prisoners". Yunan waved his hand and hundreds of men and women, young, old and children appeared from thin air, all of them were shocked and exasperated.


    "I have to thank Apophis, his introduction to the power of faith is certainly handy, and thanks to all of you, I can now do this". Yunan used his infinite mental strength to go over his memories, spells and skills, and everything he learned, he took this chance to practice as much as he could, one of the things that resulted from such high-speed learning and development was his better understanding of the power of faith. The power to ascend into godhood was something that leaves its traces in the world, it would leave an imprint with each action the ascended took, this can be seen most visibly by the example of Fortuna, if she bought from a shop it would be lucky for a time and gain new customers, if she watches a y someone with high standing will take a liking to the troop and buy the ce to help them be famous. Such things are random acts of luck that can only be attributed to the brand of faith power each ascended has, the god of death would cause deaths, the god of healing would cause the sick to heal by crossing paths, the goddess of truth would make secretse to light around her.


    If we take that as an example then anyone watching this dream world has a bit of their consciousness and power imprinted on the world, and if Yunan had enough mental power he could "will" them all to join him, trapping them with him in the dream while he bes the god in this world, changing it so that no one can exercise their power or will in this ce, as soon as he did that, he was now watching as the deities scrambled for a way to exit this ne that literally turned them mortal, if Yunan willed it they could die as their consciousness has been fully dragged into this ce.


    However Yunan did this as a form of warning to them " now that you know how strong my will is, I propose that you stay away from me and my own, I have no reason to threaten you, but just keep in mind that I could do this with your own power, and I can do it again, so, you can be sure that the next time you try to use me for fun is not going to end as peacefully as this one".


    Yunan broke the dream world and sent everyone back to their bodies, although he did something naughty to the gods, in retaliation, he took a tiny bit of divinity from each god and added them to himself, although most were minor deities the power they had was of the same origin, and therefore had the same effect. He hid all that power deeply inside himself to be locked and used only if he decided to ascend or if he was in trouble with a god.


    Upon waking up Yunan found himself still on the bosom of Venus with the rest of the group looking at them as they slept, he first shook himself away from her and went on hugging and kissing his loved ones, he had spent a month without them even if they thought it was merely a few minutes of sleep, he chose not to care about Venus, simply because she was not worth the time he should be spending with his beloved ones.


    Special note.


    Hello there dear readers, I was taken aback about how bad was the reception of the start of the new arc, that I decided to just remove it and end it early. Although it might be wrong to do that, I do not hesitate to do so because this novel is meant to be enjoyed and not provoke such negative feelings.


    Well to be honest I was nning on a test/examination arc, where Yunan is trapped in a dream world with a different identity every time he solves the previous dream, the n was to have Yunan be part of many kinds of novels, and had basically prepared a full 50 chapters worth of all the possible tropes, from the top of my head I had things like reincarnation, system novel, VR games, gender bender, cultivation, reincarnation into a monster or animal or a nt, living inside an established anime/novel, I even was in negotiation with a fellow writer, I was really looking forward to this.


    I used the fact that nothing happened to Venus in return for her trap as an indication there was no harmful intent nor there was a threat to Yunan or his safety, otherwise the luck he had would have got him out of it, I have painstakingly established that getting beaten without harmful intent would not trigger the luck retaliation, but it seems I have done this the wrong way and I apologize for my blunder, I hope in the future that I can reintroduce this project and let you all enjoy my silly writing style in all types of different genres.


    The true goal of this arc was to answer the question what if this was [enter genre here] novel, and I also wanted a change of pace, this arc may have not been overshadowed but ad it has been established with Hermes that a god can just pop up out of nowhere and demand to be entertained, unfortunately I seem to have to re-establish those ideas through more chapters and very long winded exnations like this one, which I know no one wants to read, well since it was a failed project let''s not dwell on it too much and continue with the novel onwards.


    As you might know I seriously answer mostments that have something to say and like allments, even neutral ones, so if you were interested in the project but did not say so, then please,ment of not just upvote thements that shares the same opinion, I know that there are hundreds who read daily and give me their power stones because they love the novel, however, I can not read minds and therefore I beg you, please make your thoughts heard in thements even by a simple upvote that way I can strive to make this novel into the best it could without losing the interest of my readers.


    Thanks for reading this huge mess of a note and please consider its contents, also you can leave your impressions in the discord channel, if you want more I can even make a Facebook page for it, anyway, I want to hear your opinions and ideas about anything and everything, it doesn''t matter if you think its stupid or what not, just share it, I am blessed by a good and well-behaved readers.


    Thank you, sincerely Yasser.

 Chapter 224: Return to Tartarus

    Chapter 224: Return to Tartarus


    After a good round of hugs and kisses Yunan got his due beating by Debauchery, how dare he betray the girls while they were not even 10 meters away, with the goddess who attempted to sever their bonds before.


    The beating this time was not purely for the sake of keeping Yunan honest and in line, there was a twinge of jealousy in it, after all was said and done, Venus was, in fact, a goddess of love and she was a real looker, factor in the fact that Yunan was basically the master of the harem with all thedies in it, many men would rather he would die than suffer seeing his happy smug face as the pampering even kings dream about was poured unto Yunan.


    Since it was only a minority of bad feelings there were only some punches that missed the target and some spells that activated randomly, still, Yunan was happy to be beaten like always, no matter how you looked at it, this was their way of making him feel bad about having it good all the time. Then came the next part of the questioning "why did you two fall asleep in each other''s arms?". That was the Debauchery way, violence first leaves questions forter.


    Venus was finally waking up from the dream world, even if she was a goddess she still was a sheltered rose in a sshouse, fragile and delicate, leading to her taking longer to wake up than someone like Yunan who deals with life and death daily. Upon waking up she heard these wordsing out of Yunan''s mouth "she and some gods were thinking of breaking my will for their entertainment, well it ended with me staying for a very long month in bed with an emaciated body almost unable to even move, well as you might expect I broke it".


    Venus was still thinking of running away when she felt the gaze of a predator on her neck, just then she managed to make put that a certain cat was not in the group anymore and as she looked behind her she found a very angry set of fangs greeting her in a smile that said don''t even think about moving a muscle or else


    Venus who was unable to resist the fear and dread could not understand why a goddess of love like herself would feel such a malefic and oppressive attack on her psyche, by the time she wanted to beg for her life she was surrounded by Debauchery and each was giving her a very bad feeling, she knew one thing for sure, she did not want to be here now.


    "Yunan my boy, how much would you like to get for her? I think about treating the boys to a taste of a goddess, there is a long and lonely night ahead of us boys, you took away all the warmth to yourself". "I do certainly feel like I should not miss out on such a chance, not every day you get to capture a goddess let alone hear about". "Indeed, look how delicate she looks, I bet she would break if we all get a turn tonight, but still I want to be there contributing to her moment in the limelight". "It certainly feels like the boys have been thirstytely, how about it, kiddo, why not let them quench some thirst I bet they wouldn''t break her, not too much anyway".


    "Tsk tsk, what are you doing to a goddess? How immoral, we need to keep her in one piece until we can auction a few nights with her, I bet there would be many who are interested". "That is going too far, making people pay for loving the goddess of love is wrong on so many levels, we should let it be free for all the loveless souls toe and have their moment of love with their goddess". "I agree, having people pay to love their goddess is just wrong, however, we can nt some electrodes and see what is different about a goddess making love".


    "Alright, that is enough" Yunan broke the siege of Leningrad cough... I mean Debauchery and helped the now tearful goddess to her feet and showed her a genuine smile " I already took my revenge on her and every other god that was involved, as a matter of fact, i can now find her wherever she was and bring her over for punishment if she crosses another line, for now the best you guys can do is get a feel before she goes home" Yunan let the goddess go and gestured for Kitty to follow him, as for the goddess who was now free from her predator she could not even stand as she fell backwards into the big embrace of Dustan, she wanted to be under the threatening Kitty when she looked up and saw that obscene smile on Dustan.


    "Let''s make some love my dear goddess" uttered the over-enthusiastic giant ugly orc as he cradled the goddess in his arms and ran away towards the nearest cabin with the rest of the boys snapping at his heels like rabid wolves and all thedies heard the silent cry of lost innocence and regret.


    Some dayster Yunan and friends were back at the 40th floor with rejuvenated smiles and feeling like they could break the world at will, especially the boys who were still in bliss from their happy time of loving the goddess of love.


    Upon return to the 40th floor, Yunan was tasked by the guild to provide some antidotes for the monsters in the 43 floor, ording to information, their supply was running out and it has been a while since any alchemist saw fit to replenish it.


    As a dutiful mercenary, Yunan made his way to the 42nd floor and the fennec boss, the fight was a bit refreshing for Yunan, who dove naked at the boss and punched it to death with abination of elemental attacks and some boxing skills.


    As for his treasure chest, it was another non-affiliated book, it was called cultivation of will, and it talked about how can one go about having the strength of mind that could match their bodies and ensure that the mind does not sumb to the horrors one sees as both an explorer and a soldier.


    Yunan memorised the book and then put it into the non magical section of his library, this section has grown to fit three golden books that were a most interesting read and pass time for Debauchery, especially the one about interster travel and the newly added will enhancement book, even Debauchery suffered nightmares from the horrors they themselvesmitted, so any book that can help reduce those side effects from a long life of adventure was a very wee addition.

 Chapter 225: Lucky karma

    Chapter 225: Lucky karma


    In the 43rd floor, the desert took shape of packed dry brown soil littered with rocks and boulders and the asional rocky hill, there would be a stubborn tree every few miles and water was nowhere to be seen.


    Contrary to the former floors, the monsters here were just sitting under the unbearable heat of the sun enjoying a sunbath while waiting for adventurers. These monsters wererge lizards with whips for tails and venom dripping from their mouths like drool, their scaled skin was tough and light, coloured brown and ck. These monsters were all idle until midday, before midday, one can attack freely and only the lizard under fire would retaliate, however after midday and until sundown, these lizards turned more aggressive and actively hunted prey as well as each other.


    Yunan met a group of adventurers sticking close to the entrance stairway and focusing their firepower on a smaller lizard, he waved at them when he was noticed, then took out his short swords and waded into the idle group of lizards and started decapitating them one by one, one swing per lizard. Yunan was using his full power as he collected mana and corpses, the mana was stored and the corpses were brought to theboratory where Ophelia was sampling their venom and making antidotes for it.


    Out of thin air Hermes appeared beside Yunan who instinctively swung a sword at the god and almost made contact, Yunan redirected his attack a split second before Hermes was split in two and Hermes made a sigh of relief because he was not allowed to use his godly powers in the dungeon, even his existence here was bending the rules and dancing at the edge of a cliff.


    "What do you want?" The nonchnt way Yunan had when questioning a deity always brought a smile to Hermes, "I came to make sure that you have actually stolen some divinity from a few hundred gods, I can smell it on you but it''s not even active". Hermes stated his intention very clearly,st time he went against Yunan he lost a very devout follower and almost lost his oracle.


    "And?" Yunan asked between two halves of a lizard as his gaze pierced the god who was smiling innocently. "Want some more? there have been some divinity thieves before, but none on such a scale and all of them used it momentarily when you took all those and did nothing I smelled entertainment". Yunan walked towards the god and used his finger to poke the forehead of Hermes. " I am no thief, those were my rewards for winning the game those guys set up, although I won by breaking the board, it was still a win and those shards of divinity are my rewards".


    "Do you know how my luck works?" Yunan asked as he took out a few skewers and made a fire to grill some lizard meat, turning his attention away from the god. "If anyone causes you harm, there is a rebound and a retaliation, it is almost as strong as that of Fortuna, and as far as I know if you do not consider the harmful act towards you as harmful, the aggressor is not punished".


    Yunan shook his head while keeping his gaze at the food he was dealing with, he summoned Fortuna to his side and bid her sit down besides him "I am no god and therefore my luck works both ways, for example, if I do good by others I am rewarded, if do evil to others I am punished, my luck works more like karma but is instantly effective, when someone does well by me they are rewarded when someone harms me they are punished, for example, your followers lost a huge chunk of luck for trying to harm me and ended up almost killing themselves by their own hands, mostly due to the enormous difference in luck. But as I attacked them, I caused them no harm, I merely made it apparent they were no match for me thus I was not harmed, you decided to y a game with me and lost a very devout follower, however you came here to give me some advice on my newly acquired divinity for some reason or the other and have not suffered expulsion from the dungeon".


    "Basically what I am saying is, I have instant karma based on luck around me, do good and get rewarded, do bad and get punished, so my perception is not even calcted in the karmic retaliation. Therefore please continue scheming if you want, just let me tell you something, my karma builds up, the more good you do the better rewards and luck you get, because not every bad deed is big enough to be punished immediately, it umtes and one day you are hit by so much misfortune even losing your divinity is not out of the question".


    "Not even Buddha can make karma instant, do not y with me kid, I have been a god when men were still wearing animal hides on their skin, if what you have spouted is true then why have we divine ones never heard of it?". Hermes was getting anxious, if what Yunan said was true then he had messed up royally and was facing a lot of danger "he was born with it" added Fortuna from her position leaning against Yunan "it is pure luck, however, it is both a blessing and a curse, probably something from the creator, the problem is the old bastard has not shown his face in this universe for too long, and I have no idea if this thing is hereditary or something that was identally created due to some bloodline, we all know how he loved ying with gics that old bearded shitty excuse of a father"


    An audible scared gasp rang in the surroundings as Hermes covered his mouth and shrunk away from the duo who were nonchntly insulting the creator, father of all, and the one true God. "What are you doing, you will bring the rage of heaven upon us, are you mad" shouted Hermes with a shaking and scared voice.


    "Alright, stop it, we all know your views on the creator, no need to keep saying it all the time" Yunan pinched the ear of Luna and she squirmed like a child, "listen Hermes, i really don''t care about ascending at the moment nor do I want some more divinity, therefore, please stop thinking about making me into some kind of entertainment show for you and the boring ones you represent, if they want to y, then they cane and make bets with me and we shall see what happens, otherwise, beware".


    Yunan pointed a finely grilled skewer of meat towards Hermes as he bit one of his own, Hermes took the skewers and sat down beside the two and sulked "so as long as no harm was done even insulting the God is possible around you?", "Not really, insulting is a bad deed even if its small one, she paid for it when I pinched her ear, and I seriously do not care if this gift was from the god or an ident, I have always been on the winning side thanks to it, so I don''t really know how it works i can only know something that has been proven through trial and error".


    Hermes sank in thought for a few hours before feeling Yunan touch his shoulder "its about to get dangerous in this ce, you should return and think about it in safety, also don''t beat yourself over it, if you do nothing the bad karma will dissipate on its own, so rx and leave the mysterious stuff to solve themselves" Hermes took his leave while Yunan sent Luna away after giving her a few kisses before returning to the work at hand, the moment the sun hit the centre of the sky, the slumbering lizards opened their eyes and fixed their gazes on the Dragonborn Yunan with his ck and crimson scales and intimidating wing and sharp looking tail, he was designated as target and then pounced on, the sounds of battle kept Drawing more and more lizards at Yunan who dispatched them with rtive ease, while dodging and parrying in bullet time, these lizards were built towards speed and attack speed, and were a good challenge to Yunan so that he could regain his dull battle sense that slept for more than a month.

 Chapter 226: Debilitating luck

    Chapter 226: Debilitating luck


    In the 43rd floor, Yunan had enough time to recuperate his battle sense, and trade a good amount of antidotes with the guild, meanwhile the rest of the Valyrians reached the 40th floor and joined Yunan in his new hanging pce.


    In the heart of the 43rd floor lies an oasis surrounding a ratherrgeke, strangely there was not a single creature in the 10 km vicinity of the oasis, Yunan chose this ce to rest because it was probably where the boss would have the highest chance of spawning, simply due to the emptiness around it.


    However Yunan found out this was a safe spot and all adventurers who had the ability to fight the boss would arrive here to rest before fighting the boss in a nearby cave, however Yunan did not believe this information, he could not scan beneath the water of theke and that was a very big red g for him. After some deliberation and thought Yunan dove into theke to find what secrets it hid under the interference with his scanning.


    Under theke Yunan found a red gem as big as his head, it was perfectly spherical in shape and had a bloody luminescence to it and was heavier than 50 kilogrammes when Yunan pulled away the gemstone from its pedestal he heard the pop one would hear from plucking a fruit. Strangely the calmke started to spin around the stone in Yunan''s hand and all the mana in the water swarmed and rushed inside the sphere, making it bloody lustre shine brighter.


    When everything calmed down Yunan tried to send the stone to his aquarium but was surprised that he could not detach the sphere from his hands, and soon it started topress into a single drop of blood that wormed its way into Yunan''s bloodstream and dissipated in his blood.


    For the first time in a very long time a message rang from the status "Blood of the Phoenix absorbed, ipatibility detected, dragon blood and phoenix blood mutual rejection confirmed, all stats and healing reduced by 20%, rejection reduced due to racial traits, possibility ofpatibility detected, Racial trait of Dragonborn activated, seeking perfect bloodlinepletion, bloodline quest activated, user will be drawn to locations with Phoenix blood, body or heritage, please be advised that the drop of phoenix blood will bepletely absorbed or rejected within 100 years, the possibility ofpleting a new bloodline 10%."


    Yunan felt his body almost copse as he heard the notification from his status, the pain itself was bearable for a few days but he didn''t think that he could bear this pain for 100 years. That aside 20% of his power was sealed because of cross-contamination, the only ray of light in this cloud was that even though there were rejection and ipatibility, his body had a 10% chance to integrate the third bloodline.


    The racial trait of the Dragonborn must be simr to the human race but on a higher level, if humans could integrate sessfully with all kinds of bloodlines then since the Dragonborn was both man and dragon he could integrate the third bloodline, however Yunan had to draw the shortest straw and hit the reverse jackpot, he found a bloodline that was ipatible with his dragon bloodline.


    "ck Fate, why does the dragon and phoenix reject each others bloodline even though there is no animosity between the two that is written in history, all we know is that the two ns were friendly and never at odds, one chose human masters the other chose to take care of nature, can you exin why?"


    "It is simple, the dragon n and the Phoenix n are mutually exclusive, one is magic itself the other is life itself, the two ns were born from different origins, and they had the purest form of their respective elements thus the mutual exclusiveness, to put it as simple as possible, life and magic do not mix together, they influence each other but never upy the same location, life is growth and magic is diversity, and no mana and magic are not the same. Magic is the manifestation of mana, it can never exist without mana to support it, while life can survive just fine without mana, some even consider mana the leftover energy from living beings, by that logic, mana is a byproduct of life and magic is the result of burning mana as energy, both are able to exist without the need for the other, they can interact and strengthen each other but never coexist"


    "This matter is moreplicated than any being in this universe, only the creator, the truest God can exin it perfectly, otherwise, it is nothing but spection with educated guesses. Dragon and Phoenix are notpatible due to the life and magic paradigm, think of them as two different concepts, independent in existence but co-dependent to create a living being."


    Yunan had his head even more messed up thanks to the exnation by the ring, all he cared about at the moment was the 20% loss in ability, as for the phoenix blood, well, let the mysterious stuff deal with itself.


    Yunan returned to the hanging pce and made a stop by the guild branch to buy any possible information about phoenixes that he did not have in his own library or read about somewhere else. After buying some books and selling the day''s quota of antidote, Yunan took a moment to go to the hanging pce and meet up with Leol, who was now free from his organization and was taking leisure time and enjoying the service provided by the guild in the hanging pce as per their agreement with Yunan.


    The two went out for some tea and sweets and rambled about this and that for a few hours, it has been long since the two roommates were alone and had their own time together as old friends and colleagues.


    "So what happened to Muscles I thought you two were a thing?", "As of the moment we still are, but ultimately, it is your fault our talent grew so much, we both were aiming to stay on the 30th floor and enjoy the scenery there, do some fishing now and then and just rx for life". "What did I do? It''s not like I trained her or something, besides I told you before that making such small goals was the wrong thing to do". "Dreams are dreams! you don''t need them to be right or wrong, well, thanks to you, Muscles met Debauchery, got inspired, yed around with your harem and learned a lot from them inbat, worst of all you keep feeding us that ursed meat and we just grew stronger whether we wanted to or not".


    "That is my fault, I admit, but why


    is she not by your side?". "Because she grew stronger steadily and have broken past the levels that were supposedly her maximum capacity, she has been called by her king to exin her daily life and how did she break through what they thought unbreakable chains". "Let me see, genie can you contact Muscles tell her if she does not answer the call she wouldn''t hear Leol''sst words this minute". "What are you doing? She is with her king, it has been days with him and his advisors and investigators, so far she only said she met some strong people who were able to help her grow stronger by watching them, they ask her such invasive questions about the rest of us it drives me crazy".


    "Well then, more of a reason to give her a hand and get her back, oh hi Muscles, I wanted to talk to your king, here say something before the minute is over I do not want to be a liar". "I miss yo". "That was the minute and you heard hisst words, now let me see that king of yours". "Still as entric as ever, sir Yunan, why do you want to talk to my king?".


    "Oh please, my mate here misses his lovely wife, how am I supposed to stay silent about it? Anyway tell that stupid king not to dig too deep or I am going to buy his kingdom" Yunan was still talking when he heard a violent "INSOLENCE"e through the call, so he just shifted his attention and addressed Muscles in his still cheerful tone "do you need time to pack your items? No? Okay, I am bringing you back we are going shopping".


    "What are you doing threatening a king?" Was the first thing Muscles said after being teleported then she flushed a bit saying tenderly under her breath " my king is sitting here". "Woman please, this idiot has the guts to threaten and prostitute a goddess, would he even flinch at kings?". "Well said my dear roommate as expected from my first friend, now let''s go make the happy couple a king and queen, also go ask your grandpa if he wants to be king, if not we need to find another to care for your new kingdom".


    "Can you even buy kingdoms? How rich are you? Talking about buying kingdoms like it is buying bread at the local bakery". Muscles was still in denial of the idea of going shopping for a kingdom and did not even notice Yunan use spatial shift to send Leol home. When she noticed that her man was not around it was toote " you are serious about this thing aren''t you?".


    Yunan''s answer was something a bit too good to hear for her at the moment "you called him king, I expect my friend''s wife to be a queen so, yeah, therefore buying even an empire is not a big deal".

 Chapter 227: Fighting at deaths door

    Chapter 227: Fighting at deaths door


    Shopping for a kingdom was rather fun when it really came to it, most of the kingdoms in Burkan could be bought if one had enough money, some of them were already private property by the oldest and strongest mortals, therefore, when the young looking Yunan, Leol and muscles asked the clerk in the guild headquarters to see someone about buying a kingdom, they got the ''it 500 years too early for you to make that much money'' look.


    Still they were taken to a private room as per protocol and another clerk arrived to help them in their shopping, this guy was a professional and first asked what kind of kingdoms are they buying and after establishing a type he asked about the price range, he was rather happy when Yunan told him it was not a problem, so the man happily brought out all the pretty, well-functioning kingdoms with goodws and well-behaved poption and high rate of happiness.


    When Muscles gave him the name of the kingdom she was from the clerk frowned, ording to the guild, it was a den of corruption and dissolution,w was money and money ruled, the popr was under oppressive regime and there was basically no prospects in buying it, it was actually on sale because the king had bankrupted thend and most of the money whales have gone to other kingdoms because this corrupted kingdom had nothing left to offer them, even the thrill of breaking thew and being thew died soon, all that was left were some old noble families that were even more corrupt and vile than the masters of the hanging pce.


    All in all the kingdom was rather small, most of itsnds were sold, it had the coastal royal city and 4 more medium-sized cities, the rest of thend was farnds wherendlords ruled, the kingdom was a rather small only at a quarter of a million square kilometres in surface, it had only one marine route monopolized by somepany or the other.


    Yunan bought the kingdom, he bought also an army from the guild and bought a very proficient group of officials and employees from all kinds of trades and walks of life. His first order of business was to get rid of the festering tumours called nobility and rich, he basically gave an order, follow thew or die, death for breaking the newws of thend was excessive but necessary, those ignorant of thew likemoners were to be educated in thews of thend first before being punished, crimes that are universally condemned were punishable immediately, like thievery and murder and kidnapping and so on and so forth, Yunan also asked the church to make as many branches as possible to help the massese to understand the new rules and rulers.


    Thews were rather simple and aimed at the happiness and development of the people, Yunan was not awmaker, but he knew how the lower sses felt and thought. He also introduced mandatory education as well as mandatory work, anyone without education or a job is forced into one of those two or banished from the kingdom, it worked as follows, the whole kingdom is to be rebuilt up to certain standards that make renovation and maintenance easier in the future, and those who are jobless can be educated into a job, and then thrust into the renovation of the kingdom, and since social work is never-ending Yunan made sure to create a base of well educated professionals in each area, although these changes would take years toe to fruition, it was still possible.


    After dealing with the army, the supplies, thewmakers, and officials, his first step was to drive away the corrupted ss, either by exile or seizing all their assets and leaving them to rot like the rest of the poption, he also brought Leol''s grandparents and family to the kingdom and had them be the rulers. The mild nature of Leol''s family showed itself almost immediately when the family arrived, even the unrest among the citizens was reduced by the well-spoken new king, and thanks to dealing with the roots of corruption, the new kings were hailed as saviours. After a short 10 years, the kingdom turned into one of the most prosperous and beautiful ones in the continent, the new generation of well educated and trained adventurers served as the foundation of a good kingdom.


    Let''s return back to our time, with the new kingdom dealt with and Leol officially bing royalty, a king of a nation, it was time for Yunan to return to the grind of the dungeon.


    With 20% power removed from him Yunan was now barely a level 40 and that was a big blow to his natural stats, however that did lead him to use his buff to counter the debuff, instead he went back to the 43rd floor to challenge himself, it has a very long time since he was naturally weaker to the enemies he was facing.


    That being said, by the end of the first day, Yunan had returned home in a very bad state, apparently 1260 points difference per attributes was a bit too much and with the reduced healing he had to push himself to the limit, strangely the pain was not as bad as Yunan thought and most of the wounds were superficial and they only looked terrible because they umted for a long day, as for his terrible state, 20% loss in all stats included stamina and endurance, making Yunan haggard and deste by the time he finished the day, Yunan kept training day in and day out simply because it was the best way to lift his battle sense back to being equal to his true level or higher, not his level being higher than the battle sense.


    The boss fight almost killed Yunan about 35 times, the lizards were speed and fire types, and the boss used lighting cloak to grow even faster and wind attacks to generate more of an edge to the already sharp and deadly ws. Yunan escaped by a hair''s width each time. Most of the near-death experiences came from when the boss made a retaliatory strike after taking critical damage, and Yunan was very bad at avoiding those because he could not predict how an explosion of mana will behave, sometimes it was pure lightning, sometimes it was pure wind and sometimes both, only one thing was sure, Yunan had to get close to the boss to even think about killing it and there was a retaliation every time he snuck in a good hit.


    In that fight Yunan drank enoughva wine and queen bee honey to drown in, luckily his battle consumption has been rather high and he could eat and fight without any problems, Yunan used every spells in his book and every skill he knew how to use, and every near-death experience would prompt him to change strategy to a more efficient one, eventually he killed the boss after 30 hours of struggle, the thing he did after dealing the killing blow was to take the reward from the chest and step inside the 44th floor with the boss in his storage space, after that he teleported to the infirmary for Ophelia to patch him up and left an order for Kitty and Sarah to clean him up and let him sleep, and then let his tiredness take over and dove into deep sleep in the hands of the smiling Ophelia.


    Once he woke up, it was the morning of the next day, he body felt as good as new if not for the dull pain from rejection of the phoenix blood he would have been in a perfect condition, he took his time enjoying the presence of Kitty and Sarah who sleeping beside him, he did not know what Sarah was thinking, she had not taken an oath on the master brand and was simply keeping herself around without appearing to much or catch too much attention, therefore Yunan decided to make love to her when such rare chances came to be where she willingly slept by his side.


    Sarah also enjoyed her current lifestyle, especially her being free to do whatever she wanted thanks to the new housekeeping crew Yunan bought, she would asionally bring herself to him when her lust took over her, otherwise she would find a quiet corner in the house and just watch the happy atmosphere thinking she was fortunate enough to be here to witness it, but Yunan was the reason why she still stayed in this ce.


    Not only did he not force her to do anything, he would always make sure she was satisfied when she crawled into his bed, he also cared for her feelings and never talked about her position in the house or her family since she arrived here, and even though she was in the same status as the other ves she still enjoyed the princess treatment because Yunan told the new servants she was one a princess so they cared for her and helped her with anything she asked for.


    As for Kitty, she felt jealousy because of her, Kitty was the honest type, just like Yunan, and she never hid her lust for him whenever Sarah joined them in bed, even when Yunan told her to leave them alone Kitty would just ignore Yunan and proceed in instructing Sarah on how to please the master. And Sarah was jealous mostly because Yunan himself could not help but favour Kitty and somewhat ignore Sarah, even though both were ves.


    Yunan was not aware of this train of thought, but he still took care that both he and his mates enjoyed their mating and coption.

 Chapter 228: Will~ to~ survive~

    Chapter 228: Will~ to~ survive~


    Reaching the 44th floor was a pivotal point in the dungeon because there one starts meeting monsters capable of buffing and healing other monsters, basically from now on the monsters have the ability to either heal, buff or both, something that would be very hard to deal with in theter floors.


    The monsters on this floor were weasel-like creatures that stood upright and could cast a speed and damage resistance buff on themselves and each other, their hands had scythe-like ws that could shred armour and cut through steel like it was butter, they moved swiftly and attacked in teams, the worst part about them is that the buffs stacked and if not dealt with fast they would be too fast and too sturdy resulting in inevitable explorer deaths.


    That, however, was predicated on them having enough mana to cast their buffs, since Yunan had cultivated the habit of absorbing mana when anything got in range, he did not even know about the buffs until he was in the midst of a big battle and one of the scythe weasels that was just outside his usual range of 100 meters cast the buff on its mates.


    From that point onwards Yunan made sure to leave only one that was not drained from mana in each group, and with that degree of hardship he started working on dodging, perception and dagger mastery, mostly because there was no better asion to do that, usually Yunan had stats higher than the floor by a considerable margin, leaving him unable to truly upgrade his understanding of dodging and perception but only refine its mastery at the same level, with now him being more than 20% weaker, he used that to fuel hisprehension.


    With his daggers in reverse grip he would move so that his de would meet the neck of a weasel while dodging the ws on the way there as well read and perceive all the attacksing towards him using abination of echolocation, and 360 vision and things like air sensitivity, using all of these overloaded his brains with barely enough mental energy left to n the next move.


    It took Yunan a record-breaking 9 months to feel confident in facing the boss, and when he arrived at the den of the boss Yunan almost cried tears of indignation, there were 4 bosses altogether, they were buffing each other even though there was no battle, Yunan was not confident he could drain their mana and wait for the buffs to wear off simply because he would be caught and eventually beaten or forced to flee, so he decided that he should just drain their mana and then run around until the buff duration ended before he could engage safely.


    With that in mind, Yunan cast mana syphon on the bosses and kept it on to make sure they would not regenerate any, then once he was discovered and chased after by the 4 bosses he just used teleportation to run from one corner of the den to the next, he would dodge the asional w swing when he was sure he could, and would simply teleport away if he couldn''t.


    Every 10 minutes Yunan would take a moment to try to inflict harm of on the bosses using his dagger, he had to wait until his casual swipe on the arm left a noticeable scratch, and that only came true during the 5th hour, after 5 more hours he could do more than just scratch the bosses, that was the correct moment to strike back at the bosses.


    The retaliation from Yunan was fierce and ferocious, he attacked using his maximum speed and added both wind and lightning to the des to make it cut even better, he did not use his buffs, however, not wanting to take the easy way out. Yunan didn''t specify a target to focus on, because this style ofbat does not take targeting into consideration, this storm like style would focus on dealing damage to the closest target and was the only way to deal enough consistent damage to all the bosses at the fastest possible rate.


    The battle was not just hacking and shing to see who would die first, it was much more than that, it was a war of attrition and those who failed to deal more damage while keeping in shape would die miserably. The bosses had thick hides and even if Yunan could sh them, he could not do much more than stack injury upon injury and hope that the natural healing would help shave the stamina of the bosses. While he himself was making sure to keep his energy intake high and his energy output low, even if he had enough natural regeneration to oust the 4 bosses in a prolonged fight, he was not in his optimum state thus it was wiser for him to save both energy and mind tost for the long run.


    Random thoughts were abandoned to the simple, "find the shortest path to deal damage, find escape route to avoid damage", and with 4 bosses at the same time he was still stretched thin anyway, his natural healing and regeneration were consciously dyed and slowed down so that the energy consumption would remain as low as possible, and remove a lot of stress that could umte thanks to such high consumption. Still with all that and the fact that Yunan was digesting healing items and mana filled meals, it took Yunan a full 100 hours of endless fighting before both he and the bosses were too shredded to even move, Yunan used his healing and restored his natural healing and regeneration in thest 20 hours, he focus some of his mana to keep the armour regenerating itself and did not forget to add some paralysis poison to his attacks.


    By the end of it, the bosses had be a true exhibition to the effectiveness of death by a thousand cuts, even with their abnormal natural healing, they still could not remove all the stress before more piled up and by the 80th hour, the magnificent fur they were born with now became patches in the midst of ovepping scars that healed over and over again just to be shed open soon.


    As for Yunan he took a very grave wound after rxing when dealing with an almost dead boss, the boss has run out of energy and could do nought but sit and wait for its head to drop like its brethren, however, it made a very surprisingst effort that cost it its life and dealt a horrible wound on Yunan. The boss had cut Yunan from neck to hip removing a huge chunk of flesh, bones and organs, basically the whole right side of Yunan: shoulder, 80% of a lung, 75% of the liver, a full kidney, a bit of stomach and intestines, part of the spleen, rib cage and a scratch on the hip bone.


    Yunan was Lucky to have his portable home because the genie too the liberty to send Kitty to retrieve the treasure while Ophelia stabilised Yunan and reattached the severed part, luckily the cut was clean and there was no need to regrow any part of the body, by the time Kitty returned with a book bigger than herself, both she and the stable Yunan were returned to the house and Ophelia asked the genie to bring in her master Anne and Leader since they were the highest ranked healer she knew.


    The healers arrived in time and helped sustain Yunan and heal him, Ophelia had a done a perfect job when reattaching his severed part because she unconsciously felt that error was uneptable, thus doing almost all the work and leaving only the restoration of functionality part to the healers.


    Anne and Leader praised Ophelia so much that she blushed with a silly smile for half a day, however that smilested for a week when she got herself a praise from Yunan and a promise to steal her heart when it was time for her to grow old with someone.


    Survival is one of those things that drives one to grow beyond their limits, especially after surviving such an event like a 100-hour war of attrition. Survival tasted sweeter than victory and gave the survivor a feeling of being able to resist the wrath of gods and men, and that is why most those who survive acts of violence think they could take revenge, those are the ones that survival is wasted on, a true survivor would only think about surviving longer, they would not think about others or revenge or even their own lives, their only drive is to do anything and everything to survive once more, and Yunan currently was that kind of guy, his only thought "I will survive this too". A true testament that he had reached death enough times it was more of an old friend than a dreaded foe.

 Chapter 229: Shopping like royalty

    Chapter 229: Shopping like royalty


    Why was Kitty able to open the treasure chest? Because she had mana the belongs to Yunan thanks to the ve/master contract between the two.


    Although Kitty was worried about the injuries of her beloved master, she did not fuss around like usual simply because though it was grave, her master was not feeling much troubled himself. Mostly Yunan was feeling a bit more grateful to Ophelia than usual, he knew very well how much care she put in her work on him, making him feel like he should bring her into the harem before she gets tired of acting like it didn''t matter to her at the moment.


    Yunan stayed in bandages for about a month before he was brought before the whole family and sat face to face with Leader, he was asked the most important question a family member can ask "are you alright?", Yunan was expecting questions like, what happened, or why are you trying to get killed, howe you are too weak, and so on, but the question he received made him feel a little happy and warm on the inside.


    "I have a 20% debuff on all stats for 100 years unless Iplete a quest, so far, I have no clue about the quest, therefore I choose to use my disability to gain new heights inprehending my own abilities, it worked so far and I should have used a buff to counteract the debuff but I could not resist the idea of being challenged to death". Yunan expected a scolding from Leader, especially with the way she looked starting the interrogation, but he found it was a relieved hug and a flick to the forehead.


    "Next time tell us what happened and your ns before we get worried, that way we can respond faster and be ready for more eventualities, also don''t scare me like that again, you lost half your torso, you were split in half, how can i not worry, I know you are a good healer too but if you are injured in that kind of mental state how do you expect to properly heal yourself". Yunan sat in ce and let himself enjoy the scolding, it was full of so much care that he wished the boys would beat him to make sure this wasn''t a dream.


    It seems that stagnation in the 81st floor was something beyond the power of Debauchery and they were getting sick of it, so Yunan decided that before they fought the next time he would give them a good buff so that they could progress a bit better in their quest to conquer that floor, after all, he owed them this much at least. After being scolded so tenderly Yunan was dropped off at the guild headquarters with the mission to buy a kingdom for himself, "Reina is not getting younger and she couldn''t keep rejecting suitors unless she had one in mind, and unless you are a king it will look shabby to others, so get your shit together and make Reina your Queen" that was what Lili said when he has been given his mission, it was true, 22 years old was getting on with age in Burkan, a few more years and she would be unsuitable for marriage ording to the ordinary people, but for dungeon explorers she still stank from her dirty diapers.


    Reina had light pink flush cover her cheeks as she locked hands with Yunan and went on a daydream about how they looked like a couple buying their love nest, Yunan led the girl gently inside the building and they soon were meeting with the clerk in charge of selling and buying kingdoms. The man looked rather pleased, if you buy a kingdom for your friend, you will surely buy one for your wife to be.


    The clerk was smart enough to showcase the royal pces instead of the kingdoms themselves, and that worked fine until Reina remembered they could just ask Hephaestus to build them a royal pce of dreams and that was the best way to get the best royal pce ever, so she changed her mind and started looking at the qualities of the kingdoms.


    On the table between the spreadsheets full of information, one caught Yunan''s eye and he reached for it, probably it was the one the clerk wanted to keep forst or did not intend to show at all. It was a small kingdom, just 75000 km of coastalnd, the royal city was sheltered from storms by a natural golf hidden between 2 giant cliff walls, then the ocean was west side and on the east of the royal city was a rather green, tree fruit farnds that looked like a primordial jungle.


    What caught Yunan''s eye, however, was the word "autonomous", meaning the kingdom was able to function for a long time without much interference, neither did it need a public figure like a king to show their face every now and then and the authorities were doing a good job keeping it running.


    " How about this one, it is the kind we like, a nice view with a big garden". "Excuse me sir but that one has not had a public figure like a king and is run fully by the poption, the happiness rates are high and the poption are content with the work they do and the management, it is currently under the supervision of the guild and has been for thest 400 years, this kingdom has not had a king since then, and since it poption is independent, they would reject the meddling of a stranger king, it has not been bought at all, I dare say that this kingdom would not suit sir and madam at all".


    "How about education, infrastructure and services?" Reina turned on her royal Princess mode and asked with sparkling eyes. "Madam, under the guidance of the guild this kingdom does not rely on magic and is a scientific nation, the use of magic is prohibited, with exception of trading with the neighbouring countries, andmunication with them this kingdom does not allow the usage of magic, in order to prevent the influence of magic and mana corruption on thend, that is why it looks so beautiful and natural, everything from roads to plumbing to heating to farming and whatever you can think of is made through science and technology but never magic".


    "The kingdom also has a 100% educated poption, and has poption controlws, the older generation is to work in logistics and matters of diplomacy and governance while the younger generation works the fields and the production, the kingdom also has manyws that restrict the pollution and the waste management thates with industrialization, there is also strict migration rules as well as tourism, also most services are provided to the poption free of charge to those who pay taxes, as for the proceeds from the trade with the rest of the world it goes to the improvement of the kingdom and betterment of its Infrastructure and farnds, as well as pay the staff from the guild".


    "Basically, sir and madam, this kingdom is not a ce where you can rule or be a public figure, it also forbids the use of magic so that many conveniences are lost, otherwise it is a happy little corner of the world with perfect tropical weather all year long". "Then we would like to buy it, and I would like the current management to stay as is, the citizens would know about me buying thend and bing its king but nothing else will change and everything will stay the same, if the guild can keep the current management they have over the kingdom I would be happy, for now i want to focus on clearing the dungeon, as for the royal pce we will deal with it at our own discretion, as for the kingdom I want everything to stay the same, even the name, the only thing I want to change is my name as the owner of thend and its king".


    The clerk was once again perplexed, first this man before him bought a bankrupted kingdom, started sweeping reforms, and gave it to his friends, he even paid a hefty sum to get a lot of help from the guild, that same person now just bought an autonomous kingdom, asked for nothing to change but his name on the deed of thend, something that was mind-boggling, that kingdom has been returned by many prospective buyers simply because the poption refused to offer tribute or work under changedws, sometimes the poption went as far as refusing to acknowledge the king and rose in revolution, however this guy here wants his new kingdom to stay as if he did not even buy it, rich people were weird.


    Once done with the formalities, king Yunan of the twilight pearl kingdom returned with his queen to be to their bridal home where the king''s harem and his retainers awaited with anticipation the kind of kingdom their lord would im as his own regal territory

 Chapter 230: Mother-in-law

    Chapter 230: Mother-inw


    With Yunan officially bing a royal, buying his own kingdom and fully healing from histest injury, Yunan decided to travel with Reina and Kitty to the sun inds and officially make his rtionship with Reina known to her parents and family.


    The sun emperor might already know about this since his daughter had always been more likely to spend her time with Yunan than go back home, it has been almost 10 years since theyst saw her, meanwhile they knew that she left the dungeon at least a dozen times in vacations with Yunan, she even sacrificed her standing with her organisation to stand by his side when he was hit by an unknown illness.


    If it was not for Lili leaving behind the legion and joining Reina in her organisation Yunan would have taken the two back, but he decided against it because personal rtionships and making contact with the world were important for a royal, but now that both reach the 40th floor they had no obligation to stay in the organisation.


    Yunan thought maybe it was time to start preparing for the reunion of the Valyrians, he was thinking about making a team made only of his girls and let them roam the dungeon at their leisure, while he would clear as many floors as possible, that way when they reached the 50th floor he can guide them safely, anyway that is all in the future and at the moment he was about to meet his inws. The scariest part about marriage ording to the married men out there.


    When the three of them arrived at the sun inds they were received by a cortege to ensure safety, not that a level 40 adventurer would be at any danger, it was always good to take precautions, the cortege was rather eye-catching and looked like a sore thumb amidst the peaceful roads of the sun imperial city, although Yunan and Reina did formally inform their emperor, and asked him to keep the visit only known to himself and his empress, somehow it leaked and the pce gates turned into the waiting ce where the citizens of the imperial city wanted to catch a glimpse of their Princess who left 12 years ago and returned gloriously with a husband.


    To those in the Dungeon, Yunan was a myth, his own aplished deeds could not be blown out of proportions because they were already the stuff of legend. Finding a hidden boss in the 25th floor and ying it before anyone could make it to his location. Ferrying parties through the gauntlet of the 29th floor like he was passing through without resistance. And the most recent news, he had found and killed the bosses from the 30th to the 39th floor when the rest could not even venture a few miles away.


    Add in the taming of the silver mouse and causing the downfall of the hanging pce, and you get Yunan the legend, and like any legend it passed through the guild employees to the poption of Burkan and then it would be spread across the world, and for such legendary deeds, it was hard to even change them in any way lest they lose their lustre.


    Reina being acquainted with Yunan was something whispered of since his first glorious deed was spread out, he was already too high profile in being the outstanding student of the Debauchery party, and with his great deeds getting more and more ridiculous, his status as a friend of the imperial princess wasmon knowledge for the citizens of the sun inds, and when the news leaked out that the imperial princess has managed to bring back the man with her and pull him away from his own harem, it was like the nation''s pride was satisfied by marrying a hero.


    It was true that Yunan and Reina had an agreement to be together eventually, so this marriage thing was an inevitability, however the circumstances of Reina''s birth and position was a bit too hard to keep away from their rtionship, after all, an imperial princess being just another girl in a harem that had servants, ves, teachers and fellow students, was a bit hard to swallow especially because she was the one chosen to be either an empress or a guardian, she was chosen after all and didn''t enter the dungeon willingly.


    The source of all that headache can be nipped in the bud if Yunan just took the easy way out and proposed a marriage between himself and Reina, thus keeping the prospective suitors at bay while bringing Reina officially into the ranks of his women, although Reina was not all nitpicky about it, she loved the idea of being Yunan''s only queen, an honour none but her shall have, even if he married Lili and Sarah, she would be the queen and they would be consorts and concubines.


    Facing such an enthusiastic reception Yunan and Reina left their carriage and walked their way to the gate followed by Kitty, although Yunan was only royal by name he knew how themon folk loved for their betters to pay attention to them and recognise their existence, the simple act of walking instead of riding in the carriage just won Yunan 1000 poprity points in the sun inds. The duo held hands and walked through the gate to the forbidden pce.


    Yunan noticed that there were very few guards and security at the gate, only two guards who stopped and questioned them as per protocol and then let them pass, they must do that or they would risk Reina being punished by the ancestral spirits for breaking thew that says when the sun royalty steps beyond the gate they are nothing butmoners, and thus even if Reina was the empress who unified Burkan, in the sun inds she would be treated like the nextmoner passing by, however, Yunan was afforded the courtesy befitting a hero-king whose name resounded at such a young age.


    After walking through the magnificent gate, Yunan had the feeling it was designed to make one feel the holiness and gravity of the location, one that is defiled by his presence and each step he took had an invisible weight clinging to him from his foul presence.


    That feeling however disappeared when he felt the shaking hands of Reina, she was blushing so furiously it had gone down to her chest all the way down from her ears, Yunan calmed the girl down but grabbing a feel here and there, and tickling her a bit to ease her stress, well they did not have to walk long before a mature version of Reina but with only one tail appeared before them.


    "Her Highness the fourth imperial concubine,dy Mito" announced a female servant from behind in a most respectful and worshipping voice. Reina threw herself at Mito who was attempting to bow in traditional greetings but was interrupted by her own daughter, "hi there mother-inw, don''t bother with formalities we are family after all" Yunan also added his own hug embracing both of them.


    Mito disengaged from both and said in a disappointed tone " I thought you would remember the things I taught you even if you forgot to visit me, seems like you forgot both". "That would be the fault of our teachers, etiquette was thest thing we were worried about when dying from exhaustion was a possibility, or worse receive punishment for not dying from exhaustion, that kind of environment stripes you down to the bare minimum of personality and behaviour, her hug now was saying, "Mommy, I missed yourfortable chest" well forget that, is the old emperor waiting for us? I would like to conclude business first".


    "How vulgar, both of you need re-education, and those teachers of yours too, how dare they erase my years of hard work", Yunan and Reina nodded like little pecking chicks, Mito was giving out the pissed off mother vibe, and Yunan knew from experience that not even the wrath of Debauchery wouldpare to angry mother, the next moment he looked at Reina and found she looked at him too, they had one of those telepathic moments couples boated about having during such times "think Balin and Dustan can be trained into being all nice and proper?".


    Both giggled at the odd thought and that earned them a few res from Mito who was soon smiling silly while caressing her daughter while she clung to her like a little child, mothers were frightening creatures when angry, but were the most tender when their offspring were in their embrace.

 Chapter 231: behaviour readjustment

    Chapter 231: behaviour readjustment


    Lady Mito led Yunan, Reina and Kitty to her own pce, where she and Reina used to reside before.


    Both her daughter and the boy she brought were almostpletely without any etiquette and she would not let them meet other imperials before they were at least presentable enough.


    Emperor Hoshi was aware of how Debauchery worked and did not find it surprising that they made Reina forget her training in the way of imperial and courtly behaviour, and was rather happy to have such an attentive wife who took the guests in and immediately started teaching them the correct behaviour before they made an embarrassment out of themselves.


    The etiquette was more of a behaviour correction than a skill, although it was hard to learn because habits are extremely hard to change and conscious behaviour makes one look pretentious, even so, in the upper echelons of nobility, it was better to look like a pretentious prick than to be called a mannerless savage. That is why imperial consort Mito drove the three of them hard in their way of learning, Reina and Yunan in the way of royals and Kitty in the way of servants, and as for failure, the punishment was a beating by a ruler.


    The beating naturally did not hurt but it was humiliating, therefore, Debauchery who kept in touch would taunt Yunan and Reina about it, as for Kitten she really did not care and was only learning because Mito told her if she did not learn to act that way others who she must not kill wouldugh at Yunan, it only took a week of taunting before Yunan had enough and hatched a n to give the others looking andughing at them a taste of their own medicine.


    During one of the early sessions on how to talk like a sophisticated gentleman, Yunan asked Mito if she wanted to meet and train those who made her daughter forget her hard work and the answer was "if you can do it, I''ll teach you a few things you can never learn in the sses" there was a good determination on her face so Yunan obliged during posture training.


    Yunan teleported Debauchery, told the genie to absorb all the mana in their cores and make sure themunication ring can never be removed even if the die, when all of Debauchery and the Valyrians, including Leol and Muscles, Sarah, Drogon and Sapphira, Ophelia and Anne were present in the hall, with no mana to run away and faced with the dangerous smile of a mother who bowed gently and said softly "thank you for teaching my daughter".


    Some shbacks happened in the minds of Debauchery and they all shrunk like they were dehydrated vegetables, all except for leader who bowed back and said with a calm and rxed tone "my pleasure, although I have to apologize for making her forget a few things, if you need any help please ask away, we are at your service". Leader looked like she was nobler than all of thembined, that brought a more sincere smile to Mito who now had a favourable look on Leader, and decided she would be the helpful aid she required to drill the etiquettes into the kids and the rest.


    When everyone saw their mutual recognition some sighed with relief and some felt a shiver down their spines and then all of them dropped bullets of sweat when the next exchange happened. "You must be Mary, the holy maiden, as expected of a figure such as yourself, would you mind helping me teach these savage Barbarians the way of the civilized society?", "Not at alldy Mito, it would be a great pleasure to instruct such rabble and turn them into somewhat civilized folk, after all, you can''t expect dirty mutts like them to be fully rid of their fleas no matter how you wash and groom them".


    "Well said maiden, how about we sheer then and douse them in some alcohol to purify them as well as possible? Having dirty mutts in my pce is a health risk". "Alright thendy, I will offer all my ability to aid in this undertaking". Only the dumbfounded Dustan could talk after such exchange he whispered to Balin besides him "is it gonna hurt?", Balin shook his head "I don''t think pain and hurt are enough to describe what we will go through". Somewhere among the targeted students an "oh" sounded in sudden revtion.


    And then hell was unleashed in the usually quiet and serene pce ofdy Mito, where the students of etiquettes were blockaded in a big hall where they had to perfectly act refined and noble like without looking like trying hard while doing it. "That is a spoon, not a shovel, hold it correctly". "Why are you cutting the meat like it will run away, it''s already on your te so take your time".


    "Sit upright, and don''t ck your shoulders,heads up, only your eyes, lips and hands move while you eat". "Why are you walking like wading through mud, this is the finest carpeting in the world, you don''t walk on it, you step on it while apologizing for being a low life who dares to step on it". "Good lord, what is with that smile, are you trying to scare the life out of me? Do you even know what gentle means you ugly brute!". "Dwarf, even if you pretend to be as tall as a mountain you will always be small, act like it bothers you to look up once in a while, and while we are at it, stop touching the servants, their butts are not included in the service".


    The dual teaching methods ofdy Mito and the inspection and punishment by Leader was enough to drive the boys to the brink of tearing their hair and risk angering them and seek the sweet relief of death. However, on the other side of the spectrum, they were so nice and amodating to the girls who were so fast on the uptake and were learning these things like it was some kind of thing only females could do.


    As for the boys, it was hard to change the walking posture because they didn''t have one to begin with, the way they acted was the most efficient, time and energy-saving way. Holding a spoon was meant for shovelling food into their mouths, the soup was meant to be drunk from the bowl, not sipped from spoons, a fork was there to stop the meat from squirming too much while being cut or stabbing into a sd or other bite-sized pieces of food.


    Cold drinks are meant to be chugged for maximum refreshment and hot drinks are for warming up in a cold day or to time a conversation, when they learned that you only sip from the teacup twice or thrice to make the others around at ease and was not meant to be for enjoying the tea itself, or that alcoholic drinks were to toast and hold in hand and are not to be drunk unless in privacy, or in such cases as a toast, again the container must not be finished in a social setting.


    Food was to be eaten slowly, in small doses and not to eat to full, if you are hungry eat before or after the meal not during the meal. The utensils that are set up on either side of the te are meant to be used by the hand on the corresponding side for the right-handed, reverse for left-handed, smiling is not a friendly gesture nor is scowling aggressive, words are not meant to be literal, emotions are to be faked and poker faces were forbidden and true faces are even more so. Lies and deception are asmon as talking about the weather, trying to gain benefits is a must with every meeting, your friends are meant to be there for when you need them, your true friends can never be introduced to themunity, servants are just a bit higher than bugs andmoners are lower than shit, being nice to a servant is being a gentleman, and being nice to amoner is an obligation, so many rules and regtions to learn and endless practice to learn and fail over and over again.


    Although it went fast by any standards, Yunan and the boys had to study for 3 months just to be given a passing grade while the girls were natural at it and only needed a single month to master the intricacies of the etiquette. Once everyone was allowed to leave the training hall, they uniformly marched into the back garden and every single one of the 15 of participated in a most vulgar and outright uncivilised conversation one had the fortune or misfortune to hear. Three months of acting all nice and proper got even leader to curse and join such an unscrupulous conversation, whiledy Mito only giggled as she watched, being prim and proper was a stressful thing and she just made the most free of parties out there act stuck up for three months, her revenge was already taken and thus she decided to let them vent out their pent up emotions.

 Chapter 232: Official proposal

    Chapter 232: Official proposal


    After letting go of their pent-up feelings, Debauchery felt so exhausted that they sat down on the well-kept grass in the garden andid back to take a nap for a couple of hours


    Dusk was already dying the sky red and orange when the members of the extended Debauchery family woke up, they founddy Mito having a refreshing tea time with emperor Hoshi and guardian Hatsu, the three were waited upon by a single servant who stood there as if part of the scenery, if she did not move to inform the three sitting down that the 15 guests were now awake; some of the youngsters would have missed her.


    Lady Mito has deemed her trainees fit for a royal banquet, a small and private one, but they still needed some manners to take part of it, unlike the other feast in Mar Sara city when Hoshi was amoner. Today Hoshi was an emperor and Reina was an imperial princess, therefore, observing manners and etiquette was imperative.


    When the members of Debauchery arrived at the small elegant gazebo* and got the gentle gaze and beautiful smile ofdy Mito they all had a bad premonition and each of them used their rings to send a message to Balin and Dustan, "do not muck it up, any more of this training and I will kill you". Fortunately, both the orc and the dwarf were on their best behaviour and bowed deeply to greet the emperor and his consort and guardian.


    Dinner went ahead as theplete opposite to the usually Debauchery feast, it was quiet and was only permeated with gentle voices saying warm words,plimenting the dishes or discussing the weather or the magnificent clothing,dy Mito was so impressed with Debauchery she could not stop smiling and sending proud looks towards her husband.


    On the other hand, emperor Hoshi and his guardian Hatsu were very disappointed to see the wild and unmatched Debauchery so tame and proper, it was really a red g for both of them, they knew how effectivedy Mito was when handling matters but taming Debauchery went beyond effective, they thought that maybe it was just Debauchery being nice and cooperative but they still did not take the possibility thatdy Mito was that good.


    Well, the truth was that even though Debauchery was not scared ofdy Mito and could withstand her wrath, they could not go against Leader, especially when she was all prim and proper thus the fear of an angry mother mixed with the terror of a capable Leader who turned good all of a sudden. It just happened that Leader agreed withdy Mito about Debauchery needing a lesson in manners. An Arabic idiom is a perfect idiom for this asion it trantes roughly to "mayhaps a coincidence is choicier than a thousand arrangements"


    After the formal dinner, Hoshi and Hatsu were secretly invited into the sleeping quarters of Debauchery were more food and drink were prepared by the servants ording to the wishes of Leader, the two brought Mito with them anyway because they wanted her to see how fun it can be to let go of the rules. Whendy Mito entered the room where Debauchery were having theirte dinner, there was silence on both ends, Dustan was the first to break the silence by standing up and lifting Mito off her feet and taking her to sit between him and Balin, and with that, the raucous started once more.


    Since Mito was raised all her life in the pce, she could not understand at first, she was force-fed with fat greasy fingers that had different sauces on them, she did not know how her ss made it halfway through the table and into the mouths of half the people here before returning back to her, she winced when the jade tes and bowls flew between members, the gasped when the cat was used as a messenger and when the big bat was dipped in some sauce to enhance the taste.


    She could not help but feel wrong when the food was eaten in minutes and the monsters were asking for more, she almost had a heart attack when a door opened in thin air and out of it came some servants with even more food that smelled heavenly and tasted even better, she watched as Debauchery ate and drank for hours on end, the food was so good and energetic she could not stop chewing, the honey and wine were beyond anything she ever had, and these vulgar people were having these delicacies as if it was somon and easy to find.


    Well soon she too like her daughter, was absorbed in the fun and was especially vulnerable to the antiques of Dustan and Balin who were doing a very vulgar but hrious rendition of a famous tale between a princess and her prince charming. The ugly prince was rather prone to touching where he shouldn''t and the princess was rather eager to make a ve out of her newly found prince by doing anything she could.


    Well the party kept on going until almost dawn, by then the kids were sent to sleep and the adults took the time to indulge in drinking and whatever adults groups did, it was not like the kids were not already adults, the fact that they did not like to drink alcoholic drinks just like Yunan marked them as children in the eyes of Debauchery party.


    The children went back to thefortable big bed back home where they took a good nap before morning where they would officially meet the emperor in the high court and make the proposal of marriage, Debauchery, as the teachers of Yunan the orphan, they would make the proposal on behalf of Yunan, although Yunan prefered his mother to do the honours, she was a member of an organization and would, therefore, be unable to take any political action even if it was proposing marriage for her son.


    The ceremony was rather grand and uneventful, Debauchery behaved grandly under Leader, they made the proposal in a manner befitting their rank as adventurers and the teachers of a king. Emperor Hoshi gracefully epted the grand gifts brought out by Debauchery. Most of the gifts were jewellery and enamelled armours, all made from the items he got from the 30th floors.


    Thanks to the craftsmanship of Balin and Yunan the gifts looked grander and worth more than they actually were, and as engagement gift go, they were rather fancy and grand, making the court officials and retainers feel jealousy and regretting that they did not have such girl that could bring back a king and a fortune in a few items that were only gifts to show the value they put on having the girl.


    In reality those gifts were what was given as show for the officials and masses, as for the private affair between the emperor,dy Mito and Yunan, there were no gifts nor any such things, Reina and Yunan were already a pair to them and all that was needed was making it known to the world, as for the wedding and the official ceremonies were left to the discretion of the lovebirds.

 Chapter 233: Palace of light

    Chapter 233: Pce of light


    After the formalities were over and done with, Yunan and the rest returned to the 40th floor hanging pce and started working on their next adventure.


    Debauchery had to look for any remnants of the Phoenix n and collect anything that is rted to that, as for Yunan he was to take his time in the 45th floor and not push himself like he used to, unlike Debauched who had help reaching the 70th floor, Yunan is on his own, he was told to take as many quests as possible and not underestimate the debuff he has on him.


    As for the girls, they were to make a party starting from the 41st floor, the party would include all the younger generation except for Leol and Muscles who were going to be staying at their new kingdom and help their grandparents take care of the chaos. The all-female party had Reina, Lili, Ophelia, Kitty and Sarah. Lili had the front lines, Reina and Sarah did the magic while Ophelia healed and Kitty protected them from behind.


    As for Yunan he did as told for once and made his way in the 45th floor like he was on vacation. The monsters on this floor were moths and weasels, they worked together on this floor. The moths would release a poison that is harmful to explorers but can act as a healing balm for the weasels, therefore Yunan did not skimp on mana nor did he make it harder for himself, he went to the shortest way to death and executed his strongest magic attacks without even thinking twice about it, he had almost died thrice from wanting to challenge himself, so cruising through was not a very big deal now and then.


    During his year-long journey on this floor, Yunan found a dead city that was buried under the dead and dry soil of the desert. The city was mainly untouched as if it was deliberately buried, that theory was proved right when he entered one of the houses and saw how intact everything was inside, time was showing but there was no trace of the erosion that usually apanies the extent of time needed to bury a city.


    Yunan had been in this rxed mood for almost a year and thus could not be bothered to excavate the city gently, he used earth shift to remove the soil that was not part of the city, taking only a few minutes to do what archaeologists needed years toplete, revealing a magnificent city under his eyes.


    Yunan told the genie to take the city inside his home, and preserve it for him until he was free to study it. The genie obliged and the city was ced inside the backyard, the first building in the endless expanse that was the forest biome.


    Recently the genie has been enjoying the abundant mana and items the could be created from inside the home, the two blue mana wolves were feeding on all the materials that Yunan had no use for, mainly the pearls from the aquarium and the abundant treasures that have grown untouched in the backyard including rare and magnificent flora and fauna. Thus, with the help of the mana wolves, the genie as able to expand the house dimension greatly and it was now more than thrice what it was before entering the 30th floor.


    The genie was using most of the mana it acquired through Yunan and Debauchery to upgrade the space and the abundance of the raw materials and the mana generating flora and fauna, still, it did not put any mana into upgrading the system of the house nor itself, after all, there was no need for that yet.


    After keeping the city Yunan resumed his exploration to finally find the boss two monthster, and kill it in a shower of lightning and a storm of wind des. Inside the chest he found the dictionary to a pictographguage, it was simr to the ancient scripts from the days of old when men had just discovered writtenmunications.


    After learning thenguage, the book disappeared and the chest disappeared with it. Yunan was happy with the results from this floor, his healing aura was strengthened and he could now turn into a selective aura, and his buffing spells gained a new height thanks to the ability to stack with other buffs.


    Back in the house, when the weekend arrived Yunan found himself missing the feeling of being smothered in smooth and supple flesh of his harem, it was very unlike them to miss the chance of a weekend to have the time to y with him, especially with them spending their days climbing the dungeon and their nights sleeping like rocks.


    The genie informed Yunan that his harem was on an exploration trip in the city that just materialized in the forest biome, especially because Yunan never said anything about it. Sighing with relief, Yunan teleported to the location where the five girls were looking around in the city, and after getting his fill of kissing and cuddling Yunan led the girls to the most magnificent building in the city, a pce made of marble and crystal, a marvel of engineering for a city that is built with rock houses.


    Inside the pce, Yunan and hispanions found the walls painted beautifully in murals depicting imposing beasts and majestic birds, dazzling knights in resplendent armours surrounding elegantdies on their way to an opulent and imperial pce, striking and rich gentleman in conference around impressive artefacts, spectacr flower gardens that are adorned with flowery shy maidens and swooning butterflies.


    There was no story to tell in most of the murals nor was there a reason for their existence beyond beauty and feasting the eyes of those visiting the pce, it exhibited the splendour and grandeur of the civilization that ruled this city once upon a time.


    Heading further into the pce, Yunan found the throne room, it was madepletely out of carved crystal, it was so colourful and brilliant casting rainbows and shades of different colourings across the room, at the heart of the room stood a throne made from in marble, it was not eye-catching in this splendid room, however, it gave the feeling that the one who sat on it was entuated by the in throne. It was designed to make the ruler look even more magnificent than the room by contrasting it with the unornamented throne.


    Yunan sat on the throne because he wanted to see how the room looked to the eyes of the king, he ordered the genie to change the light entering the city so that the rays of the sun matched that of the original orientation of the city, then he told the genie to start the day cycle to see when would the king arrive and when would he leave, after watching the shades and rainbows shift and dance around the room, entuating and conjoining at the throne between 10 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon, then scattered in the room after that.


    It seems that the king would sit at court only in certain times where his arrival is heralded by light and his leaving left the light scattered and unfocused like lost rays with nothing worthy of their illumination. This must be what it felt to im to be the lord of light and the king of brightness. Yunan took hisdies in further exploration to find more about this pce, although it was quiet in here, there was no silence, one would feel like this ce is full of life that was invisible, to the visitor, there was warmth in this ce, the warmth of life and love and care, and Yunan could not help feel like he belonged here.

 Chapter 234: New palace

    Chapter 234: New pce


    Yunan looked around the pce and found nothing of worth, it seems whoever left that pce behind has taken everything else, including the poption and left, even so, Yunan could not help but exim at the craftsmanship of the pce, it was truly a ce of light, even though it had no light sources inside, it was still full of light and brightness.


    During his tour of the pce, the party stumbled upon a sealed room made of exquisite ck marble, it was pitch ck inside and the only light came from the open door that the party used toe inside. There was a pedestal with a transparent crystal ball that looked like it was filled with water, the pedestal was grey marble, and the crystal ball rested effortlessly on its crown.


    When everyone entered the room the door closed shut and the fluid inside the crystal ball became luminous enough to let everyone see vaguely in the room, out of curiosity Reina ced her hand on the crystal and it projected words on the ck marbles walls, the words seemed to be floating in the darkness for the party.


    "Oh fated one who has found our legacy, we have fled the 45th floor and can no longer live peacefully here anymore, the sentient ones who have once been our guests have turned on us, we monsters who have attained sentience can no longer tolerate their aggression. We have chosen to leave this city and bury it in the sand, so as to see that neither monster nor explorer can further defile its hallowed grounds."


    "We will follow the great builder, and we will leave this ce that we once chose over the outside world, the benevolent builder has always been good to us and our kind, even though we refused his aid multiple times he continued to care for us, thus we have decided to follow him to where those who awakened live in the outside world. This city has been home and refuge for millennia but is no longer capable of such a role. This pce was built as a lighthouse to all those in the darkness, a ce of respite and hope. s, the vision can no longer be sustained, both the awakened and the sentient no longer tolerate each other, and thus we chose to bury our hope to safeguard it for future."


    "Oh fated one who has found our legacy, this pce, must never again be buried in the dark, let it gloriously drink the light of Tartarus and if possible, let the sun of the surface world nurture its halls, let it be refilled with joy andughter, let the world see the splendour that was once the pce of light, let this pce once again be a beacon of hope and tolerance like it was once before."


    "Oh fated one who has gained our legacy, fulfil our wishes and our blessings shall bring the favour of the gods unto you, oh fated one, never let the throne of light be buried in the dark again, sit on the throne as we did and bathe in the light of the gods and their eternal blessings, fate, have brought this pce to you and with fate we bind you to it, it shall serve you and your own for as long as it lives, oh fated one, drop your blood on the ball and take it with you, make our dreamse true, and the gratefulness of the awakened shall forever be yours"


    Yunan and the girls looked at each other with tacit understanding, their beautiful little kingdom has just got itself a new ce, Yunan told the girls to drop their blood on the crystal ball and im ownership over the bright pce but they all rejected. Ther excuse a very flimsy but romantic one "only a king''s order must resonate in his pce, we dare not take that right from the man we pledge ourselves to".


    Since none of the girls wanted the pce, Yunan turned to Sapphira, as an awakened, she was the next best candidate to take over the pce, yet she refused with a flimsier excuse "the awakened failed this pce once already, maybe the sentient will fail too, only then will the awakened have the right to try again." seeing as it was not working Yunan proceeded to stand over the pedestal and pierce his finger to drop his blood on the ball and im it but something else happened.


    What came out of Yunan''s finger was not an ordinary drop of blood, it was the drop of Phoenix blood that has tormented him, as soon as the drop fell on the crystal ball turned blood red and a voice sweeter than the chirping of birds filled the room and the pce was fully absorbed into the crystal ball as it hovered at chest length before Yunan.


    The pleasurable voice said something in anguage none of those present could understand, it then sent all that bloody fluid inside it into Yunan''s body leaving behind only the crystal ball with a pce floating inside of it, as for the rest of the city it turned to dust the moment the crystal ball absorbed the pce.


    Inside Yunan however, was a raging battle as the new blood took a greater part of the body resulting n the increase of the debuff to 25% to all stats, it was painful enough that Yunan had to grit his teeth and endure as sweat filled his forehead. By the time his body limated to the new blood, he had almost fainted, causing the girls to feel concern for him, the only benefit of this new addition to his blood was the higher chance at 20% of assimting the Phoenix bloodline without problems.


    Now that the event was over, Yunan took his harem and went to his newly bought kingdom. After a year it still looked as beautiful and as happy as it was when he bought it, there were more tourists wanting to catch a glimpse of the legendary Yunan, the new king of the twilight pearl and son-inw of the kitsune.


    Yunan did not like to make a scene in his first visit to the new kingdom so he used the government to make a path for him where he could safely go to the old royal pce and rece it. The old pce was mainly a tourist spot or rarely the residence of foreign diplomats or the asional king that rents the ce when taking a vacation in the twilight pearl.


    Since it was so, the pce was easily cleared and Yunan removed all the plot ofnd and reced it with the bright pce and a piece of the garden, the old pce was ced in a nearer position to the gates of the royal city to function as reception and residence for the foreign diplomats and those who can afford to rent it, as for the bright pce it would be used as the new government building and also a tourist attraction.


    Since Yunan wanted to see how the popce received this change and how they felt about it, he thought he might as well introduce himself and his queen to his subjects, even though he knew he was king only in name, having a king show himself and not having any were two different things.


    Thus it was decided that the pce will ept visitors the next day and as his first official appearance, Yunan would sit on his throne for all to see, he also decided to give away some small trinkets he can mass produce using pearls and some precious metals to those who arrive and congratte their king.


    First, the reception only had limited time from 10 am to 3 pm, each group had 5 minutes with the king and his queen where they would be able to leave behind questions or demands to the new king if there were any, as for gifts he made breast watches for the men and a vast array of jewellery for thedies, his goal was to give the people an idea that their new king was not there for their wealth and hard work, he just liked the ce.

 Chapter 235: Behold the bright king

    Chapter 235: Behold the bright king


    The news of the new kinging by and changing the pce, making a ceremony for the citizens as well publicly use magic was spread fast among the residents of the small kingdom of twilight pearl, this new king has not done anything for a year and just came about doing things shily.


    Most citizens just madeints about the tant use of magic, even though Yunan technically did not use magic, it was a small technically as using magic tools should be considered using magic, so the government made sure to fine Yunan the new king in a manner that would cripple a king who recently bought a new kingdom and had a new pce made just the other day.


    The fine they sent towards Yunan to appease the poption was a bit over exaggerated, they estimated the price of the old pce and the cost of moving it and doubled it, and presented it to Yunan who just paid it at the same moment, he would rather not have any problems when showing off his queens and a few pieces of gold was not worth the headache it might cause if he didn''t pay it.


    Once the fine was paid in full, those who were very critical of Yunan found themselves unable to say anything, because as the king of thend, respectfully paying fine instead of t out rejecting it was almost unheard of, although some thought it was weakness the smart ones knew this man was not to be trifled with, if he had a storage space big enough for a pce he was rich enough to wipe out this smallnd and rebuild it in his own image, thus they stopped those going on strikes as well as those going on protests, this one was a benevolent king that chosew over dignity, he was, therefore, someone who doesn''t care about what this kingdom can offer except for its peaceful ways.


    Yunan didn''t announce anything other than the fact that he was showing his face and his wives for those who wished to see their king, the gifts were left as a surprise as well as the interior of the throne room.


    There were many that chose to attend the event, most of them were from the elderly who brought their grandchildren to see the splendour of a king, the rest of those attending were officials who were sent by theirmunity to meet the king. The numbers were rather low even if Yunan expected on the government and guild employees to attend, therefore he changed his n and decided to let everyone in at the same time since the throne room was big enough to amodate all of the possible guests, at least those present at the moment.


    Yunan made gear madepletely out of pearls, the dresses for the girls were so breathtaking that the girls thought it was a waste to put them on, as for himself he made a battle armour that was so shiny and sparkly it was almost a crime.


    At 9 am in the morning the masses were allowed inside the bright pce, where gasps of awe and wonder echoed in the marble halls, the well-preserved murals and the archaic feel the whole bright pce gave made people wonder where such a pce came from, it was beyond extravagant, and certainly not made by sentient being from the current age, another thing that was asked endlessly was where is the lighting from, there were nomps, no torches, no candles, and nothing that seemed like a mirror to reflect light, the servants only answer was "we don''t know".


    As for you my dear readers it is the marble itself that is illuminating the bright pce. The outer part of the pce absorbs light and disperses it to the whole pce where it is stored and then released inside in the gentlest light possible, thus even though the only window in the whole pce was inside the throne room, the rest of the pce was well lit almost day and night, as for the sleeping quarters, there was a marble ball beside the beds, one can touch and send an order to dim the lights or totally extinguish it, since the only requirement was intent and the magical properties of the marble, the pce itself could not be considered a magical item and was not using magic against thew.


    The pce was built like a visitor centre, the front gate led to a wide hall, that branched when reaching the door to the throne room, on the left was the service quarter; where one can meet the court officials and employees of the government, on the left was guest quarter, one can find rest lounges and banquet halls, and all kinds of facilities that are open for the guests, both service and guest quarters have a dedicated kitchen and servant dormitories so as to not be in a position where one quarter must be prioritized over the other and thus offending anyone was almost impossible.


    As for the royal quarters, they were behind the throne room, as in you must first pass by the throne room and reach the back door to enter it, the royal quarters are not connected to anything else, however, beneath the throne room exists a study that both the service and guest quarters can ess to speak directly with the king in case of emergency or secret negotiations, the door connecting to this study can only be opened by the king himself and it requires the control over the pce to create the links.


    Now you can imagine entering through a grand marble gate, simple and without decoration, as if telling the outside world, you are not worthy enough to glimpse the magnificence thatys inside, as you step inside, you will not feel the light dimming, instead it feels as bright as the outside but gentler on the eyes, as you proceed through the hall you are hit with the beauty of the pce and its decoration without warning, murals, carvings, and endless rich colours.


    As you are still taking in the dazzling sight, you notice that there are no visible means to spread light, and while you are asking you find yourself before the door leading to the throne room, you notice that you have not stopped walking and have been almost in a trance to notice, when you look at the simple marble door, it feels out of ce, it draws your attention because even though it shares the same space as those things that just took your breath away, it just stood there humble and epting it would never be as breathtaking, however you feel that it only stands there to cleanse your mental pte in order to witness something that you will never forget.


    As the marble door opens you witness the colourful crystal hall, it looks like it was made from gems and jewels, then you notice the lighting from the only window in the pce, a crystal clear panel that drowns the room in light, that pure light scattering again and again in rainbows filling the room, you notice the again simple throne in the room, there are no rainbows on it, it feels lonely and afraid of the dark, you notice behind it that the scattered light has made a path from the back door all the way to the throne.


    You look at the time and notice that the few moments you have been here, are in actuality an hour, and you glimpse the back door noiselessly open from behind it, a man in bright armour walks in, a beautiful woman walks by each side, the follow a step behind him, he is their master and for a moment he is yours too, the man follows the path of light and 3ach step he bes brighter and more colourful, you notice that three more beautiful girls emerge behind the man but you don''t keep them in mind, the man that is getting showered by light with each step closer to the simple lonely throne draws all your attention.


    You witness the man sit on the throne and all the broken lights in the room converge on him, bing a halo of light, you can look as much as you want but your mind can not help but shut your eyes and you unconsciously kneel before your king, you do not hesitate nor do you find it disheartening, your king deserves to be knelt to, and you are his subject.


    You immerse yourself in the feeling of the light hitting your closed eyelids demanding you open them and behold the most magnificent king, but you wait, not sure why or for what but you wait, until you hear the gentle and mild, yet strong voice reverberating in the room "rise" and you obey, you stand on your feet and open your eyes to look at your king, there he sits on the simple throne, he is the main attraction, not the throne he sits on, three queens stand on the right, the left and behind him, beyond them two servants stand two steps back with their eyes on the king, there are no guards and no security, a true king sits in front of you, and no man can have the presence of mind to wield a de to harm him.

 Chapter 236: Holding court

    Chapter 236: Holding court


    After all the visitors have risen to behold their king, Yunan signalled to Reina and she bowed slightly then raised her voice for those present to hear "the court of King Yunan the wise Prowler is hereby in session, please take your turns to introduce yourselves and the queries you have".


    There was a moment of silence before someone introduced himself as the appointed minister of finance "since your majesty have chosen to make an appearance after a whole year, will your majesty be taking an active role in the ruling of this kingdom?". Although the question was a trap in itself, Yunan only smiled at the man before responding in a calm voice.


    "No, we just wanted to show my face and show off my beautiful wives, as for the internal affairs of this kingdom we already like it the way it is, no need to change anything, as for the external affairs, we will only interfere if a diplomatic situation esctes beyond the control of the current government system, so you do need to fret over your position".


    Another moved forward and introduced himself as the minister of justice and legalism " your majesty has not announced any changes in this kingdom which is unheard of especially in the legal facet of ruling, even though your majesty have not changed any suchws, you have used magic and introduced big changes to the capital, something that has the citizens feeling anxiety, might your majesty share with us your royal thoughts?".


    "Rest assured, there is nothing to fear, we think this kingdom is perfect as it is, as for the big change and usage of magic that is nothing but a technicality, we have used a storage item the belongs to us to move the old pce and set this one in its ce, as for the technicality of using magic and magic items we have paid the fine issued by your ministry immediately, so there should be no problem, as for the future, we will be careful not to break thew that governs thisnd, it is unbefitting for a king to break his ownws".


    There were a few more questions and answers from the officials about many things that ended with the same conclusion, this kingdom will just run the same, except now it had a public king that will protect it from foreign affairs if things got too heated, they no longer have to fear the guild pulling away their protection and abandoning this ce that is barely profitable for the guild.


    After the officials came the retired ones who brought their children as the second group, they had been so immersed in the beautiful halls they did not notice the officials leaving and were still oblivious until the herald announces that the king will see his subjects. And so they made their way to the throne room again to only be blinded by the splendid lights covering the room and entuating the presence of the king and his wives.


    Some knelt some did not, and neither did Yunan say anything about it, not all men who see a king would kneel to him or show reverence, therefore Yunan did not ask the herald to voice the customary "kneel before your king" line, and for the next hour or so Yunan chatted with the youngsters and their elders like he was their neighbour, while the wives were mostly targeted by the girls who also wanted t princesses and queens, it made Yunan chuckle every time a little girl cheered when she was proimed a princess for today by Reina or Lili.


    After all the visitors left, Yunan had ate lunch with the highest levels of authority in the kingdom, namely the prime minister, the guild representative, the minister of foreign affairs and the minister of security and policing. In the meeting, Yunan discussed the most urgent matters of the kingdom, mainly pirates and merchant empires that were trying to take over the production lines and the transport lines.


    Yunan directly bought aid from the guild to provide a fleet for protection of the current trading route as well as training for some of the poption to create a naval army as well as a police force made mostly from explorers under thirty of age and have sessfully reached the tenth floor or higher, he also told the minister of the foreign affairs to work with the holy empire of the sun inds to provide a bigger market as well as diplomatic support, as for those mercantile empire trying to take over the production line, they only needed to stop dealing with them and focus on the production under the kingdom, if money was needed Yunan was prepared to buy the production lines back himself and give them back to the kingdom.


    With most of the problems solved the lunch was called to an end, Yunan gave the prime minister a ring ofmunication to establish contact, while Yunan would show his face once or twice a year so the poption could recognize him. There was a bit of rejection from themon men for this new overlord, but after the news about him and hismunication with the officials was spread that rejection dwindled to almost nothing.


    Even if they were lucky to have this king being all nice and gentle, it was a bit too lucky for them that he did not care about ruling or changing this beautiful ce they built generation after generation, nor did he care about taking the ruling role, excepting the case of national emergency or other such major events threatening the kingdom.


    Yunan stayed for a week in the bright pce and the twilight pearl kingdom to rx and have some precious time with his harem, meanwhile Debauchery was making progress in the 81st floor of the dungeon, after a bit of stagnation the daily 100% buffs they got from Yunan proved very helpful for them in reaching the necessary attribute points to survive without that buff anymore, they were having bad luck when it came to capturing a monster they wanted to tame.

 Chapter 237: Suffering bird

    Chapter 237: Suffering bird


    "How long has it been since we held the ritual?" asked Dustan as he pulled out an old throne from his ring and started dusting and cleaning it with the utmost care. "About 5 years, we have been cking in doing it ever since we stopped needing his luck", said Bai with a nostalgic look.


    Fae was ying around with her variant slime, while Lucian was giving Leader her daily back rub, Balin was working on some sort of contraption while scratching his head with one of its corners every now and then. Debauchery party members were taking a rest back in the privet dimension, they had been especially sadtely since the youngsters have been away for a long time and they missed having the extra mouths when making noise.


    "If we kept the ritual that bloody bird would have been ours from day one, it has been giving us too much trouble ever since we stepped on its nest by mistake!". Dustan was very hurt and indignant about the whole ordeal, so he was visibly happy when Reina popped from behind him tweeting like a songbird "you deserved it, you should pay attention to small things no matter how big you are". The visibly happy mood Reina was in, infected everyone as they drew smiles on their faces.


    "So how did it go, you just said you were going on an adventure but said nothing else, care to tell us what happened?" Fae was so curious she directly threw her slime on Balin''s beard as he skittered stealthily towards the fluffy girl, it has been too long since hest had her in his arms especially now that the two tails have be 4 with a fifth growing out, that bought Fae enough time to scoop up the kitsune and hug her tight enough to keep away Balin.


    "Well, hubby brought home a hole city from the dungeon and we went to explore it, we found this unbelievable pce inside, so we took it to our little kingdom and then Yunan held court in the new pce, you should have seen how dreamy and cool he looked, and then there was so many colourful lights and rainbows that made him look even more kingly, and when he held court he was so dignified and was so kingly i was gonna die from happiness".


    As the news had nothing to do with Reina herself Debauchery tuned it out as white noise and just ignored most of it, the gist was that Yunan got lucky again and now he looks kingly just by sitting on a freaking chair, as his wife Reina was acting more like a mistress and not a wife. She was swooning over him like he was the best there ever was and there ever will be, she soon was joined by Ophelia and Kitty who kept singing praise to Yunan for hours while he was in the bath taking a nap with Lili and Sarah by his side.


    Debauchery listened to the white noiseing from the girls until it was dinner time, there Yunan had to ask why is Balin bringing his work to the table and why is Dustan still carrying around that old throne of embarrassing rituals. "It''s a bird". "What bird?". "Not a bird, the bird", "bird is the word I see". "Exin please". "So while in the 81st floor Dustan stepped on the nest of this little bird and it has been causing us trouble ever since. When we sneak on something it alerts it when we fight it brings reinforcements if we take a rest it shits on our heads or drops rotten fruit, we tried every trick in the book to catch it but we couldn''t" Lucian exined.


    "Why not just bring it home, if you are not lucky enough to catch we can bring Fortuna herself and we can see how long it canst, anyway, why are you even making traps for it?" Reina was as brutally straightforward as always saying hat should not be said. Debauchery was not very impressed but still said "I think it knows somehow, we tried to use that method and it stays out of the ten-meter range at all times and no matter what we do it does not fall in our traps, we are at wits end" Leader was not too bothered about it by her tone.


    "Alright before you guys move out tomorrow let''s do the luck ritual and see how it goes, let me bless that trap you are building too, we should cover all the bases, if not for the fact that I am too weak I would go with you there myself". Yunan could have stopped there and all would be fine but he has been too rxed for his own good even his death seeking tendencies returned to the surface.


    He said with a snigger "but to think the almighty Debauchery would be reduced to wit''s end by a bird, surely you must have gone down the self-esteem rankingtely" that was all the words it took for Yunan to flip a switch in Debauchery, and killing intent started hurling itself at him, only then did he realise what he said was the wrong statement at the wrong time, he should have waited until they caught the bird before letting such a line be heard.


    The punishment was not too severe at all, Yunan almost got away scot-free, he was only turned to a bird and made to eat some grains and earthworms from the garden hand picked by Dustan for maximal gross factor, Yunan the bird had his feathers plucked, regrown and plucked again enough times to make a very soft pillow for leader, he was given to Sapphira to toy with him for a bit, then he was put in a cage for the rest of the night.


    And if he refused to tweet and sing in his new melodious voice, he was poked by a rod to sing and sing until they offended Debauchery was satisfied, probably the other bird has escaped this treatment thanks to the contributions of Yunan, well he literally suffered for the bird''s sins, even if the line Yunan used was not that bad in the scheme of things, it was the straw that broke the proverbial camel''s back.

 Chapter 238: Using luck

    Chapter 238: Using luck


    A weekter Debauchery returned with a small fist-sized bird, it was locked under so many locks and spells that Yunan almost thought it was the most dangerous thing in the world. The bird looked sad and indignant while Debauchery looked haggard as if they went through a war, the whole lot of them were on odds and that brought a smile to Yunan and the rest.


    The first thing happened was the girls taking away the caged bird and running away with it from the clutches of Debauchery, taking Sapphira with them as the trantor between species, meanwhile, Debauchery went to take a rxing few hours.


    Yunan decided not to interfere with the story and headed to the 46th floor, where he would fight his way through groups of vultures that had the cunning and the aerial advantage, as well as having their cries debuff Yunan and buff each other, the debuffs stacked while the buffs did not. Facing this kind of opponent Yunan had to strategize and n for each fight alone, he also had to take in the various debuffs and buff himself ordingly, thankfully he has just gained the stacking buff ability and for now, he could stack 10 buffs at the same time.


    To fight these vultures Yunan created earth golems and made them shoot projectiles at the vulture to add in a factor of variables to help reduce the pressure from the aerial fight, as for Yunan himself he decided to go with teleportation and then paralysis, grounding the big birds for easier takedown or let the golems deal with them if he was not predisposed to deal with the fallen ones before they could shake the paralysis.


    Yunan chose to go for a paralysis spell instead of poison because vulture has naturally strong immune systems since they survive as carrion animals and feed only on dead bodies, some are rotten and poisonous, or even ridden with sickness. If that high immunity was transferred to the monster vulture and it got strengthened then the use of biological warfare was the wrong choice to take in this fight.


    Meanwhile back in the portable home, the little bird was pouring out its indignations towards Debauchery party to the girls through Sapphira, the girls had tears filling their eyes and understanding written on their faces, they too promised the bird to help it take revenge on Debauchery. So after it promised to behave when it was with the girls and only attack when told to, the girls let the little bird out of its cage and it uttered a very beautiful "finally free" cry.


    As for Debauchery they did not know their newest nemesis has escaped its bounds and now had allies to back it up too, they just took their time rxing in the baths. The rxing moment onlysted until dinner time when Yunan returned home. Since Yunan has been killing birds all day long, he was rather conditioned to preparing his mana on the sight of feathers and ramping up his killing intent, which offended the little bird who was sitting on Sapphira''s head.


    Their first meeting went wrong because Sapphira, as the chosen one, brought the little bird into the baths to convince Yunan to help it and the girls to y a good prank on Debauchery, and since Yunan bared his fangs immediately at the sight of feathers, the little proud bird was immediately infuriated and refused to cooperate. Until Yunan told it "you better behave in my home, otherwise I will have you in a cage so small you will forget how to p your wings".


    Lets just say Yunan had to buff himself at 1000% a few times to make his aura threatening enough, naturally the effective strength he could draw out can not surpass his Constitution even of his numbers said otherwise, the trick with the aura was enough to frighten the little bird simply because birds are more susceptible to believe the strength of the aura, rather than believe in the power of the strike, bolder creatures would resist a bit more until they take a punch equivalent to the aura.


    After some negotiation, the bird finally agreed to take Yunan as it''s master for the time being, but only until he dealt with Debauchery and then it must be returned to its floor. During dinner time Yunan introduced his new pet sessfully to Debauchery, and while they werementing his good luck, for the first time, he activated his own luck and made it so that Debauchery would face a string of unfortunate events, he lost enough luck to return from godly luck to very good luck in that moment.


    Debauchery trouble only started after dinner, with Fae breaking her nose after a rather gentle bump when Dustan was trying to get past her and find the aquarium, the first thought that hit everyone''s minds was "that was not right", but Fae had apletely different thought " you broke my beautiful nose you @#$_&$#@@@$__&_$##@__&" the string of profanity that escaped the sulent lips would have made adults cringe and shiver in disgust.


    Fae didn''t stop there, she proceeded to have a full power fist fight with Dustan who somehow managed to spit out a mouthful of blood and broken teeth into Balin''s new groomed beard. In his disbelieving retreat, Balin grabbed onto Lucian''s tail causing him to sink his ws into Leader while pushing her away from the way of the retreating Balin, that in turn led to Bai who wasing out into the garden to receive a face full of lykan posterior.


    By now, Leader was calmly dressing minor wounds, Balin and Fae were ganging up on Dustan, all three of them bloody and bruised while Lucian and Bai were engaged in a wrestling match and were rolling around the garden, the bird looked proud of Yunan for a moment before flying out from his shoulder and started throwing some solid fruits at the fighting gang.


    Leader was about to jump on Lucian and give him a piece of her mind or fist or both but stopped suddenly when she got an apple to the back of the head, she stood still for a few seconds her mind gears visibly working on overdrive, before shemanded "HALT" with a tone that gave Yunan a shudder. Thankfully he was the only one aware of how he would prank Debauchery and therefore the others could not lie about it, on the other hand, he needs to be very careful and make considerate answers, he after all already had the intention to hide information from Leader if she questioned him.

 Chapter 239: Praised

    Chapter 239: Praised


    Following Leader''smand every single one in the garden stopped moving, even the birdnded on Yunan''s should and tried to be a bit smaller than it actually is and stayed closer to Yunan''s neck than it did before.


    Leader watched her bloody and blue party for a moment then returned her look at Yunan who tried very hard not to panic, he, however, was very determined not to lie so as to not trigger the liars mark on his forehead and get punished for his perfect n. Therefore although he started sweating he kept hisposure as best as he could. "You guy know I hate infighting right?", There was a lot of aggression in those few words and even Dustan let out a whimper while Fae was still on her bad mood thanks to the broken nose and the new bruises that cropped up after that.


    "He broke my nose" screamed Fae at leader "he must be punished, now my mood and skin will be bad for ages". Leader just turned her attention to Dustan and Balin "since when have you been using enough strength to break her precious nose home?". " I never did, I usually do like you taught me and seal my strength away after every single fight, it was working up to dinner just now?" Responded Dustan with a lot of hurt feelings as if he was the victim here. Balin was still ogling Dustan as if he wanted to still slog him a few more times "he spat out his teeth and blood square in my beard, I really just finished grooming it with all the care in the world and now I have to do it again.


    The start of this event was very much down to luck, Dustan was so excited he forgot to keep his strength in check, causing fae to break her nose and fly into a rage, as they were fighting it, Dustan wanted to spit some blood and teeth that happened tond on Balin, that also caused her injuries and subsequently the involvement of Bai, and if not for the fruit hitting the back of her head, she might have joined that fight too.


    Therefore her eyes darted to Yunan and his bird "did you n this?" She asked Yunan who was stiff as a board. "There is no way I can n this, this is too much even for my luck, I might need to lose all of it to make sure the events y as they did". "So what did you n," she asked." a prank, get you tangled up and let the bird take some revenge, then convince you to return it back its own floor, you would have been so proud you would pat my head and say good job". So far Yunan did not lie, he did not n nor did he tell any false ims, Leader would have praised him if he pulled a prank on them.


    "Care to exin this then?" She wanted to make him slip out and make a mistake. "Must be due to luck, you might have used too much good luck in capturing the bird, and as my luck goes both ways, it might have taken the imprisonment of the bird as an evil act done by abusing luck and retaliated in the nearest possible moment, look at my luck, it went down from godly to very good, that is too much bad luck in store for you guys if all of it was turned against you".


    Yunan was surer than anyone that getting them to fight in those series of perfect idents was the extent of the bad luck he paid for, it was, therefore, possible for Leader to wake up from the spell of bad luck and regain control of her future."alright we will return the bird, as for the lot of you, punishment for infighting even if it was started by bad luck".


    With their heads down Debauchery party left for the baths to clean up and heal, while Leader stayed behind and watched them walking away whispering about what kind of punishment they would get. She then turned to Yunan "you can keep it if you want to, although it is a monster, it is a docile one, very intelligent too, and it seems like you two have an affinity."


    Yunan shook his head "we made a deal, and I don''t want to break it, it really wanted to return so badly, now that it had its revenge, it won''t attack your party anymore, after all, you broke his first marital nest, and that caused his wife to get angry at him, so, you should have just apologized and helped them rebuild instead of ignoring the nest and keep moving"


    Leader had a proud look on her face but she still said something that got Yunan to stiffen again "now tell me the whole truth", Yunan didn''t know what to say at first then in resignation said to Leader "the bad luck you hadst week, was the rebound from trying and seeding in capturing the bird, the fight earlier was my doing, I activated my luck to give you some very bad luck, and I identally used too much and ended up degrading my luck a few stages". He was expecting some kind of punishment or warning but he only felt a hand on his head and a soft whisper he thought was a hallucination "good job".


    Although leader was not very angry or anything, she still appreciated the fact that her student could actually inflict some damage on her and her party, and even put them in a vulnerable state to outside attacks, while only losing luck, even if it was not worth it in the long run, his luck would recover and this tactic of inflicting bad luck on others was an extra strategy in his arsenal. Therefore she chose to praise him instead of berating him, even if he himself did not realize the extent of the damage he dealt to Debauchery.


    There was a reason why infighting was forbidden in Debauchery, because it would restrain two members, although two was a small number, in a party of 6 or 7 two was a third of the avable forces, and in this incident, Yunan had sessfully restrained 6 members, leaving behind the useless healer, if there was an ambush more sinister than a bird throwing fruits Debauchery would have been caught with their pants down.

 Chapter 240: Faulty defences

    Chapter 240: Faulty defences


    Watching Leader leaving, Yunan could not help but reflect on his action, howe all that luck spent was only able to cause some infighting and the fact that leader praised him meant it did more than just cause infighting, and he did not know about it, therefore he decided on a strategy meeting for the avable members of the Valyrians.


    He told the bird to stay with Leader since she had agreed to take the bird back to its floor where it can find its wife and restart a new nest, he watched as the bird flew and chirped at Leader and her giggling at it and ying with it and scratching it bulging victorious chest, she did not seem like she was going to punish her subordinates too hard, therefore, Yunan focused on his next objective, figuring out the extent of damage he had dealt to Debauchery.


    His girls, however, were have immediately found the discrepancy when he retold what happened to them, "it''s obvious" said Sarah "you just made them vulnerable to an ambush, and the ambush was sessful, the bird could have been using arrows instead of fruits causing each and every one of them to be dead". "Also think how they did not even notice they were being targeted and hit by the fruits if leader did not get hit in the head and she was not in the midst of a fight, if she was she might have not noticed until the bird had it fun and revenge" Reina added her insights too.


    "You mean I just used enough luck to kill a party of level 80 adventurers by simply causing infighting? shouldn''t they be alert to outside threats even when they were fighting each other?". "Yes" Lili responded to Yunan " they have spent weeks getting hit by this bird and were very attuned to its attacks yet totally missed it this time, and the little bird was there in front of them, yet they still got hit by the fruits, it means their minds were fully focused on their targets that they missed the thing they have been fighting against for weeks".


    "Meaning that I would need much less luck to cause another party to fall in a worse situation than I did with Debauchery because they especially hate infighting and solve their issues nonviolently each time. If that is the case then I may have just found a strategy to use against enemies, but it requires luck and I need to umte mine again, at least so that I have enough to activate it multiple times without incurring bad luck on myself ".


    After a good talking and thinking session the youngsters went to bed in preparation of their next day of dungeon exploring, the girls were moving on the 43rd floor and Yunan gave them a few pieces of advice on how to deal with the monsters they would face, on the other hand, he was thinking about what the boss would look like and how he could deal with it.


    The next few weeks went pretty good for Yunan and the girls, the only thing that got them down was Debauchery, they have beening back haggard and tired even more than they were before, it seems Leader''s punishment was a bit harsher than it looked like, ording to whispers drifting from Fae and Balin, it indicated that Leader was experimenting with expanding the amount of attention the party pays to the outside world while engaged inbat or during arguments, something they would not usually do in the current level they were fighting at.


    Debauchery had their unique way of staving boredom while fighting weaker monsters, they would take that as both strength control training as well as a way to use their excess mental energy for something, that can manifest itself in the hrious situations they get themselves into. On the other hand, when dealing with monsters on their own level, their mental capacity is already stretched enough as is between keeping vigil and focusing on the monster and its attacks, while also keeping the actions of their party members under consideration.


    Leader had added talking and arguing to the fight regime in an effort to counter the effects of the attack Yunan just used against them, luckily for them, Yunan was a good kid and has never intended harm to his teachers, it was only a small prank, to act as revenge for the little bird and stop it from holding a grudge and disrupt them further.


    However, that little prank has shown a ring hole in the defences of the party, and dealing with such a problem was her duty as the Leader for those lovable misfits. One must acknowledge that the luck worked so well mostly because the party was rxed and had no feeling of attention or danger in the ce they called home for years now, it was a safe ce and they have rxed their guard, but even so, as adventurers of such high calibre that have gone through so many gruelling trials, being caught off guard was rather embarrassing.


    If we add the fact that a soothing spell can lead them to rx their guard in the wild, then the fact that another covert spell to cause mayhem between the members is more likely to seed, even if it was not a spell, and it was a drug or a monster effect, the possibility was high that Debauchery would be decimated, thankfully these kinds of strategies are mostly used on the surface world by those who could not reach beyond the 30th floor, therefore those who reach higher floors are less likely to fight among themselves, since it is rare to bump into another party due to the size of the floors and few numbers of explorers in contrast, evident by how Yunan had not met many parties during his time in the 40th floors.


    Yunan thought it was high time he started working with other people in the dungeon, he has been using his mental energy and expanding it by doing things like arithmetics and someplicated mathematics while fighting, but that was one thing and fighting with others was apletely different concept, even if he was able to use more of his mental strength that way it was more efficient and more taxing if it was used in tandem with others.

 Chapter 241: Turning 30

    Chapter 241: Turning 30


    To start on his ns Yunan left a quest in the guild to look for a party in the vicinity, however, he didn''t sit and wait; instead, he went to investigate a im that he received through the guild about someone having the blood of a phoenix in their possession.


    The imant was an old man living in a remote area, he used to im that his ancestors had a close rtionship with the Phoenix n and worked as stewards for them, he also imed that a red ss bead was a gift of recognition left by the Phoenix n for his ancestors before they too died off, almost at the same time as the dragon n. ording to the old man, there was an old map in his possession that can lead to the burial site of the Phoenix n and where they left their legacy, however Yunan immediately knew that he was lying because the red bead in his possession was the tear of a dragon and not a phoenix blood drop, he had both types of blood running in his veins and he could tell.


    Yunan was not dispirited and chose to return to Tartarus and leave the matter of the Phoenix legacy to another time. He spent the next year fighting vultures in the 46th floor and ended up ying the boss in that time, the boss was a 4 winged vulture with domineering aura, it could debuff those under the influence of its aura directly without the need for it to cry, it instead used its mouth as a wind cannon and fired it in tandem with the wind des from its wings to make Yunan have even more of a miserable time, all thanks to the debuffs he had been suffering, he had to buff himself to 500% just to counter the loss of functionality.


    The fight went as can be expected with Yunan teleporting into the bosses blind spots and firing his magic at it, in addition he had golems act as ballistic troops and air suppression, making things much easier for him, he who used the fact that the boss was focused on the golems to deal as much damage as he could each time he made it into the blind spots of the boss.


    Afterwards, Yunan moved forward for the next 5 years until he reached the 50th floor, during that time he had no news about the legacy of the Phoenix and the responses he got from Hephaestus and Fortuna about the matter were ambiguous at best, something about not bringing forward the arrival of a certain person. The gains during this period were three golden books, one was the second volume of the biography left behind by Apophis, the second was an upgrade to the heavenly smithing that includes engineering and higher enchanting in it, thest golden book contained the myth of creation, specifically the story of the Phoenix n and the dragon n.


    ording to the script in the book, it was created by the scribe of the god Metatron, and was left behind by the scribe inside the dungeon as a reward for clearing the first 49 floors solo, the book itself was read by many before, and Yunan was the 14th person to achieve the great deed. It seems that even though Yunan had led a few parties through some floors, he was still awarded the solo clear because he had the ability to clear each floor on his own and was carrying others and being burdened by them.


    The book itself talked about the two sides of creation, soul and body, the Phoenix n was the soul aspect of life while the dragon n was the body, thus the dragon n had greater affinity to mortals and magic while the Phoenix n was a n that sought the peek of spiritualism, they had mortal disciples who aimed to achieve eternal life through reincarnation or spiritual ascension. Like the two faces of the coin that is life, their existence required each other, and their bloodlines being mutual exclusive was the result of the separation of the ns, they had been apart for too long, so long they had diverged from the path intended for them by the creator.


    The body must seek spiritual ascension while the spirit must seek bodily pleasure, a spirit without desire is nothing more than a shoddy replica of an angel while a body without a lofty spirit is nothing but mud. In their quest to seek individuality, the dragon n chose the path to magic and earthly creation, while the Phoenix n sought the path of nirvana, the path of bliss through spiritual growth and fulfilment.


    Even though both ns rejected each other, they could not change thepatibility of their bloodlines until the mana corruption started affecting the world and as the ns that birthed life itself, they were the first to be corrupted and even though their minds were not lost, their bloodlines slowly followed their paths and not long after the two ns became mutually exclusive thus being unable to restore the world to what it was before the corruption even if they wished to.


    With the corruption of mana, many things and legends came into life, the humans were not the only sentient beings anymore, and then with time the corruption of the ns reached the point where both had to die so that the world may live longer, the reasoning was that if both ns were to be corrupted even further and lost their minds, then life itself will be lost too, or it will change into something else, both ns left behind eggs and legacies to revive themselves and perhaps find a way to regain theirpatibility, but s, the ns that chose death had chosen the wrong stewards, who used their legacies and eggs to get paid instead of protecting the future of the world.


    Upon reaching the 50th floor, the guild contacted Yunan about a party in the 50th floor who were seeking a magician, and Yunan decided he might join them while waiting for his girls to reach the same floor. The group hiring a mage was almost shocked to see a teenager entering the meeting room, they themselves were middle-aged men and women, they looked that way even though they were much much older, and seeing someone looking like a teenager was rather odd for them, it meant his Constitution advanced greatly in a short amount of time thus extending his lifespan and halting his ageing process.

 Chapter 242: Life with the new party

    Chapter 242: Life with the new party


    The new party Yunan met were rather ordinary, they greeted him and talked about his magic range and his output, as well as what else he could do, they had no interest in his private life or how he could make it so far so quickly.


    In the dungeon, it is possible to raise high-level adventurers faster by taking the most promising new recruits to the higher floors and skipping the grind, many did the same with their students or family members, but not all of the boosted adventurers could survive their new environment.


    That was the real thing keeping the number of high-level adventurers very low, the mortality rates in the higher floors are much lower per capita but replenishment of the capita is much slower the higher the floor is, for example the majority of the explorers are within the first 10 floors, there the talented ones are separated from the rest and slowly build better parties as they advance into the 20s and 30s, by the time the adventurers reach the 40th floor the mortality rate due to monsters is reduced drastically and the survivors tend to either slow down and die from old age by the time they reach the 60th floor or keep pushing hard and die from umted stress in that same vicinity.


    Although it was strange seeing a teenager in the 50th floor it was by no means a first, there were many prodigious adventurers that came here looking too young, however Yunan was the only one to carve his way that fast, therefore he did not find any need in bragging about it, since he did it he assumed others did as well, never in his dreams would he think that actually climbing down 50 floors in 15 years was by no means an ordinary feat anyone can pull of.


    When the party and Yunan agreed to do a test run in the 50th floor outside the established based, they were extremely pleased with how Yunan handled himself.


    The monsters on the 50s were spiritual type monsters, they range from ghosts to elemental sprites, including shades, phantasms and more. These monsters were somewhat corporeal, they leave behind monster cores and a sort of ectosm, nothing edible can be left behind, but, using fermentation rock would Still reward withva wine, thus it was not a problem when Yunan asked to keep the remains of monsters other than the monster cores.


    As for dealing with these monsters, one has to deal enough physical and magical attacks to break the barrier surrounding the cores and subsequently rip it away from the rest of the spirit ending in the death of the monsters, or one can deplete the monster core immediately killing the monster. This was not a known method, mostly because no one had tried mana syphon midbat while Yunan used it almost instinctively upon encounter.


    His first kill was not even registered by his new party because they did not notice the ghost lurking away from them, it just happened to enter Yunan''s battle range of 100 meters, the minimum safety distance that anything hostile in that radius is dealt with almost unconsciously. Yunan noticed that the ghost that entered his range was snuffed out of existence the moment mana syphon was activated and before he sent his first lighting bolt at it the mana core was already inside the armour storage.


    Seeing him take a hostile stance the party thought he was a bit too sensitive, an excuse he took for an exnation for the mapping and detection he was capable of, after the first 5 times he called out the location of a monster the party took his word asw when it was about detection. Yunan didn''t let the party know about his home, and he seriously hid his family from them, he kept Drogon by his side and only went home when the party returned to the 50th floor after a hunt.


    Maybe he was too cautious when dealing with his secrets, any other person might actually brag about it, but Yunan had learned his lesson when the first party tried to take away Drogon, although he had brought many outsiders inside his private dimension and the information that he could teleport and take people with him, along as well as having a spatial gate, that information may have been known to many outsiders, he never mentioned that it was a portable private dimension, well he was careful, and being careful is always good, as taught by Debauchery.


    Yunan disappearing from sight after a sortie became something ordinary for the new party, they appreciated that Yunan always returned on schedule, they spected he was meeting a lover or something like that in the higher floors. This new party found Yunan to their liking, he was good at killing and was a walking detector, he didn''t fuss much about the bounty they got and kept doing his job as well as looking out for the rest of the members.


    Yunan was calling out the names of the spells he used to make them think that he needed chanting, as for the loot, for every monster they killed in a group he killed ten who were beyond their vision, he even expanded the range of his minimum safety zone from 100m meter to 500 just because he didn''t want them to notice when he drained a target or looted them. Yunan was a ranger and a rogue, he knew how to mask the true range of his detection and only killing monsters who were at the edge of his 500m range. Most of those monsters were ignored by the party and Yunan took them down after confirming with his party about if they choose to attack or not.


    During his time with the party the ended up running all around the floor mapping itpletely, they even stumbled upon the boss but were unaware of anything while Yunan just syphoned its huge mana reserves and sent Drogon to bring him the loot, the boss died noiselessly and Drogon brought the loot back for Yunan, a few cubic metres of ectosm and a tasty monster core, the golden chest held another golden book.


    The golden book was written by the Phoenix n and had inside it one of the paths they found could lead to nirvana, it was also ced on the golden shelf - as named by Debauchery - the section of the library where all the golden books stood there waiting to be read, this path was the first clue about the legacy of the Phoenix n and Yunan decided to study it thoroughly and reveal as many of its secrets as possible.

 Chapter 243: Shard acquired

    Chapter 243: Shard acquired


    Unlike other adventurers, Yunan was used to rushing around while gaining power, but this party who had enough stats to take on the boss without buffs had been avoiding it for sometime.


    When Yunan asked why they were avoiding the boss he was told that the boss was rather hard to deal with, it had the ability to one shot magic users in the midst of chanting, something that made them fear it, this is what happened to thest mage that was with them, he was hit by a peculiar magic that detonated all the mana he was preparing to use and that turned his body into an unrecoverable mass of flesh.


    Yunan almost had his brain glitch and stop working when he heard theirints, if the boss killed by detonation of the prepared mana then don''t use too much mana in one big attack at worse it will only take longer to take him down and you have to heal a bit more,at best the injuries would be so negligible you won''t need any, therefore Yunan asked them to join him in fighting the boss while leaving all magic attacks to him, even healing.


    The party reluctantly agreed to join the boss fight, after all Yunan was taking all the danger on himself and even giving them a way out if things went the wrong way, and so after a small rest Yunan led the party back to the location of the boss after it respawned and they had some hard time believing what would happen next.


    Yunan himself drew aggro by using a small bit of mana to create a weak mage light, otherwise he used his traceless casting to hide his mana and the chanting needed for the spells, the boss could not deal any damage that his ordinary regeneration could not heal, while the party was watching and forgetting to fight.


    Yunan had to actually remind them that he was okay with killing the boss alone if he got all the loot, that brought the rest of the party back into the fight, those who were greedy enough to cast spells, were taking most of the damage, unlike Yunan, they still had to chant and couldn''t hide their mana as well as he did. The boss did notst too long because Yunan still used mana syphon on it with discretion, gaining a bit more mana thanks to that.


    When it came to the looting of the boss, the the party were very organized, everyone gets what they need most, or in this case what they want most because they didn''t need much. The golden book that Yunan asked for was passed around everyone before handing it over, since Yunan said he only wanted the book the rest of the loot was divided amongst the rest. The only reason Yunan got the book was because no one could read it or open it.


    The book was another path to nirvana, but was on the same level as the first one not adding much to Yunan''s library, but something inside the chest drew Yunan to it, it was a shriveled talon that looked like that of a hawk, as soon as Yunanid eyes on it, the talon flew to his hand and embedded itself in his palm, momentster the pain of rejection hit Yunan hard and he had again to feel his blood boil and his body tear itself apart.


    Having been in this situation twice already, Yunan managed to keep his consciousness and resist the temptations of passing out to escape the pain. The party became flurried and did not know what to do, the healing magic was useless and they have never seen anything like this before, therefore they opted to wait for the convulsive Yunan to either die or return to normal. And after a few minutes he regained his usual demeanor, in his hand rang a notice from the status "phoenix talon absorbed. Debuff reduced to 15%. Compatibility with phoenix bloodline increased to 30%. mutual rejection of bloodlines decreased to 90%. New ability gained. Spirit absorb can alleviate the bloodline rejection debuff by absorbing a spiritual monster or its remaining ectosm. Legacy shard acquired."


    Seeing Yunan regain hisposure the party chose not to ask about what happened and resumed their journey around the floor, during which they never once mentioned about how Yunan got his hands on both the talon and the golden book, they thought that the convulsions were enough pay back for the talon even if the book was something only Yunan could open.


    "Bloodline rejection" Yunan started talking while they were sitting around a campfire, "whatever drew that w to fuse with my body made things worse, now i have a permanent 15% debuff until the talon is fully digested, approximately 100 years, there is also the chance that my body would start to reject itself afterpletely absorbing the talon, inyman terms my lifespan has shortened to 100 years thanks to the talon, so of you wantpensation just ask for it, don''t get all awkward amd keep your thoughts to yourself, i hate secrets the most".


    The way Yunan put it had the party in awe, they never thought the kid keeping to himself would be so frank about something like this with others especially something like losing his life span, as for Yunan he just had enough keeping his mental energy on his party members during the fights and saving their lives without them even noticing, he did not have anymore mental energy to worry about them working with less efficiency because they were bitter about some loot.


    The mental energy training Yunan was going through was particrly effective, his new party was ard working and very in tune with each other but they had too many gaps in their defence, gaps that Debauchery would kill him if he did not cover, just those gaps were enough to engage all the mental energy that was left over, Yunan was even operating on autopilot sometimes because they had too many openings to cover during a fight, especially between the healers and the rogues who sometimes even got healed by Yunan in critical points, this party was rather good for training Yunan since any worse and they would be annihted before long.

 Chapter 244: Hubbys favourite

    Chapter 244: Hubby''s favourite


    Back to 5 years ago, the harem party has just been established, with Sapphira as the mascot, kitty as the rogue, Reina and Sarah as range damage dealers, with Reina taking on the extra role of providing support magic, Lili as the front liner and Ophelia as the dedicated healer, everyone had their extra jobs, for Example Reina could take the shield bearer role when things get too difficult or Kitty acting as scout between fights.


    The peculiar thing about this party 2as the constant bickering they get themselves into any time and anywhere, mid-fight, during rest or food, other than the dinner meal they enjoyed with Yunan, the girls were taking turns cooking and cleaning between each other.


    This is a story of when a party had met them while they were dealing with a boss in the 40, the scythed weasel to be urate. The girls were beating the boss to kingdome while they were engaged in a heated discussion.


    What the party came to see was the big boss weasel was drooling under some illusion magic and firing its wind scythes at some point in the air, the moths that were hovering over it were uselessness itself as there were no wounds to heal and the boss was aiming sometimes at the moths as they healed it. This particr scene was rather possible and not too strange, the strange part was the girls d in white pearly armours, the girls were arguing about something and there was a cat that seemed rather uninterested in the whole thing as it watched the boss with hungry eyes.


    When the party got closer to the girls in ordance with the rules of the guild to ask permission to join or deal with the boss while the girls were indisposed. As they got closer and closer they could hear the argument between the girls clearly "what do you mean you are number one because you can choose your status?" Said a rather feisty unarmed girl, who for all intents and purposes looked and felt like a berserker nun, she had a human girl by the shoulders and was shaking her like she was a water balloon.


    Besides them a feline beast girl had her ws out ready to shred someone "take that back, he will never give us numbers, we all know our roles and we stick to them and that includes you!". Holding the feline was kitsune who seemed like the mother of the party "now-now, Kitty, Hubby will not like it if you scratch his belongings, even if he does not say it, hubby hates headaches, that is why there are no favourites, well except that lucky goddess, she is the real enemy".


    "Can we kill the boss first and ask Hubby to assign numbers during dinner", said thest girl who seemed like the healer and her answer was a resounding "no!", She immediately retorted "then shut up about this subject and kill the damnable boss, we have to get ready for dinner". Then she took the cat with her and walked angrily towards the boss and took out a sword that looked sharper than anything in the world, and pointed it at the boss and started sending mana shes at it.


    "See, you got her angry, now who is going to heal, I told you before this talk about who is best in the eyes of Hubby is useless, if you still have things to say then say them while fighting", the kitsune dragged the feline who was hissing at her target, the berserker nun let go of the girl in her hands and said "that way of thinking will make Hubby very cross with you, we are all his and that is all, now get to work, we need to eat that thing for dinner tonight".


    The party had unconsciously stopped walking while hearing the girls talk amongst themselves, and now they watched as the girls humiliated a boss on the 40s and took their anger issues on it. The berserker nun and the feline made sure to pummel the boss out of its knees and tendons, the angry healer had stopped sending her mana shed that trimmed its fur in all the weak spots, and was buffing and healing here and there, the kitsune had a crossbow shooting arrows faster than thought at the shaved patches, as for thest girl she just bombarded the boss with spell after spell, she was the weakest link mainly because she was chanting her magic while the rest were not, but then suddenly the argument started again with berserker nun pummeling the boss in the face.


    "We all know the goddess was his first, even if she has not shown her facetely she still gets number one if we had to make an order of superiority in the harem, I would say the wife is number one, the cat is number two, doctor is number three, I take number 4 and princess getsst". The princess as named by the nun retorted "why are you before me? you are just a virgin nun, who has been studying with him, if he had any feeling for you-you would not still be a virgin, on the other hand, I have served Hubby so many times, if he really cared for you he would have taken you a long time ago" after those words the bosses face made a very ugly "thud" sound as a fist dug into its cheekbones.


    "That''s the stupid talking, you have been with Hubby for 4 years and still don''t get him, there are no virgins in the harem, it''s just that you pass out too early to know who Hubby does when he is in the mood, besides, out of all of us here, you rankst because you have not told hubby what you are to him" the kitsune was rather harsh on her words but nheless they still felt like a mother''s scoldings.


    "Hubby is not the kind you read about in the stories and fairy tales, he has only two settings when ites to loves, he either treasures you or not, and that is why all of us here willingly give our lives to him, as for you, he has epted you, but if you keep thinking like this, he might just let you go, to him we are precious all of us, including you, the one he told to choose what is she to him, if you still want to be Hubby''s favourite you can onlypete with Sapphira, Drogon and mom"


    While the girls were talking the boss finally breathed itsst under the boots of the nun and just like a mirage it disappeared with the pearly girls and their silver cat.

 Chapter 245: Girls are complicated

    Chapter 245: Girls areplicated


    Yunan might have known how his girls thought about their standing in his eyes but he chose not to interfere with them, he was sure of one thing, none of them was insecure enough to actually drag him into the argument.


    Women always appear weak and vulnerable when the men they love are around, however, only weak-willed women would drag their insecurity into the rtionship with their man, some women discuss their fears and insecurities but never include the husband in the solving of such things.


    Women like Leader Mary and Fae can solve their problems on their own, as for being insecure, well they have enough self-confidence they do not need topete or validation of any other, something that rubbed on Lili and Reina, Kitty just has one thing in mind and that is Yunan, Ophelia was never part of anything andpetitiveness was never part of her personality, leaving behind only the princess Sarah who was raised into apetitive household and even had to fight in the dungeon for her family, thus her standing was always a sore spot for her.


    Whenever an argument about standing urred, Sarah was trying to im a spot for herself, Lili was outraged at the thought of Yunan taking favourites, Kitty was just angry that Sarah thought so little of Yunan, Ophelia hated them arguing and took it all on the target they were fighting, as for Reina she just wanted to keep them from going too far in their argument and yed the reassurance role and cated everyone.


    Contrary to what Reina just said there are three ces that Yunan has for those around him, treasured, epted and the rest, those treasured were those he would die for, those epted are those he cares for to a certain degree and the rest depends on their action, the helpful are rewarded and the enemies are destroyed. Reina did not mention that third bracket because it would make Sarah even more insecure and that would just weaken the party and might even cause problems for Yunan in the future, if Sarah was happier that way, well by the time she discovers that third bracket she would have gotten used to the way their family works.


    The girls had a few encounters in the dungeon that solidified their teamwork, especially when the foe was adventurers, those greedy always get the wrong idea seeing the delicate flowers bickering among themselves, one such encounter ended with a party of 40 getting their hides handed to them when they thought it was a good idea to y hooky with these flowers.


    The main reason for the beating was that the offenders tried to poach some girls from the party, especially Ophelia who hated the fighting, they surrounded her and tried to entice her with a harmonious environment as well as some good treatment, however when she kept declining the offers, someone had to call her just another bitch in another harem. Well, that guy was kindly reminded by the fists of Lili to respectdies and act gentlemanly in the dungeon, everyone could kill him.


    Herd mentality is an idea that has seeped far in the human sociological behaviour, meaning that standing out is discouraged and going with the flow was encouraged, the herd mentality breeds the asional leader in each generation but never is too outstanding, it focuses on surviving as a group; strong and weak included, but the downside is the generation it breeds always believe in "safety in numbers" therefore the bigger the herd the least likely you are to fall prey. The party that intruded on the girls were like this, they act in thefort of many but when singled out they were nothing but weaklings.


    As for the girls, Lili and Reina were raised by Debauchery who had a pack mentality, the strongest can feed and the weakest gets the leftovers, when in danger the pack fights as one, they fight off the aggressor and leave taking care of the next generation to the weaklings, in a pack you either hunt or babysit, there was no middle ground, and as part of their babysitting duty of the weak sacrifice themselves while the strongest lead the kids away to safety, as for the time of leisure, there is a natural selection that forces the weak to either get stronger or die to create a strong pack that can dominate both individual and in a group.


    Kitty was basically feral and in her mind she had two options when it came to strength, either fight or die, Ophelia was raised by her entric master, therefore she was just as entric, she could hold her own anywhere yet did not show off or use her strength unless it was needed, a for Sarah, herpetitive nature, even if she looked docile and understanding on the outside had her get on the level of the rest of the girls in mere months of fighting.


    The disparity between a party of 5 and a party of 40 on the same floor was massive. The 5 have to deal with more than ten times the pressure with each fight, while the 40 rely on others to cover up for themselves, an effective strategy, but only when backed with the right soldiers. Thus when the guy was taken down a peg by Lili, his party felt offended and attacked for revenge, the most surprising to them was the healer they have been trying to seduce, because she was raised alone she had somebat skills to keep her safe, she made her move the moment she saw Lili under attack and blew away those around her.


    Kitty was like a tornado throwing adventurers like they were made of straw while Reina was using the best moves taught by Balin in the art of dismantling one''s opponents, Sarah too was hurling spells like it was the end of the world. meanwhile, Lili took her time beating the living daylights out of anyone that came within reach of her arms. The girls might have been bickering and shouting at each other but they were still on the same side, threatening any of them was enough to get you beaten while they keep bickering and shouting at each other and taking their feelings on your hide.

 Chapter 246: Godly bureaucracy

    Chapter 246: Godly bureaucracy


    During the long period of 5 years, Yunan had been king in the twilight pearl kingdom, he had made very few appearances and was contacted a few times to solve some issues that came with the kingdom standing up to the pirates and the merchant empires trying to get a piece of paradise.


    During these 5 years Yunan had initiated an army, a navy and an adventurer organisation, those who are in the army and the navy were all natives that were boosted by Yunan''s money to the 20th floor, after they left the adventurer organisation would start training the youth and slowly with each generation try to get into higher floors, the current limit is the 20th floor, but it will soon be able to have adventurers clearing the 30s soon enough, with the abundance of money Yunan provided through the guild, the kingdom has been able to prosper even more.


    Yunan was now the only supplier the guild has for many rare metals, most of theme from the aquarium and the abundance of ms he has in there, the guild also bought pearls from Yunan because they were an easy way to add enchantments to low-level armament as well as help train the newest batch of smiths faster. Where else could you find pure metals without needing to process the metal for impurities, and the visually pleasing pearls that double as enchanting materials, therefore, with regr intervals, Yunan would clean up his aquarium and sell it to the guild, but there were some things that were instead fed to the portable dimension because selling such pearls was asking to be turned into a farm by the guild.


    During these 5 years, Debauchery sessfully found their way to the 83rd floor, reaching the end of the territory officially chartered by the guild, after this floor only the strongest and the best could step beyond, there were 7 more floors to go to reach the actual limit of the guild, because beyond this point, the 89th floor lies the floors that have only been reached by the strongest adventurers in history.


    ck Fate has been dormant during the 5 years, Yunan did not need it much and therefore it didn''t even bother to ry to him the features he had unlocked, it deemed Yunan was getting stronger in an eptable rate and therefore it did not interfere, it would only awaken when Yunan was asking about a certain skill or a spell, or if Yunan felt like knowing his own status. Yunan was only depending on it to save his life, therefore, he kept it supplied with mana.


    As for Yunan and his own skills, what he grew into was mostly a new understanding of magic and application of skill mastery into more thanbat, his current focus was to get his mastery of his skills and spells into something that is beyond the level of masters and grandmasters, although he was currently nearing the level of instinctivebat, he wanted something even more, a level where fighting is no longer justbat and application of skills, strategy and spells, he had no idea what kind of level is that or if even it was possible, but his still aimed for it.


    Free time was a rarity for dungeon explorers especially those who reached the lower floors, except for those who sought to no longer advance or take their time advancing after getting a trauma from the difficulty spike, and Yunan was something of a rarity, he was taking free time like he was not interested in climbing down Tartarus, most of his free time would be spent with the girls who recently found a passion for having him teach them his fighting style, among other things.


    This free time was truly free, although he had to teach his girls this and that, it was done yfully and lovingly thus it was more of a good pass time than the typicalbat studies.


    Romantically, Yunan have been feeling the distance between him and Fortuna who has been very busy preparing for something, even the easy-going Hephaestus has been looking rather gloomy and declined a few dinner invitations, even the ones he attended he partied rather harder than usual, as for the girls, during the past 5 years, well, they got better at understanding each other and subsequently made some sort of agreement around their love life that Yunan could not figure out and it was kept a secret from him.


    Fortuna hase to visit a few times during this period and was rather happy to see that her beloved has not forgotten about her, what she appreciated most was that he did not ask questions or me her for being away for too long. She was a goddess and had things to do, even if us mortals could not fathom them, and Yunan was not the guy to even care about things like that, as long as their feelings were in synch there was no need for thinking too much about anything.


    Gods were like paper pushers, their jobs can only be called paper pushing, caring about a few hundred billion people and their luck; idents and whatever else was in Fortuna''s jurisdictions, was not easy, it can be mostly left on automatic, and there are things that can require attention like when things got into the territory of many gods at once, therefore it happens that sometimes things need sorting out even after the event was over and done with.


    Like all bureaucratic agencies, of there was no cooperation things would go badly and chaos would reign, and like all bureaucratic agencies, some hate each other and make life hard for each other, therefore it happens that a moment of time where someone was lucky enough to win the lottery, find love and gain some insight into this or that, can lead to a few years of paperwork between a number of gods, and things can go as far as a war in extreme cases, therefore a happy go lucky god like Fortuna would get stuck in paperwork more often than not if ever there was a hitch in the working of the continent of Burkan.

 Chapter 247: Leaving the dungeon?

    Chapter 247: Leaving the dungeon?


    Life in the dungeon passed by slowly and steadily for 5 years, it got to the point of Yunan starting to crave for something to go wrong and thetest episode of legacy hunting was the trigger Yunan needed to go on his own for a bit, he had to collect the legacy anyways so why not now.


    With that idea in my mind Yunan left his current party and decided to go to the outside world in search of the legacy of the Phoenix, even shards were eptable for Yunan. Point of order: what Tartarus mentioned about Yunan gaining a shard of legacy did not mean that there was only one single phoenix legacy as a whole, what it meant was that a piece of legacy was imed, and Yunan was not bound to find the parts rted to the same phoenix that Yunan absorbed, all he needed was enough of bloodline to fuse with, nothing more, this talon was named shard because it was a fragment and Tartarus thought it was a good melodramatic twist to use shard instead of part.


    In short, Yunan had to umte enough phoenix fragments toplete the bloodline, it depends on luck how much Yunan is able to get each time, this time it was 5 per cent next time he might just find a full phoenix and be done with the quest. Thus Yunan chose the surface world because he thought there might be a higher probability of finding a graveyard or even a nest or an egg in the outside world, even if he knew that he could gain his legacy eventually in the dungeon, what was the fun in certainty?


    Yunan had 90 years left on the counter, at worst he would need to spend 50 years to reach the 90th floor and by then all he would need was a thought to find the legacy if it wasn''t provided by the dungeon, so he has 40 odd years to spend trying his luck here and there, and it would also count as travelling the world.


    When Yunan forcefully brought the whole family for a meeting, they were visibly upset at first, it was not like Yunan to force himself on others, or even force others in any way, so when Yunan told them about his decision to leave the dungeon temporarily for a couple dozen years shocked faces filled the room, Hephaestus was first tough at the sudden decision while Luna was getting worried about Yunan, Debauchery had a constipated look on their faces because they were pulled out from their best attempt at a certain boss for just this, while the girls were making mental notes about what kinds of clothing they should bring with them in this sortee.


    Hephaestus wasughing because he knew that he was part of the reason Yunan made this decision, when Yunan asked about the legacy shards Hephaestus just said "keep climbing and you will get it" effectively given a guarantee that Yunan had a safe back up n, he -Hephaestus- also choose to do the same as Luna and not tell Yunan about where to find more shards because bringing back that guy earlier than was just no good.


    Luna was getting worried because Yunan had robbed a number of gods of their hard-earned divinity, even if all he took was a grain from a desert, it was a grain they worked hard for, therefore there were many gods that wanted to either im his collection of divinity to punish him for taking what they worked hard for, she thought hard about what to do and only when the party was over did she stop fretting over it, Yunan told her that he had his own ways to run away or avoid danger and since gods could use their piece of divinity to find him, he could sense them the same way.


    Debauchery were irreconcble due to having their best run interrupted, but all was forgiven when Yunan offered to craft a lucky talisman for them that has the same effect as the lucky ritual, while Anne needed the persuasion of a few tons of rare herbs to experiment on, the garden had been flooded in man for over 10 years and there was an abundance of such materials, mostly thanks to Ophelia not having the time to practice pharmacy and still go adventuring with the harem party as dubbed by Balin, thus the umtion of the rarest herbs in the got bigger and bigger, if not for the fact that only stalks of these herbs get sold individually every now and then they would have been sold to the guild.


    Bing a supplier for the when it came to rare herbs would bring so many riches on him that there is nothing to describe that amount other than thebination "untold riches", add in the fact the he is already the supplier for rare metals and rare enchantments and the guild might start getting greedy, even if Martin was not dumb enough to try anything, his counsel might be, after all, that much money would tickle the greed in any person.


    Being too eye-catching already was not a reason to go supernova and glitter everyone into blindness, besides, if for example, one says that someone being able to provide refined metals is doable using mana and someplicated spell work, then the same can be said for enchanted pearls, however of the same person does both,it means he has a treasure in his hands to allow him such a miracle, however, if you add in rare herbs into the equation, the treasure bes something that even gods want to get their hands on, therefore Yunan opted to keep that fact a family secret.


    As for the girls they were disappointed to learn that they would not be going with Yunan and only see him when he returned home, Yunan wanted them to reach the 50th floor faster during his travels so that he might bring them out with him and upon return they could start their party from the 50 floors and start heading to the second half of the dungeon.

 Chapter 248: Tea shop

    Chapter 248: Tea shop


    Before Yunan sent everyone on their way, Hephaestus presented him with a small bit of information. "There is a hidden valley somewhere in the continent, inside it you may find a test made by someone, I discovered that location by ident, there are many rumours about it, one of which is that it''s a dream world where one can find anything they desire. If you look for it then there will be a chance you will finish your quest much earlier than the 3 decades".


    There was a smile on Hephaestus as he left the house, even though he was getting scolded by Luna secretly, she was certain that the ce was sade if Hephaestus was the one to rmend it, but she still feared the bloodline rejection that may tear Yunan into shredded meat if it got out of hand.


    On the other hand, Luna made her decision to stick the night with Yunan and lecture him a bit about the dangers of the world and legacies that stayed sessfully hidden even to this day. That left the girls with the option of making a team meeting from that night to discuss their next moves or worship the lucky artefact Yunan made with the enthusiastic Debauchery.


    As promised, Debauchery became the recipient to an idol in the image of a scantily dressed Fortuna, it had the same lucky aura and ording to Yunan had a bit of the divinity of luck in it. Lady luck was not the only goddess of luck, she was just the main one, and Yunan had gotten his hands on the divinity of a "rabbit foot" when he was dishing punishment to the gods if you remember that time when Morpheus yed dirty.


    In the end, Luna was not the only one who lectured Yunan about the dangers of the outside world, mainly Bai and Leader, it felt like they really did not want Yunan to die. The girls also joined in the lecture making sure their husband would not fall into the woos and wiles of the women out there, he was a catch and they made sure to teach him every single entrapment trick they knew about, extending the end of the party a few more dayster.


    When Yunan left the dungeon through the main entrance he found Martin himself waiting for him outside the checkpoint newly set up by the guild, the two shook hands before heading to a small tea house in a corner manned by an amiable olddy, the kind of ce that would be popr in a small neighborhood, upon stepping inside Yunan got the same feeling he got from the barbershop, a ce where you get served by the will of the owner and money was just to keep the illusion of business.


    When the two took seat and started exchanging mundane words a young female waited upon them, Martin asked for his usual while Yunan asked for anything personally made by the olddy, he was disappointed to hear a firm "no, owner does not serve anyone" so he said "well anything that can lift my mood would be great". Again the waitress had to disappoint him "we do not serve such things, please read the menu and choose a drink from the list" Yunan just randomly pointed at something from the tea list and made it his order.


    Martin was intrigued by Yunan''s way of ordering, it was not the typical way but he also had the feeling of him being wee in the ce with strict conditions, upon asking Yunan he found himself chuckling at the answer. "I visited a barber shop once, it looked like this ce old and decaying but had a certain sense of being forbidden grounds, that shop is where I visit to have fun and not to get a haircut, you should ask Markus to take you, his nuns liked that ce so much i bet they drag him there to have fun".


    "What makes you think that this ce is the same, a ce to have fun and not to drink in peace and quiet?" Asked Martin between chuckles. Yunan just shrugged "I just felt like the olddy at the entrance had the same glint in her eyes as the barber, so I thought perhaps it was the same, well it really is disappointing to have to choose from a menu, I prefer to be served a drink designed personally for me, especially if the ce has this kind of exclusive feeling".


    Before Martin could process the information there was an angry shouting from the doorway "disappointment in my shop? Thrice in one sitting? Who dares offend my customers!" The olddy briskly walked inside the tea house and found Yunan, the very source of dissatisfaction polluting her precious tea house. "What made you feel that way?" sheid a hand on Yunan''s shoulder that felt heavier than the itself, she was strong, unfathomably strong and she was enraged.


    "I asked for anything personally made by you and got rejected, they said you serve no one, when I asked for a drink to uplift my mood they said I have to follow the menu, and the feeling of this ce reminded me of a certain fun shop that made me feel it''s wasted on this funless ce". The old woman had a really beautiful smile on her face "well, well, aren''t you a brave little one, I like you, it has been too long since anyone else told me off in my own shop, I''ll make your mood uplifter if you pay 10 gold coins".


    Martin did a spit take dousing Yunan in some rather minty-fresh tea, 10 gold coins was not even a drop in a bucket when it came to the prices in this ce, even entering the ce cost a few tens of thousands let alone the drinks, and this guy just got to pay such a measly some for getting a drink made by the owner and it was something that was not on the menu, that would usually cost millions if one asked for something not in the menu.


    Yunan took out a pouch full of gold coins " I will pay for ten different mood sses for two" the old woman took the pouch while the staff were getting nervous and fidgeting about, it has been years since the owner got involved and they felt from her stares that they were in for a spanking once she was done, so the closed the shop and hid in the kitchen away from her sight for the moment.

 Chapter 249: Emotional crescendo

    Chapter 249: Emotional crescendo


    Martin had this look on his face that Yunan could not ignore while he was cleaning away the tea drenching him, so he said after a while "it''s not about the money, it''s about treasuring the experience, this ce serves very few people for a reason, and that is the satisfaction of its customers cannot be guaranteed otherwise, thus the atmosphere that makes one really want toe to this ce even if one has never been in it"


    "That means this ce was not meant to serve the masses?", "I cannot say how it started, but I can only tell you that on a certain point of its history this ce was bustling withughter and one would feel better just from passing by, however when the olddy stopped providing her services and only took very few customers that were mostly old acquaintances, the ce changed inevitably to what it is today, luckily the old woman still cares about the satisfaction of her customers even if their good mood is no longer her concern".


    "So that is why you asked for a feel better drink when the waitress told you the olddy was not working. It really feels unbelievable that this ce has such a hidden story behind it". Just as Martin finished his words the olddy was back with an old bracelet jingling on her wrist, she sat beside the two and provided two empty sses and a teapot for them. "men forget" she looked at Martin with a nostalgic look in her eyes and sighed "I got old and stopped working and it took just a few years for the world to forget the joys that spread from this old shop".


    Yunan nodded his head in affirmation, he had personally experienced it with the old barber who must have be lonely again with him being as picky as he was. The two of them watched the olddy pull out powders and dried leaves and crushed minerals and some other things better left with being known and mix them in the teapot, casting a spell here and there before finally pouring some water in the pot and using magic to boil it.


    The fragrance was not the most enchanting or the strongest but it was soothing and rxing, it spread around them forming a visible bubble that blocked the sound of the outside world, inside the bubble it feltfortable and cosy, so much so that the tense Martin found his shoulders slouching and upright back bent a pit forward into a more rxed pose. The olddy poured a sip for each of them and then started working on the next concoction.


    Yunan and Martin took a sip at the same time sighing a big relief sigh as the sensation of the tea drowned their minds into a world were stress was an alien concept. "I am leaving, I will be back in a few years, 30 years at thetest, there is no need to worry about me getting into trouble, there is nothing to worry about, after all my teachers are still inside, of anything goes wrong I will contact you immediately, our deals will be active while I am away, so no need to worry, evening yourself to greet me is a waste of time".


    "I see", said Martin, he would think that this conversation would better be left for private, but for some reason he just knew it was safe to talk at this time and ce. "The deals are not a big matter, however, you leaving the dungeon and your newest party would ring a few rm bells for me, the threat of the cult is still fresh in my mind, and although things have been rather quiet we rather feel that you going on world tour to look for some legacy is more like a lie than anything else. But if it is the truth then I wish you a safe journey".


    The two talked a bit more about a few official matters and by the time they were done the second drink was ready, the first bubble had just burst and a new one was forming, this one had an odd feeling to it, one that Yunan could not ce, but to Martin it was as clear as the sun on a sunny day, it felt like the moment when one wakes up on thest day of a lovely vacation and start preparing mentally for returning to the daily grind.


    Yunan and Martin stopped talking soon after the second sip, their eyes were fixed on the old woman working with rehearsed and refined moves, the exquisite spell work and the wless control was more mesmerising than any other small talk the two could think about. As for the old woman she started feeling nervous from being watched so intently, usually people would start chatting and never stop until they left the ce, these two, however, were more interested in her work than in talking gibberish, it felt really nice; being noticed and appreciated for her work and not its effect was probably what got her to open the shop and she hadpletely forgotten about that feeling.


    The drinks came in moderate session, and with them came an emotional and sensational crescendo that lifted the spirit of Yunan to a realm he never thought was possible for him. Going up from preparing for daily life to the daily grind to the anticipation of payday, to the excitement of going out with friends and the light-hearted feeling when the meeting turns from a dinner to an all night long party, the excitement of meeting a love interest, the fidgeting and stressful feeling when taking the first step towards creating a rtionship, the abundance of the first kiss, and the happiness of the honeymoon when love blossoms with all its power.


    Some of those feelings were very strange to Yunan yet he still felt that he had a taste of what they represent once upon a time, while some he was still experiencing even after 15 years, therefore he made a mental note, if he got his legacy and lived to tell about it, he would invite both this old woman and the old barber to have a Debauchery style party, they would appreciate the atmosphere better than most.


    Afterwards, Yunan left the ce in high spirits, he waved at the new Martin who just learned to rx after so many centuries of stressful life, he then used phase shift to arrive at the international port of the twilight pearl kingdom where he would start his hunt for this mystical valley hidden in the world or Burkan.

 Chapter 250: Arriving at the pearl kingdom

    Chapter 250: Arriving at the pearl kingdom


    After arriving at the port, Yunan took a carriage and made his way to the pce of light where he met the government and discussed the progression of the nation and how it was faring in the world. Other than having to address the fears raised by neighbouring nations about the sudden militaristic acts and the diplomats; who were running back and forth in an attempt to limit the power surge that the twilight pearl kingdom was having, as of thetest years.


    Domestically, the kingdom was having a great boost thanks to the extra ie provided by the dungeon, that was further augmented by the deals between the guild and Yunan, this economic growth drew more than enough eyes and greedy finger, most were kept at bay in the name of regtion but some of the persistent ones were used to make a statement, to those who thought this ce was just a piece of pie that can be licked at any moment.


    One of the things Yunan implemented that were inspired by the guild was an underground branch of the government that deals in everything shady, from very to magic items and smuggling, anything illegal done in the kingdom was under the knowledge of the government. In a country where crime was almost nonexistent due to prolonged proper management and education, there was bound to be crimes brought through the cracks in the system, Like illegal immigration and the ve trade.


    However when Yunan built his underground government he used all the possible means to discover and deal with such things, and thanks to the great effort in thest 5 years, except for the asional crime of passion or the uncontroble circumstances, all crime was regted, that includes different crime syndicates, different territories, and mainly many small branches on the street level to keep the thugs and spies well fed and informed.


    There was even regted corruption, people who are in the employ of both the underground government and the ordinary one, most of them working in ces where temptations are at their worst, for example, border patrol and custom offices, although this was not announced to the public it wasmon knowledge, something that would be said behind closed door and shared only with the closest family and rtives. If an underground government could help the kingdom, most of the poption would agree and let them to their devices, after all, no one wanted to be involved in a crime, and since most of those in the crime syndicates were employed and the minority were actual criminals, it was much safer for the poption,and when thugs inevitably engaged in a war, the offenders were cleaned up by their own organisation.


    The status quo must always be protected, a thug belonging to a ckmail and extortion gang must never cross to thievery and home invasion, those in kidnapping must not cross to trading in illegal items, it was made so that the organised crime was really organized, and frequent meetings between the heads of the local syndicates make it so the actual criminals thought that the bosses must have some kind of agreement that must not be broken.


    The underground government proved far more than just crime management, they actually were so good at their job they made "friends" in the criminal world, effectively halting most of the piracy and intrusion of foreign criminals, they even created informationworks that brought more useful news than the official channels, especially in the neighbouring countries, making the pearl much safer and ready to face worse threats than just pirates and somepanies.


    While Yunan was meeting with the court officials and the ministers of the government he was surprised at the degree of efficiency these ministers can work with especially after they epted him as their king, even the subtle hints of rejection that were previously present at all times have disappeared thanks to the amount of time and effort Yunan sank in his kingdom even if he was exploring Tartarus, he helped so much with the issues that the pearl had, so much so, that he proved undoubtedly that he was a good king, one that could make their pearl shine as bright as the sun.


    Yunan stayed in his pce for almost a month and patiently listened to every single report and new information, even though he had stated that he would only interfere in the cases of emergency he was forcibly pushed to be a part of the government even if it was just listening to reports and news. All was well until Yunan was invited to deal with a rather powerful murderer that has been just smuggled into the country. The man who came to the pearl in order to rx and evade capture, he was a drunk braggart who not only rambled about his victims, he also bragged about how unmatched he was in the 40th floor.


    If that was true, then the king was needed because this drunk braggart was an escaped murderer, and being drunk meant it was only a matter of time before he turned from bragging about murder to showing off his killer handy work. Of course upon listening to the report the government immediately issued Yunan the right to do all that is necessary to bring this guy down, even thew was not an issue. A level 20 powerhouse was like a god to these people and they dreaded the very thought of a rampaging one, what they felt about hearing a possible threat from a level 40 was nothing short of absolute terror.


    Yunan also felt the same way, a ticking bomb was still a bomb no matter how long the countdown was on its timer, urgently dismantling it was the wisest action, thus he changed his look and went with the guide set up for him to meet this level 40 guy. The man was not bulky nor muscled, he looked more of a rogue than Bai, but ye still had the aura of blood and carnage, upon seeing Yunan arrive at the ce he was drinking at the man sobered up, he could feel the powerful manaing from a level 20 mage radiating from Yunan and smirked to himself before unleashing a level 40 mana of his own to rival Yunan.


    To Yunan however, the man felt utterlycking, he had level 40 stats in only dexterity, the rest weregging at least 5-9 floor behind, seeing the idiot unleash his aura to establish superiority, almost made Yunanugh out loud, Bai have already killed Yunan about 500 times for showing off as a rogue, and this rogue was one of those Bai would call "up-jumped thieves and pickpockets". Yunan immediately cast his mana syphon draining the guy before he noticed and by the time he noticed his mana gone he found himself bound and gagged with something he didn''t understand.

 Chapter 251: Performance

    Chapter 251: Performance


    Yunan always acted decisively, thus when he saw his pray unting its power carelessly he struck with impunity. Mana syphon was always first because an adventurer without mana is like a limbless spider, once the adventurer loses their mana they take a moment to understand the situation and another to make sure that it is reality and then a third to remember they have skills that don''t require mana, and by the time they begin to think which skills to use they would find themselves either dead or the next best thing; waiting to die.


    For a well-trained person like Yunan any threat; that present itself; has a solution that has been already calcted, and so when facing someone carelessly unting his power, the moment he felt the aura of the criminal ramp up his tentacles were already seeping into the ground through his feet and mana syphon was being cast, it only took for the tentacles the time between the cast of mana syphon and the time the opponent was drained to sprout like vines from beneath the man and wrap him up and restrain him, and just in case that was not enough a plethora of paralyzing venoms were pumped into the man.


    Being drunk and showing off his mana, the man only noticed himself being syphoned when his mana was draining like it was spilling into an abyss rather than being shown off outside his body, once he was fully drained the thought that he was under attack finally struck but it was already toote as the cold touch of the tentacles has already taken over him and restrained him, next he was so powerless that even struggling was out of the question.


    There were some low-level thugs enjoying the tales of cruelty the man was telling and they were still celebrating while Yunan was done and nning to leave, he was stopped by the guide who looked towards the thugs as if asking Yunan to apprehend them too, since they were mostly those that were always on the fringe of breaking the rules. Yunan understood that the guide was asking him to handle them in an effort to lower the threat to the peace preserved by the underground government.


    As for the excuse, it presented itself in a hurry as one of the thugs tried to stab Yunan from the back, his de was shaken off by the manifestation of a pair of wings and when his friends came with their weapons drawn a swipe from a tail sent the lot sprawling and coughing blood. Those in the bar were mostly outsiders, true criminals if you will, including the underground government agent here and there to keep them in check.


    The crowd had watched the fight, in a blink of an eye the man who imed to be a level 40 killing machine was wrapped by tentacles and hisckeys were blown away by what seemed to be wings and tail, the monster did not even look at theckeys and seemingly it was just releasing its monstrous form in preparation for flight after leaving the bar. They saw the monster turn around and fear gripped the hearts, even the guide was shivering and had his teeth ttering from fright.


    The monster turned around and it''s hideous face full of scales and fangs and icy cold blue eyes with vertical pupils, its snout did not belong to any being they knew about and no matter how they tried they could never remember anything but darkness and fear in that figure. The eldritch horror turned around and faced the thugs that were now shitting themselves, he said in a voice that could only be born in the most wretched hell. "Living on the fringe of thew of the syndicates is not enough for you, now you have to interfere with the enforcement of thew?"


    The eldritch horror raised its w in the general direction of the thugs, then suddenly tentacles sprouted from its palm and captured the victims then brought them closer to face of the monstrosity, after taking a sniff of their necks the monstrosity said some more words, words the audience wished they never born to hear in the first ce. "You live under the protection of the syndicates and I am the sweeper that cleans the trash, he broke thew and you tried to save him, knowledge is not an excuse, thew says to never break the peace and you have broken it, however, lucky for everyone here I only sweep the trash and do not clean the dust".


    Satisfied with his little show, Yunan dropped the thugs after dislocating their major joins and just left. He went straight to the location were the prison for the murderer floating behind him was situated, it only took them a few minutes to reach the location, Yunan was feeling like it should be about time he learned some memory magic, because waiting for the guild to provide answers was too long and inviting Leader or Bai would cost him, therefore, he thought he should start learning both torture and memory magic.


    Back in the bar the atmosphere was still tense, the guests were still shivering from fear, the guide was just starting to get himself in functioning order, the thugs did not even try to move or struggle in an attempt to escape, what Yunan did was just a small y using some fear and intimidation, shape-shifting and voice control, basic things even the weakest explorers were able to use, however, unbeknownst to him the legend of the horror of the pearl raised by the crime syndicates to keep the peace would resound through their corner of the world.


    Many a criminal organisation that was still hiding inside the pearl left running, those who tried to get a piece of thend drew back their ws and most importantly, the underground government could finally make the whole country fall under its gaze, and even gained it a reputation, because something that imprints fear and darkness instead of an image was just too much of a threat to the sanity of humans, and anything that causes insanity by merely showing up had enough power to be respected.

 Chapter 252: Spiritual cave

    Chapter 252: Spiritual cave


    After dropping his charge in the designated location Yunan returned to his pce where he had set up the door to his private dimension, where he met and talked about the recent events with his family and rested for a bit in the loving embrace of his wives.


    The results from the investigation arrived soon, some crime syndicates wanted to create some chaos by sending the murderer to the pearl, they wanted the government to antagonize him, that way the murderer gets a chance to break the new military power of the pearl back into nothing and strangle this growing nt in its pot. Well many knew the new king was an adventurer who did not care much about ruling but few knew he was actually a level 50 with enough ability to go prowling the dungeon alone.


    Understandably, Yunan decided not to attack a country just because their criminals were scheming, so he just left behind another ring ofmunication and started going on his own journey, he trusted the guild could keep the captured murderer under control. And so Yunan took his Dragonborn form and flew his way looking for any source of magic that he could find, he shaped his scanning function to look like a cone starting from his body as the top and spreading to cover hundreds of square kilometres ofnd at the base.


    Yunan came across many oddities during his search, not all of them left an impression on him, one of these things was a magical prison that shone like a magical beacon. The prison was an automated holding cell that used the mana of its prisoners to confine and torture them, anyone entering the prison would be subject to its power and be trapped there until death. Yunan took the opportunity to syphon some of the excess mana and lower the intensity of mana that surrounded the ce.


    Another was a graveyard that had the bones inside it engraved with magical runes that would turn them into undead if anyone trespassed without the intention of holding a funeral or visiting a grave, any and all thieves would also be turned into magical servants that would maintain the graveyard and help keep it in a good shape.


    There were many such oddities, so many in fact that Yunan believed the world he was living through was tooplex for him, previously it was the dungeon and monster nests and the rest of the world, that grey area in his mind about the outside world came from the peaceful and mundane days he spent in the Mar Sara academy and the mercantile city of Damascus, however, he now understood that the mundane and peaceful life he experienced was rather the dullest part of the world.


    The outside world had so many things to show off, it was abundant with colours and the touch of magic, there were so many fascinating locations and phenomena that Yunan could not help but think he should have travelled the world long ago instead of focusing on Tartarus and get nothing but small vacations now and then to relieve stress and strain. Many of the oddities Yunan encountered were some sort of a side effect of a magical situation or the deliberate and precise nning of someone who died long ago.


    Most importantly all these oddities were in some shape or form a sort of enlightenment to Yunan, even if all he noticed was an idea popping in his head about one of his spells or how the magical oddities functioned, it was an enlightening moment nheless, he just had to realise that.


    One day Yunan stumbled upon a small cave on the side of a cliff facing the roaring waves of the endless ocean, the ce attracted Yunan''s attention because of two things, first the ce was so abundant with spiritual energy that Yunan almost mistook it for mana, and there was a hint of divinity, it felt like the divinity was thest breath of some dying deity, probably someone who was specialised in dreams or wishes.


    Yunan hovered outside the cave debating whether to enter or not, gods were very tricky, even the gods of honesty and justice had something twisted about them, therefore getting caught up in something a dead god left behind would be either beneficial or harmful, either case means that Yunan had to take the time to go through whatever the god nned and get out safe and sound.


    The worst part was that it was a spiritual location, even if the god was benign, there might be some damages to his mind if he was not mentally capable of dealing with the test itself. After talking about it with his friends and family, he resolved to enter the ce, if the worst case scenario ended up happening he was ready to sacrifice some divinity to get out unharmed.


    Taking a deep breath and preparing to cast all the spells he knew and the skill he mastered in self-defence, Yunan then took a step inside the mouth of the cave, he could feel himself being enveloped by the spiritual energy and the divinity left behind beginning to execute the assignment entrusted by thete deity. After walking through the dark cave for a few minutes a blinding light took away Yunan''s senses for a moment.


    After the light faded away Yunan found himself back in the hospital bed where he woke up after being trapped by Morpheus and Venus. He had almost thought it was the same except this time there was an elderly man beside the bed, although the old man was wrinkled and withered by the effect of time, he still had eyes following behind a dream with a gleem that took Yunan''s breath away. Whoever this old man was, he dreamed big and nothing would take those dreams away from him.


    Yunan was aware that this world was an exact replica of the world Morpheus had created, however, this one went ording to Yunan''s memories rather than a copy of the original, and that was why knew very well he was in a spiritual-type test, and since he had experienced this one was more troublesome than the one he experienced before, simply because he still had all his power in this one. Yunan was still working through the previous information when he was startled by the old man sighing heavily then putting both hands in a prayer-like gesture.

 Chapter 253: Dream garden

    Chapter 253: Dream garden


    After praying silently for a moment to let Yunan get used to the new world and his presence the old man waited until Yunan stabilised his mentality before breaking off from prayer and watched Yunan with dangerously bright eyes. "Have the world forgotten about me yet?". The question sounded like a child''s request about his favourite doll, therefore Yunan decided to soften the blow on him.


    "Many gods havee and gone, as many of those perished in the catastrophes that have filled history, there are even more that are not even known to be living or dead and still have worshippers in some corner of the world, which domain did you have?". The old man smile was as silly as his bright dreamy eyes "that means I have been forgotten and my name itself was lost in time, I was a major god once, the old god of dreams, as old as the creator, for I was born from his first dream" the man looked outside the window in the hospital room with aplex look on his face.


    "Now, there many gods of dreams, even a dream world parallel to this one called dreamscape, the main god of dreams is called Morpheus, and arou6him are a bunch of lesser gods, I got some of their divinities sometime ago". Yunan decided the old man to be a benign god and therefore he got chatty with him, after all, him lying on the bed was just part of the dream and there was nothing wrong with him otherwise.


    "Oh, my little garden has grown to be a whole world, that makes the best news I had in a long time" the old man had a genuine smile, it drove Yunan to think this nave sincerity was what killed the old man, how else someone who can be liked so easily and get along with anyone lose his life in a remote cave. "Well since my name was forgotten there is no reason to tell you any more, and please do not take away my divinity, I left it with this piece of consciousness to help grant dreams, at least people would not stop dreaming if they knew this ce existed in order to fulfil dreams".


    "Now that you mention it, this ce is rather isted and forgotten, the ce I was looking for is a valley that serves the very same function, fulfils wishes of those who clear its test, anyway, where are we?". "Oh we are in the dreamscape, this is the original garden, I linked it with my death bed, it makes dreamse true easier, do you feel it? You should try to sense it with your divinity, the power of dreams in this ce is enough for achieving world peace a few times over, maybe that is why I felt my little garden has grown too lush over the years."


    Yunan closed his eyes in his bed and called upon the dream rted divinities in his sea of consciousness, they answered hurriedly and lined up to integrate with him but Yunan did not consume them or merge with them, instead, he just linked his senses to the divinities and started feeling the world through them as an extra sense. As expected he could see the true form of the world, an ever-changing, endlessly shifting mass of energy, inside it one could see the manifestation of the strangest dreams and the worst nightmares, he could see such manifestation being born, being devoured, battling for supremacy or gently passing by all this like an ethereal presence.


    Yunan soon broke the link and sent the disappointed shards of divinity back to where he usually kept them, near enough to call in a moment''s notice and far enough to keep them from influencing him into bing a divine already. "Dreamscape is a rather fascinating ce, but unfortunately I have a wish to fulfil, maybe I will go visit it when I be a god myself". The old man nodded his head, he could clearly sense what Yunan did because they were in Yunan''s dream and the man was a god of dreams, all he needed is a catalyst for reaching out to the Dreamworld and he could connect with it effortlessly.


    "Well then, tell me your dream, I might be able to guide you there", it seems that the old man had felt the chaotic state of Dreamscape and decided to not linger here for too long, even if his little garden was the origin of the whole world it did not mean it was safe, something Yunan also understood and appreciated the old man for doing. "I have no dreams, to be honest, I try to fulfil them as soon as they crop up, thus I have been a hero, I have saved the world, I have made a goddess my wife, and part of my harem, I have beautiful and smart wives, I have just enough friends to be stimted at all times, I have a dragon for a pet and my enemy list includes, gods and men, so I have no dreams, however I have one wish, to fix the problem that arose from exclusive bloodlines inside my body".


    The old man nodded his head as heard what Yunan said, for a man in his thirties, he has done more than some people can even dream about, but the thing about exclusive bloodlines got him rather curious because there was no such thing before so he plunged his hand inside Yunan, he gripped the heart and pulled it out. There was no pain nor any side effects from having his heart ripped out of his chest, Yunan could see his heart still pumping and could feel his blood flowing through his body so he stayed silent and observed as the old man made some runes and that looked as old as creation itself.


    "So dragon and phoenix have be separated, the creator will not be pleased, he went on a stroll the other day and if he returns to find his little world like this, it scares me, to even think about it, but the truth is still for all to see, corruption has seeped too far and the bloodlines now reject each other, well the best I can do for you is let you know where you will find a legacy of the phoenix"

 Chapter 254: Unworthy, buried for valuables

    Chapter 254: Unworthy, buried for valuables


    "That would be wonderful, as payback for your favour, l will also help grant you a request as well, that way we can be called even, and if we meet again we can call each other friends". Yunan was a not the hero type of guy, he was not a hypocrite nor was he delusional. He was raised to pay back the good deed a thousand times better and the bad deed a thousand times worse, he also had his own set of rules that govern his interactions with others, mainly three rules: hiding one''s secrets when exposure meant the possibility of a headache, treat everyone with respect then switch to the appropriate response depending on their actions and temperament, and finally treating everyone and everything with sincerity and integrity, until it was time to show them the ugly side if they act too badly.


    The old man was just a consciousness mounted on a shard of divinity, he felt genuine and his words were mostly true. as far as Yunan knew he was the first to visit the man in such a long time, even some current major gods were still mortal or yet to be even born. Even so, the old man acted with the same genial way that his smile and demeanour suggested, therefore Yunan also responded in the same genial way, he told truths as needed and did not brag about his own power or the fact that his collection of divinity shards could overpower the old man''s.


    The old man also found Yunan to be agreeable enough to actually share a few secrets, like the creator going for a stroll and the fact that the heart of Dreamscape was but a rose garden tended to by a dead god. The news that the true God was away was like an open secret, anyone that had any regr contact with the ascended would know that, as for the fact that the heart of Dreamscape was owned and possibly controlled by the whims of a consciousness, well that one was rather big news. Someone who has been known to take away divinities like Yunan would most certainly act like a madman to get his hands on the divinity, that divinity maybe only had a chance to ess such a ce. even if the divinity had no control over Dreamscape or draw power from it, the ess to such a ce meant almost endless energy because sentient beings could not help but dream.


    "If that''s the case then let''s get you to the test grounds and see if you are worthy to be granted a boon by me". After hearing the words said by Yunan the old man decided to go with the processing and to Yunan''s shock, he woke up momentarily inside the cave, the blinding light was gone and what reced it was a graveyard of dead and old bones. There were so many that Yunan found he was standing on a hill of skeletal remains.


    As the kind of man he was Yunan used his automated looting to strip away all valuables in that hill and then used earth shift to create a massive grave where heid the remains to rest and said loudly "I took your possessions as fee for your burial, please refrain from haunting me because I am no saint and will exorcise you if you do, if you have a grievance then me yourselves for being unworthy". Afterwards, Yunan buried the hill in the massive grave and put a headstone that said, "unworthy, buried for their valuables".


    What was called valuables was nothing but dust to Yunan, he just had to get paid for working, therefore we see him taking away whatever was left untouched by time. Afterwards he looked around the cave and followed its path to a back room where a bodyid there, fresh as if it had just died not a moment ago, there were many things in that chamber that were so valuable that Yunan''s appraisal was pinging like mad, there was so much treasure and all of it was beyond his appraisal level. Those only earned a nce, what truly got Yunan''s attention was a fiery golden egg, the colour was so vivid that it caused one to feel heat sting ones face.


    Despite the temptations, Yunan walked beside the dead old man and said: "I would bury you and take your divinity with me, but I need to know the answer to one question, when did you decide to die?". He was answered byughter that resounded in his brain. "I thought you would ask if you were worthy of the boon, unexpectedly you seem to be very unworthy of it indeed, you have to make a man talk on his deathbed and reveal such intentions, so very unworthy of you".


    There were some moments of silence where both stayed quiet before both burst intoughter "friends indeed" said the old man''s voice. "You are truly worthy, but I must remind you, all this spiritual energy is too much for you to take in even after youplete your bloodline, and I have to also tell you that once upon a time this cave was part of a lush valley that was sought out by endless hordes of dreamers, unfortunately the world sundered thanks to humans and now I live on a cliff, my only visitor since time immemorial is a man who did not even think he should ask if he was worthy or not".


    "There is nothing to feel bad about, as yourst friend, I will take this cave with me into my own personal dimension and will use all the spiritual energy to create ayer of spirit stone around it, I will make this ce a heaven for those who seek spiritual enlightenment and ascension, I might even make it open to the public if you desire. Just tell me what I want to know".


    After some silence the old man answered "this consciousness is old, so very old, first it was only executing orders left behind by the main mind, however after countless year, I have be more than just a program that follows orders, I became sentient too, and like all sentient beings, I have been so lonely for so long that I decided if ever there came a person worthy of my boon, that I would grant their wish and let them be a god as well, it took you so long to finallye and kill me".


    "Yunan is the name of your killer, remember it, if we ever meet again in the afterlife, i would like to share a drink or two with you" after saying this Yunan ced his hand on the forehead of the dead body and sucked in the divinity, he was told by the genie of his own house that he could turn the consciousness into a genie too and make use of it, but Yunan thought that what was before him was no longer a stream of consciousness, rather a realplete soul.

 Chapter 255: Reward: all functions unlocked

    Chapter 255: Reward: all functions unlocked


    Yunan found he was mistaken about the divinity of dreams he just got, it was really beyond his imagination that what looked like a dying divinity was actuallyplete, it was full of power and the dying feeling he got at first must have been the death wishes of the old man.


    Extracting the divinity was easier with the help of the old man, and maybe thanks to his help as well it did not try to help Yunan ascend like the others and did not need as much of a suppression, maybe allplete divinities were sensitive to the will of their master unlike the shards that sought to hurriedly help their master ascend. Once the divinity was imed and stored within the sea of consciousness it started to manipte the spiritual energy inside the cave and caused it all to gather at the tip of Yunan''s fingers.


    The pressure of that huge amount of spiritual energy almost turned Yunan into a dimwit, but fortunately, the ck Fate intervened by shielding Yunan''s mind, thereafter, Yunan made the genie store all the spiritual energy and condense it into liquid in preparation for turning it into stone. He then took the back part of the cave as a whole and ced it inside his own mountain in the back garden, where he made the genie turn the spiritual energy and mould it into a spirit stone that would engulf the cave. The spirit stone that resulted from condensed spiritual energy was about 50 meters thick and by design of the genie, it only enveloped the back room, the rest of the cave was still flooded with spiritual energy even without the stone covering it. After some mild changes, the cave was made into a ce where spiritual energy gradually ramped up and culminated in the back room where the energy there was so dense it looked like a fog.


    After dealing with the cave, Yunan sent a message to his friends about the cave and warned them not to get inside it too carelessly, given that with or without his warning there is bound to be someone reckless, he chose to let them know so they would be reckless knowingly. As for the treasures, he could not even appraise they were stored in a private room where Balin can spend his time ying with them without the added danger of blinking the whole ce out of existence.


    Lastly was the fiery golden egg, Yunan was not sure what to do with it and was about to call Hephaestus about it, but the voice of the heart of Tartarus sounded in his mind "drip your blood on it, it will do you both good". Yunan never thought about using the mark of Tartarus tomunicate before, he thought it was like a limit breaker and a chain at the same time, so when he heard the message he felt stupid for not realising that the previous notifications he got from the mark were simply messages from the heart of Tartarus itself.


    Upon dropping some blood on the egg, it cracked, and from within came out a ball of me that danced around Yunan before entering his bloodstream through the healing wound. Yunan didn''t even get to be surprised before the mind-wrenching pain took over him. No amount of strong mentality can help if the pain went past a certain threshold, and what Yunan was experiencing was his body changing at the cellr level, the pain was the natural oue of having one''s body be destroyed and rebuilt while they still were conscious about it.


    Time had ceased to be of meaning for Yunan, he did his best to endure the pain and stay alive, but that bit of conscious thought was also devoured when Drogon seemed to also feel the need to slip inside Yunan''s body and mess around inside just like the fiery golden ball did. That shattered Yunan''s remaining defence and he cked out right after, luckily he was home where he could be guarded and tended to by his beloved ones, because the current changes happening to him would be disrupted or even corrupted if the genie used spatial shift or teleport to bring him back, thus the genie just led the girls to the back garden where Yunan had just finished dealing with the new meditation cave and decided it was time to finish his quest.


    The first to notice something was wrong was kitty, she could feel the small cut Yunan made by himself and then the excruciating pain also took away her breath, her sisters envied her this link to Yunan even with such a side effect, but none of them wasted any time in cleaning up and protect the vulnerable girl before they returned all together to the private dimension and contacted the genie about the location of Yunan. By this time both the man and his cat were out cold and the girls carried both gently back to the bedroom.


    Yunan woke up to the sharp ping of the Tartarus notification system "quest cleared, congrattions on obtaining two mythical bloodlines, new pet gained, all functions of the ck Fate have been unlocked as a reward for clearing the quest before 100 years". Yunan listened well to the announcement and mulled over it for a few moments before opening his eyes and meet those who were anxiously waiting for him.


    Turns out other than Kitty and Ophelia the rest has been reassured by Drogon and went on to deal with their work, leaving Kitty to help sense anyplications and Ophelia to heal repeatedly replenishing the mana and spiritual energy Yunan lost. Both Kitty and Ophelia were so close to Yunan he could barely breathe while being smothered by softness, it put a smile on his face, but before his hands started wondering where they shouldn''t he discovered his newest pet.


    Drogon was on his essory mode, and Sapphira was curled up in a ball on his chest and purring loudly, and beside her was a bird with fine golden red plumage, it looked soft and enchanting, just like mes, the bird had a hooked beak and ruby red eyes, its neck had a feathery mane, it''s body was proportioned like that of any bird of prey,rge wingspan and sharp talons, the only thing that made this one differ from the birds of prey was the majestic mane and the striking colour that looked like a ze has taken physical form.

 Chapter 256: The great harem rankings

    Chapter 256: The great harem rankings


    The little bird the size of a swallow nestled against the Egyptian Mau like they were old friends, seemingly feelingforted by the purring cat. Yunan could feel a rtionship between him and the bird, something simr to what he and Drogon had, something like a bond formed from kin, however that thought was interrupted by the telepathic voice of Drogon. "It''s not the same, I chose you to be my master, she thinks she is your master, she even tried to erase Dragonification from your body, I had to stop her, sorry about that, made you sleep a few extra days than you should".


    Yunan and Drogon had a very wordless rtionship and for Drogon to actually initiate a talk and whine about something was unprecedented, Drogon might talk and y with others but when it came to Yunan, it was different, he just ate whatever was not used for dinner or stored forter, he relied on their bond to share what they needed too and therefore they barely exchange verbal contact, they were partners, they knew each other better than anyone else and now there was some little birdie who thought she was the master of his best buddy and even tried to destroy something that Yunan was very fond of.


    As for the birdie who seemed to be listening on their conversation, well she just ruffled her feathers tossing the essory Drogon across the room, something that Drogon did not even deign toment on as just floated back to the medallion he was always attached to and stayed there calmly. This made Yunan smile, the birdie did not join the conversation because she was still nameless and could not oppose Drogon for calling her birdie, as for her try to delete the Dragonborn bloodline from Yunan and help him merge with her Phenix bloodline, she came to understand her mistake when Drogon had forced Yunan''s memories about Dragonification and the Dragonborn bloodline and his appreciation for the two.


    Birdie, as she was now called in Yunan''s mind, was rather shy and nervous about that, because if she only tried to perfect the phoenix bloodline the amount of pain Yunan had to deal with would be so much manageable for him, after all, bloodline rejection was way worse than bloodline integration, and what was worse was that she resisted Drogon making the pain even worse, so, since her first interaction with her partner was causing trouble for him, she just stayed quiet and could only object by way of throwing Drogon across the room.


    After the small incident Yunan just smile to himself, these two were bound to bring endless trouble and make his peaceful life a little bit noisier, so he woke Sapphira up and told her and Drogon to take birdie on a tour around the house, she was only allowed to look, if she needed food, she can ask in the kitchen, anything else must be reported. Sapphira and Drogon took the hint, it seems that Yunan was feeling like it was time for some intimate moments and he certainly did not feel like hearing the thoughts of birdie on his harem and nned activities.


    Birdie was not very cooperative but she followed Sapphira when Sapphira said " the man wants to copte with his bitches, if you want to watch feel free, you can join them too if you want, me and Drogon are gonna have some good y time in the meantime, so what is it gonna be?". Although Yunan never hid his intimacy with his wives, he thought it was not in the best interest for birdie to watch such a thing before she gets an idea of how the rtionships work around here, because it was a bitplicated to understand if one was not around for a while.


    Yunan had Luna, a goddess wife who was infatuated by the way he took away control from her making her feel like any other maiden in the arms of the man she loved, she followed his pace whenever they met and she couldn''t find it in her to try and take back control from him, she acted the most spoiled in the harem, she had seniority and she did not feel bad about unting her seniority now and then.


    Reina was the official wife, she was the glue keeping the harem from wing at each other''s throats, she was kind and was not very demanding, she enjoyed her time with Yunan and always found herself in contact with him whenever they met, on the contrary Lili was rather aggressive about wanting Yunan to be hers alone, she did not mind sharing him only because Yunan was very selective about his partners, and therefore she could only y hard to get around him, even if she was the one easiest to convince and order around by both him and Reina.


    Kitty was a cat and acted like a cat in love with her owner, she belonged to him wholeheartedly because he smells good to her, she cares about him and his beloved, but cares little for the whole drama in the harem, she has a special spot for Reina because that girl was always on Yunan''s side no matter what the wives bickered about, making it so that Yunan never suffered from the usual power struggle in your typical harem.


    Ophelia just loved being in love, Yunan was the first man to look at her as a girl, he saw her as all she was and treated her ording to what made her feel best, she knew very well that was the way Yunan was with everyone, but she could not help but fall for the man after living with him for a while, he was basically the weird kind of knight in shining armor she always wanted, he even fought a god for her, nheless, she found herself part of the harem and she did not really care as long as Yunan had feelings of care for her, she was satisfied, thus she unknowingly ranked high among the wives.


    Finally there is Sarah, who always found herself fighting and thus when she was cared for by Yunan for the first time they met, she thought he was a good guy, but when he bought her and told her she can be what she wanted, even free to go, she knew she was wrong, the man was gentle but not good, and his version of love was so distorted that she could not help but want to be included, her habit of fighting for a better ce was triggered when she decided to join the harem, even if she was satisfied just by joining and receiving attention and care from Yunan, she still wanted him for herself, she could only make empty noise trying to get the most irritating two to fall with Yunan, Lili was hot-headed and didn''t tolerate it when someone said something bad about Yunan and Kitty who would simply kill if someone dared to even look at him funny. Sarah knew she was rankedst because she could not find her proper spot yet, she, however, understood that no matter her standing in the harem, all of them were equal in Yunan''s heart.


    So for those of you wondering about the harem ranking, here it is, Luna is in the first spot, second spot is shared between Reina and Ophelia, fourth ce was for Lili, Kitty was not in the race, but Sarah was still unranked or by her definition, still not at the stadium yet, as for Yunan, he too had his own secret ranking, Luna was the pure and mature older woman type, Reina was the girl next door, Lili was the childhood friend, Kitty was a cat, and Sarah was that fling you meet all the time but never have a defined rtionship, as for Ophelia she was the private sexy ready to care for him at all times.

 Chapter 257: Back to schooling

    Chapter 257: Back to schooling


    During the time Yunan spent looking for the phoenix legacy and leisurely prancing around the world, the girls made their way to the 49th floor and were preparing to cross over to the 50s, and if not for the fact that Yunan had just returned and was under house arrest to make sure he was fine they would have gone and taken the boss down.


    During the time of his house arrest, Yunan had to deal with two groups of groupies, his wives who suddenly found themselves in a very terrible heat, and Balin, the guy who has been begging him to let him experiment on the items that were brought from the spiritual cave. Yunan had already allowed Balin to y with them but he did not allow anything that might damage orpromise the items, items gained from gods were something beyond mortals and the private dimension was a good proof of that.


    Since he had nothing to do buty down and be pampered endlessly, he thought he should explore the functions of the ck Fate and get to know birdie better, she had been rejecting names left and right even ones chosen by Yunan, and birdie was slowly taking over as her name because it was the only thing she could be called that was mildly reasonable, even the names she came with were by far too unsightly.


    Thus, the peaceful days kept rolling around, and Debauchery took the chance to tutor Yunan while he was at home, his appraisal level was already at level 80, same for his smithing so what he did most was to exchange with Dustan and Balin respectively on their subjects, reaching such a high level in these talents meant that Yunan was already good enough with his practice and extremely diligent at it. On the contrary the tutoring by Fae and Leader were heavily resting on mana maniption and raw magical power, Fae made sure Yunan reached the high sage level in mana maniption, the only rank below divinity when ites to mastery over something, while Leader made sure Yunan understood how control over his magic could save him so much time and so many avoidable headaches.


    Compared to many, Yunan had a bigger mana pool in his core and his regeneration was on par with far stronger people, and with something like that, he was used to spending his mana as needed, his control was impable for an adventurer on his level but still too far from the likes of Fae and Leader who can cast all their spells without trace nor chant, without the need to rely on a skill like Yunan. Even if Yunan had trained so well that he could do the same, he still relied on the skill because traceless casting was too far away from him, naturally that is, the problem was that his body has not been casting magic for a period long enough to be able to hide magical intent, sadly simply overusing magic was not the way topensate for time and Yunan had to wait at least 10 more years for his body to naturally reach that point and that is only because he had two mythical bloodlines that dealt in magic.


    It was the turn for Bai and Lucian to y tutor when the girls, specifically Sarah, brought up a very interesting question; from the outlook of Debauchery that is, "why is it that Yunan never actually killed, his closest deed was to let someone die because they ignored his advice, the second worst was send a package that was sure to cause mayhem knowing it was going to kill hundreds of he was not heeded".


    One can im Yunan had never taken a life, or he had taken plenty by proxy, but the consensus was that he should be able to kill, why has he not done it yet with so many opportunities, and the answer was simple, no one had made him feel like they deserved to die by his hands, at best they came close enough to be fire fuel for Drogon. And so Debauchery has, in their infinite wisdom, decided to break that mental block of the worthiness of death, and just turn Yunan into the guy who can just kill on a whim, or at least include torture if the killing was deemed too little of a punishment.


    And thus Yunan was squeezed into torture training because ording to Debauchery "it is high bloody time", "such a disgrace to our name, how can our student go 50 floors in the dungeon, fight a super cult, be king with 0 casualties, it''s like we raised a pacifist", "this is it, as soon as the girls hit the 50s all of you will taste blood". A loophole appeared and Yunan took advantage of it immediately, he made the girls take at least 6 more months because he wanted some time to work on the ck Fate.


    After dealing with Debauchery temporarily and escaping their clutches, Yunan found himself sitting in the spiritual cave with his pets frolicking around him, in hands the ck Fate was visible and ready to talk. "Anything useful after the full unlock?" Yunan was not going to look through everything, the ring knew everything about itself much better and it could project how it can help Yunan ording to his level of power. "The encyclopedia about encountered monsters now includes all creatures that exist in the dungeon, including variants and awakened, there is also a tracking for finding certain extremely rare monsters if the user is into collecting those. Andstly aplete encyclopedia of magic and skills that are currently inside the dungeon"


    "All other functions have no use because User has better versions including a storage space and a radar system, there is also danger detection rm that can predict the future but it is not as effective as users natural talent and will only cause distractions". Yunan nodded his head, he decided to read the magic encyclopedia to see if he could find memory magic or something that could be used to simte the same effect, as for the monster encyclopedia, he would readter in search of viable traits to add to his arsenal.

 Chapter 258: Shall we do it again?

    Chapter 258: Shall we do it again?


    Yunan found so many good magics that he really desired to have, many of which were only possible to obtain in the lowest floors of the dungeon, effectively forcing Yunan to delve deeper inside the Dungeon. Still he did not have much time to do nothing since Debauchery felt like he needed to be reminded of their way of doing business, and so just like back in the academy, Yunan would join lectures and then fight with Debauchery until he almost copsed, that would only be possible if the fights were at full power andsted for days and sometimes weeks on end.


    Other than that he got time to train his newest pet to fight and cast spells, and eventually had to force a name on her either Ignis or she could live forever as Birdie, unfortunately for the Phoenix she choose veryte, because even though she liked the name Ignis, she has be known as Birdie for everyone who frequented the portable home, after all, they called her Birdie for nigh on six months before she finally took a name.


    Ignis was ying the proud card mistakenly thinking it would grant her status in the private dimension, however that only led to the disappointed faces of Yunan and family, ording to a very blunt statement from Dustan, "birdie is not even established as a pet and think she is so lofty and above the rest of us, I would have left her to rot in some corner of this house to teach her manners, look at Drogon, a freaking dragon, he is so chill and rxed one might think he is just a pet lizard, but this red birdie thinks she is hot shit when she can''t even speak her mother tongue, know no phoenix exclusive spells and still ying lofty, tsk tsk, i feel for poor Yunan"


    Birdie was very sensitive to the fact that her tribe left no legacy, unlike the Dragon tribe who left behind things even before world contamination began, dragons were as proud as the phoenix, but the phoenix were treated as myths while dragons were legends, one was as unattainable as a mirage and the other grounded in some truths, still Drogon taught Birdie mana control and basic fire magic because it was her element as well, and it irritated her that Yunan was much closer to Drogon no matter how she tried to give herself importance and value.


    Those feelings of hers had been on her mind so much that they were shared with Yunan and Drogon, Yunan gave her a rather stupid answer, "why not try to be nice and act with sincerity, I know we share a bond and can feel each other, but why do you have to mask your heart when you chose to bond with me, if you hate being with us feel free to break the bond and leave". Those words made Birdie feel like an idiot, she has been here for six whole months and she failed to understand how sincerity and honesty drove this band of misfits. She was just trying to get a ce for herself worthy of the mythical tribe of the phoenix but she chose the wrong methods to operate with.


    Yunan had left Ignis with Sapphira and Drogon to let her experience how the big family worked, especially when Debauchery and the girls were having their days off, that experience should be invaluable to the ones that can appreciate it, but the phoenix thought it was to show her where her ce in the pack was, and then furthermore misunderstand what Yunan expected from her. Eventually, Yunan made Sapphira and Drogon take her to the first floor to hunt and learn to fight, and maybe get her hands on something that Tartarus thought would help her grow.


    While Sapphira and Drogon were ying dungeon guides, They did not need to take her to each floor, the needed to only have her fight in every tenth floor while she fed on the leftover corpses Yunan had to help her get up to enough strength to reach the 50th floor where she could sit still and do nothing while benefiting from Yunan''s hard work just like her two predecessors. After killing a few bosses and many more monsters Tartarus was only able to provide mana syphon and mana maniption for Ignis, the rest of her exploits were simply flight and shapeshift skills, fire control and intangibility, the only skill that might be rted to her ancestor''s.


    Intangibility worked by making Ignis take her true phoenix form, a mass of mes that was shaped like a bird, it then made the body as intangible as real mes effectively make her almost invulnerable to physical damage, meanwhile the girls reach the 50th floor, and have been struggling to keep their courage when facing ghosts, thus they returned home and waited to go out with their manly man who could even kill ghosts and make them flee facing him, after meeting the ghosts on the 50th floor, the girls now thought of Yunan more god than man, to them Yunan has been slowly checking each box on the list of the manliest man, dream of all women.


    "How are we gonna teach torture with no evildoers? We need someone we can reliably inflict pain on while justifying it as justice or whatever" said Bai while Yunan was using his tentacles to give Leader a massage, around the two Debauchery and the Valyrians, were all talking about theck of training dolls and ording to Balin "I feel bad to use the big brute but me might have no other choice". "Listen here, I like being tortured as much as any of you, I could deal with dislocation but torture is a no, no, Bai, on the other hand, has done a bit more evil than the rest of us, maybe we can help him repent?".


    "Dream on fatty, I will be sure to y you if you even think about it"... Such back and forthsted until Leader had enough of her tentacle massage and sat up effectively bringing the idle chat to an end, it was then that Reina said in a thinking out loud voice "why not make a ritual and see what happens".

 Chapter 259: Gatcha

    Chapter 259: Gatcha


    Yes, the luck ritual that has been almost forgotten was the answer to Debauchery''s problem, being who they were,they would not go hunting for criminals in the dungeon nor would they go to a prison or such detaining establishments to acquire a training subject, hence them being unable to start working based on their own criteria. Of course, as soon as Reina brought up the ritual, Dustan already had the throne, altar and his own ceremonial robes ready, Balin whipped up something as the offering and the rest were getting in ce as the worshippers in the ritual.


    "Ohdy luck, bless us through this husband of yours, and grant us a test subject for torture training, the scummiest of them all would be so perfect but we can do with anything you can offer, ohdy luck we offer this . Gift of  eh..ah...gratitude for the luck you will bestow on us, oh goddess of luck if you don''t help your husband will forever remain pure and childish in his thoughts".


    As Dustan finished uttering thest words the altar broke and the offering disintegrated into dust, it was an obvious warning from thedy herself, "leave my husband out of your trickery" as was interpreted by high priest Dustan. There was a round of bowing and praising the husband of luck and wishing the duo some good long lovey dovey years together. Soon after Yunan vacated the throne in case of being evicted forcefully and by the time everyone was out of ritual mode a message arrived.


    The genie had taken the liberty of keeping thepany undisturbed and weing all iing messages from the outside during the ritual, after they were done they got a call from the guy that usually buys the materials for the guild from Yunan, he seemed a bit unnerved, as if forced to make the call, therefore Yunan limited the video feed to himself alone while making the genie use the ring to scan around the man.


    The man was with a multitude of others that were not the usual assistants, the took the precaution of hiding their weapons and masking their readied magic but what Hephaestus made was not a simplemunication tool, it was much more than that, and with the genie using mana freely, Yunan could tell the situation immediately. Thus he made an inquisitive face as of he was not sure what was going on, on the background all of Debauchery was heading for the quarantine room while the genie was getting ready to teleport everyone on the other side inside the private dimension.


    "The usual is about to be ready, is there something that I can do for you? This is very unusual". The man had to clear his throat and disengage his eyes away from his kidnappers and follow their script to survive. "Sir Yunan, we have a sudden shortage of materials and we are in need of high-quality goods as fast as possible, especially the enchanting pearls, it would be great if you can send us any that you have on hand, we will pay twice the usual price".


    Yunan nodded his head as if in understanding and said "currently you guys have not yet returned the storage equipment from thest shipment, so I will need to bring here to make you sign on contract detailing that you borrowed storage equipment, so there will be a great teleportation triggered, of you have assistants that can help you do the counting please ask them to step closer, since this is not the usual shipment and protocol I have to make you count the items before it leaves this ce, that will help keep my boss pacified".


    The man felt relieved when he heard Yunan as if his worries were blown away, so he looked at his captors as if telling them what to do next, as expected they all got close to the man and they voiced out that they were ready. The only one who was standing in a bit far away did not join. Yunan did not care as he supplied the genie with enough mana to teleport everyone in the same room to his quarantine room where Debauchery was ready for them.


    The criminals were 8 in total, a chief and his 7 followers, 2 magician girls and 2 healers, the rest were all men, one was an archer and the other two were fighters, they only realised what was wrong when their chief was in their midst and the guild employee was not in sight. What broke their hearts was that no matter how they tried to attack the room, break the walls or the door and even teleport, they failed miserably, despair hung over their heads and fear of whoever built such a fortification was starting to seep into their souls, first the ring being used as both teleport beacon andmunication device, it could also be used to spy on the surroundings of the carrier as well as it was a very big beacon if it could also add the head criminal to the teleport list, not to mention that they deliberately left out the part of the teleport being able to send people in the same space into different ces and rearrange those transported in its effects.


    While the bandits were getting slowly past terror and into the territory of despair, Yunan was watching Bai reading the memories of the guild employee, he seemed keen to know what is going on before deciding to spare or add the man into the lost of torture subjects. Luckily the man himself wasn''t a traitor, he was going to meet some businessmen about some guild work and deals and these bandits turned out to be after him in hopes of reaching Yunan and get their hands on the method or even the production facilities of the pearls. He was threatened for his life, and like any man with power he chose to save his life, Yunan was not more precious than him and even if his treasure got stolen it only meant more materials for the guild.


    Bai was rather inconsble when he finished reading the man''s memories, the guild was not treating Yunan any better than other providers, they ripped him off big in the process they agreed on, but the guild thought Yunan had some production cost, when in reality he had to stroll around and gather mana from the dungeon monsters to produce anything in this ce, it was even self-sufficienttely due to Yunan finding a few mana beasts and letting them loose in the back garden, Bai felt that his own pockets were being stolen from because Debauchery could treat Yunan as a walking cash cow, thus his money was a bit more valuable than their own.

 Chapter 260: Starting the lesson

    Chapter 260: Starting the lesson


    Dustan and Fae were most aggrieved by the report was given by Bai and thought they should take the chance to negotiate a sweeter deal with the guild for more profits, unfortunately for them this was not part of the ritual and under a strict gaze from leader they sent the employee to the twilight pearl and left a message for Martin to pick him up and do something about the leaking information, 8 bandits gaining ess to Yunan was bad by her judgement. Only Balin was unperturbed because if they really needed money they could just sell more jewellery and get rich within moments.


    After the employee was sent away fae was sent inside to do her taming thing, and if not for the screams and pleas drifting through the usually soundproof room, no one would know what happened inside, like a shy maiden, Fae asked for monitoring to be stopped in the room because she did not want anyone to see that side of hers, after a few hours inside, Fae strode out of the room her face glowing and her body radiating a feminine aura about her, "how therapeutic" she said as she ushered everyone inside, even the pets were invited because Leader thought they too should know these kinds of things.


    Inside there were eight people of different races and genders standing side by side, something between terror and insanity was imprinted on their faces, it seems it has been so long that Faest did something fun like this that she went overboard, luckily she stopped just a hair from turning the captives insane thus negatively affecting the torture lessons and by extension get punished by leader by bringing even more subjects and training them, something that would be very much hateful for her precious skin care time.


    Leader took the lead and looked at the frenzied captives that had their eyes fixed on Fae, fear was no longer a valid word to describe what they felt towards her. She said with her jolly yfulness " we need to read your memories and then torture you as a lesson for my precious students if you agree, this lovely elf.." Leader pointed at Fae who was smiling so radiantly "... will not be able to touch you at all, however, if you n to refuse, then we will let her take care of you and we will do the same anyway, the point is, if you choose the first you can be delivered to the guild alive, if you choose the second option, well, we can only guarantee that hell will not be such a bad destination after we are done with you"


    There was a visible shiver that took the captives from head to toe and they immediately kneeled in subservience, hell was already too good a ce for them now, they would die in a heartbeat if they were allowed to, but if there was something worse thanst night, they were sure that they did not want to experience it, know about it or even imagine it. The choice was the first lesson of torture, a captive who has the illusion of choice is far easier to subdue then the one who is cornered and helpless, a man without future has nothing to lose thus there is something that can never be broken no matter how hard he is tortured, however, a man with a tiny bit of hope even unrealistic will be broken with the slightest bit of pressure.


    Unlike the previous sessions of torture, the point was not to retrieve information but to break the will of the subject, psychological torment was already something Yunan could do sessfully, now it was time to break their minds through breaking their bodies. And so Leader produced a chair for each of them and gave them another choice "each one of you will be subject to torture, you can witness others turns or you can look away, the chairs you were handed are the chairs we will torture you on, sit on them or wait until your turn".


    Yunan watched as the fragile insanity in their faces disappeared and a sense of eptance washed over their faces, the fear was still there but it was no longer the prevalent emotion, There was a small discussion among the captives before the first split in their ranks happened, some sat on their chairs some stood up, and all silently waited for Leader to start her torture lesson. Leader initiated a telepathic group conversation and said out loud "as our student, you should be able to figure out the answer by watching carefully".


    In his mind Yunan could hear the gentle sound of Mary as she started her lecture "first break the mind, if they ept their fate then you have won half the battle, give them the illusion of choice and they would be more docile also it would crack their unity, as you can see, the results are the same with or without the choices but look how peaceful it is at the moment,we did not even have to tie them up or take their weapons, Fae disy fromst night gave them both choice, try to run or stay still there is no escape, there was no choice in that so even if they are armed they would not try something without choice".


    Leader then proceeded to point at Balin who took a step forward and said in a very sweet voice "who is the most despicable one and who is the most virtuous among you? I want each of you to point at two people on with each hand, use your right to point out the virtuous one and the left to point out the despicable one". Leader exin seriously and patiently "this is to show them that we do not care about their lives or their gender or race, even the most virtuous one would get tortured just like the most despicable one, this lesson is a job that we take no pleasure in no matter how it looks and this idea will help them endure longer and easily forgive us, because someone working was far more likely to be fair to them than someone who enjoys it, case and point is Fae, they saw her take pleasure in training them, and now they have the chance to let someone else who did not enjoy the job work on them, this will let them feel sympathetic no matter how much pain we inflict on them"


    The team has chosen two members, the most despicable was the leader of the group, and the most virtuous was a healer, she looked so out of ce but just like Leader said there was sympathy in her gaze towards Yunan and the rest, however the leader was very aware of what was going on and if not for the fact that Fae was standing in the same room he might have said or done something but his gaze contained defiance that did not escape Leader so she informed Yunan "the despicable one understands but he can not say or do anything, he can only offer defiance but that will change soon enough, he will actively try to push torture away from himself and onto his underlings, and that is what we want his to do"

 Chapter 261: Displaying

    Chapter 261: Disying


    The man showing defiance and the woman showing sympathy both stood in ce silently waiting for the next order of business, but what they didn''t expect was yet another choice. "Please name the one who will be tortured first, You may discuss the details with your team, I want each of you toe up with a name within 30 seconds". Balin was ying his role rather too well, something that got Yunan worried and made him think that it will be bad of he broke character and just showed his perverted self to the captives but reassurance came with another piece of the lecture.


    "Making them choose the most despicable and the most virtuous just to make them name the first victim is us giving the despicable one a bit of influence on the game, he thinks that there is a trap but there is none, the fact that he thinks so is itself the trap, as for Balin acting too good, it can be interpreted by the captives as him trying hard to act objectively and with neutrality especially upon confirmation that the most despicable was the boss and the most virtuous was a fair and pretty woman, so even if his perverted self appears it should be thanks to either one of the two, hatred for the despicable or wanting to taint the virtuous".


    As time came to an end a fighter was chosen under the influence of the boss, mainly because this one was a girl and that she had higher pain tolerance than the rest of them, thus Balin weed the victim and escorted her to the middle of the room, where he helped her sit down and tied her up in her chair loosely, meaning she was allowed to struggle and fight back, this ording to leader would make the rest even more sympathetic with them, and also give the despicable man a chance to go against Debauchery by whispering to his buddies about how cruel it is to tie up someone loosely under torture, they would try to move and they would try to fight back, but that would just mean that the ones already falling under "Stockholm Syndrome" would think the captors were trying to give some leeway for the captives to move and express their pain physically.


    Balin did not start immediately but called out to Yunan and made hime closer to the chair, saying "torture for man and woman is different, what we want from them is all the information they can provide, from the date of their first wet dream to the how much milk they sucked on as a baby, what we do to women mostly is humiliating them and shaming them, bodily torture is just for those who are too stubborn or enjoy that kind of thing, thus usually we would r*pe her until she started bleeding from her juice box, we would then start the bodily torture by muttion of her sexuality making her womanhood unrecognisable. But since this one is a fighter her sense of womanhood is not too strong and humiliation would not work as good as it will for a magician or a healer, more feminine roles".


    Next Balin used his own hand to test the responsiveness of this woman by tenderly touching the base of her jaw and going down to her chest. The woman shivered under his touch, probably something magical that he did not say out loud "magic fingers is something i learned during enchanting, using enchanting on the body of someone would reveal their truest senses to the least touch, if they are a sensitive person who likes to be touched during intimate moments you will see this kind of reaction, there are different kinds of reactions depending on the person, this one is one of those that wants the hands of her lover to never stop roaming around her body" the exnation came through the mental link as soon as Yunan wondered about it.


    The woman in the chair felt two contradictory emotions at Balin''s touch, first repulsion because he wasn''t her lover and some mild pleasure from the same touch, Balin did not talk about this result and slowly moved his hand to her right arm, forearm then hand where he began by twisting the fingers out of ce. The fighter did not know what she was feeling was pain or pleasure, the magic fingers made her unsure of what to feel, but still she stomped her legs and stretched her other cuff as far as she could, showing signs of pain but the moan that came from her mouth showed her other feeling as well.


    But soon the magic finger trick stopped while the discement of finger joints and hand bones continued, when the previously gracious and battle tempered hand had turned into a monstrosity of twisted bones and flesh, the fighter had her sweet voice turned hoarse and her pained screams echoed endlessly in the hall, Balin was done, he gestured to Yunan to do the next part, return her hand back to the normal settings without using healing magic, as someone who studied healing magic and healing theory, if Yunan could not repair the hand perfectly before using magic, he would have to take extra courses the Debauchery way, on himself.


    "Lay aforting hand on the good hand, say with low pitch voice that you are sorry for what is going to happen and hope that you can help her alleviate the pain, then slowly but confidently return her hand back to normal, Balin''s work is well done and he did not deal any irreparable damage", Yunan did as told and said the correct words, winning a smile and look of fervent appreciation from his captive as he worked on her, she even managed to stifle most of her cries in her attempt to keep him from feeling too bad, she could see he was young and that he was forced into this kind of lesson. When Yunan was done he heard a barely audible "thank you" when he turned away, he knew very well that resetting bone would produce more painsting much longer than discing it, it seemed that the strategy chosen by Leader was very effective.

 Chapter 262: Interested Lucian

    Chapter 262: Interested Lucian


    Then one by one, each of the captive was given a taste of a torture technique mastered by a member of Debauchery, the gruesome sight invoked by Balin''s discement was by far the easiest on the eyes, while the rest of Debauchery were by no means slouches when it came to hurting people. And after a fashion, Yunan also started shaping his own method of dealing pain and torture.


    Dustan had the most intrusive methods, for example he got the leader of the captives, a werebear, and started by peeling the skin in his forearms, then he would use his own hands to tears the muscle fibres one pinch at the time, when he came across a nerve he would handle it as roughly as possible, first ripping it from the were it connected then channeling lighting mana into it, he would kneed it, pinch it or even clip its ends, he would stop now and then to break some bones or use his fingernails to scrap the soft cartge at the joints, the werebear was frothing from shock and could not even let out a sound beyond heavy breathing, but Dustan seemed to not notice and kept working.


    He would make the ribs pierce the skin by the sides of the chest, open the throat from the outside carefully and the paralyzed some vocal cords but not others, he would open the gut and feed the man what was still being digested inside his own bowels, he would cut pieces from different organs and make the man eat himself to near death. Dustan did not stop and call for a healer until he made an anatomically correct doll of the werebear, one that showed anything from the guts to the muscle and bone structure.


    Bai has is own witchcraft like method where he would use a spell that keeps the body linked even after amputation, he then would cut the part he wanted to torture off before making the captive see with his own eyes what is happening to him, the unfortunate one was the archer, he watched as Bai opened his chest and took out the beating heart then proceeded to pee on it, stomp on it and then toss it away, Bai started by removing the head and letting the victim watch how their own body was toyed with endlessly.


    when Dustan was working through the making of his anatomically correct doll, Yunan was the guy who had to ce back what was taken out, repair what was broken, although the werebear knew Yunan was part of the torture he could not help but be grateful for the relief brought back by the healing moments Yunan gave him. As for the rest of the audience, they either thought Yunan was a saint because he took it upon himself to provide relief to the tortured or thought of him as the greatest actor of his time. Even Fae had stars in her eyes as she dreamed about his stage performance and flooded the telepathic link with her daydreams prompting giggles from the weak-willed ones.


    The subject to Lucian''s torture was the one chosen as the most virtuous one, she looked at Yunan with reproachful eyes as she took her chair and strapped herself for Lucian to work on her, even as a bandit the woman seemed much more likely there to stop any deaths from happening, after all the gild would not be so desperate to find a group of bandits if the victims lost nothing more than worldly possessions, and kept their lives or even got healed by the bandits in case of idents.


    Lucian was a kind man, he was not the type to enjoy inflicting pain, and was the most unlikely person to be kind and thoughtful in Debauchery, he was loyal to a fault and his quiet temperament and silent stand in all asions made him look like the deadliest type, thus when he watched the healer make her way and obediently strap herself in he just stood there and watched her silently, what he did next was use a blindfold to cover her eyes and cast a hyper sense spell, this overpowered version of the heightened senses spell made even the tiniest bit of airflow as painful as a hammer strike.


    And so Lucian chose to showcase his speciality in torture this way, Lucian was a master in the perception side of torture, he could make a pinch feel like a stab and a paper cut like an amputation, when he looked at the obedient healer doing her best to ept her fate he chose to not harm her and just make her think he did, with her eyes blindfolded her natural senses were already on overdrive thus the hyper sense made her so sensitive to the most minute of stimuli, and to his credit Lucian only walked around her and moved to make the air turbulent around her, he used small mana orbs and various minor spells to stimte her even more, the woman did not cry much, she breathed hard and and tightened her body to resist the iing painful attacks.


    In reality Lucian did nothing harmful, warm fire orbs, made the woman feel in hell being roasted from every direction, a cold orb sent her to the freezing wastnd of ice at the poles, an electrical spark made her feel like in the heart of a lightning shower, a grain of sand made her feel entombed alive, even the wind des that made contact made her feel like being cut with a thousand knives at once, the woman was strong, however, other than heavy panting and taught muscles clenched all over her body she showed no signs of pain or hurt until she passed out.


    "If you get the chance bring her home, I like her" Lucian talked as if he had no concerns about the ridicule he would receive from both captive and Debauchery, who in her right mind would agree to join the faction that tortured her into passing out. Yunan understood the feeling Lucian had, being interested in someone had nothing to do with what happened between the two and as someone who had a harem of interesting characters he knew very well what it means to be interested.

 Chapter 263: Extracting information

    Chapter 263: Extracting information


    Yunan cared for the healer and brought her back to her friends making room for Leader to demonstrate her speciality, and hers was the most disturbing by far, it worked around decay and desecration, simply put, under the torture of Leader one would literally wither and die, each part she touched or acted on became desecrated flesh, meaning that she could touch a finger and the whole body would enter into a rejection state that would end with the finger falling off. In other words, when touched by Leader the part gets old in a matter of seconds and die turning to ashes or it would be rejected from the body like it was any other intrusive object.


    The catch with this method of torture is that any loss is permanent, any parts that wither or are desecrated can never be regrown again, not even transntation can attach a simr part to the one lost, and Yunan attributed this to the nature of faith power. As a healer elerating the process of growth and regeneration is the most basic thing all healers learn, but if this eleration was focused on consuming life instead of stopping when the subject is healed then the subject will age and wither eventually.


    As for the desecration it rtes to the nature of holiness that the healers have innately, making any healer of faith able to dere a body part unholy, thus after desecration, the desecrated part bes an unnatural existence that is to be rejected By thews of nature itself. It is terrifying to know this kind of power is avable and unidentifiable, a sinister character can make use of these powers to do so much harm, luckily faith was exclusive to the church and it takes a great deal of power and talent to reach such a high realm in either power.


    After the torture lessons, Yunan was told to extract information from the captives using the torture he had just learned, and since he was not very keen on doing it he chose to go with the leader of the captive bandits as he was the most despicable by vote of the majority and probably had most of the information anyway. And so Yunan used his own style for the first time.


    The man was rather unlucky because Yunan was still not sure on what to do and was not proficient in his style yet so Yunan was a bit rough with him, he asked his questions while twisting bones out of ce, breaking the skin to manually explore what is beneath, y and strip skin, use the heightened senses to make the torture even more impactful, he even went as far as feeding the man his own intestines because he refused to answer who was the one that gave him the information or who was the mind behind it. It took almost two days before the leader broke.


    Yunan was so bloody he looked like he was another butcher in the abattoir, he got the man to finally talk by opening his cranial cavity and started talking about slicing some of the inactive parts of the brain that did not contain information and feeding them to the man, the leader broke down the moment Yunan poked his scalpel into the frontal lobe. Brains were not like any other organs, lost pieces of a brain were lost for good, because the way the brain works and how neurons behave to form information pathways and memorynes any lost neurons would be reced by apletely new one, that would not be bad in the case of muscle or nerves because both of these to are not as essential and are easier to retrain than lost brain cells.


    Facing the possibility of losing more than just memories or personality traits the man caved and started talking, the bandits received their intelligence from the guild itself, there was someone who thought about taking over the production facilities or at the bare minimum gain the knowledge and methods to recreate the same products, unfortunately for the guild the information about Yunan was mostly confidential and the snippets found in the paper trail were extremely faulty, Yunan, for example, was registered as a level 20 explorer, his age was registered as undetermined, belongings to no factions and having no visible back up, he was literally just another adventurer that did not even gain formal education.


    It is worth mentioning that when Yunan dealt with the guild he would usually make deals with the employee at his floor, for example when in the 40s he dealt with the clerk in that particr branch at the 40th floor and did the same all the time, when someone with the identity of Yunan, being a rich neer who works solo and is known to have better firepower than a legion of adventurers of the same level, the paperwork would be altered, especially when it came to things like his top grade jewellery and untold number of corpses, as well as the other things he thought to sell or buy, someone who was basically dealing with so much money, was protected by these types of empty forms and if anyone dug too deep and found contradictory paperwork, they would attribute it to different people, the dungeon had billions of adventurers inside it and having 30 or 40 with the same name was not something to fuss about.


    It was supposed to be an easy robbery, get in touch using the guild contact and then force the boy to lead them to the production facilities, however it turned bad because the paper trail was false, many guild employees do not hesitate to cover for anyone who can make the guild money, and many of them do not care about this rule either, although the guild has a rule to protect its contractors, it is left to the discretion of the clerk making the deal, whoever looked into Yunan, would only find that the proceeds were to be channelled to a certain kingdom and would immediately think the guy is just a worker because the true boss does not care enough to do the business himself.


    With all this spection and very empty paperwork, it is easy to think that the clerk decided to protect the real boss by leaving things like age empty, as for the level being false, well there is no reason for that since the boss should be much stronger than Yunan, therefore, there was no gain in targeting anyone but the middleman, in this case, Yunan.


    Yunan had no idea about the handy work of the guild clerks until it was exined partially by the man under torture, he thought he should appreciate their action more in the future if he ever was in the hands of such a decent clerk, it is still worrying that there was someone in the guild coveting his wealth, so he made the man spill out the name, how they made contact and when and where they nned to meet, making a record out of this confession and passing it to Martin to deal with, even if Martin was not going to act himself, it was out of Yunan''s jurisdiction to fight a corruption war with guild employees.


    While wrapping up the captives and preparing them for transportation, Yunan offered a job for the healer and she epted very easily, the job was to work as a sister in a certain orphanage to keep the sisters there safe and sound, her name was Moddy and she like many others working on a job she disliked because the pay was much needed, therefore when presented with an alternative she took it immediately, Yunan sent her to the orphanage after letting her spend a day with Lucian, the two seemed to have a good synergy between them but that was all there was to it, if that healer took any more time from Lucian, Leader might get jealous and that would be a great ordeal for all involved.

 Chapter 264: Wedding?

    Chapter 264: Wedding?


    "We are gonna have a wedding" said Mary between sips ofva wine prompting a total of 12 spit takes, 7 of those led to mild coughing fits that were drowned by liquid while 3 led to choking and required the Heimlich manoeuvre, 70 percent of the food was dirtied by the spit takes and thest 30 percent was contaminated by spit from the coughing.


    The feast was a sess dinner for Yunan who has sessfullypleted the torture course and proven to have the ability and the willpower to perform the heinous act like it was just another mundane job, he also proved that he has no mental blocks about torture or killing, it was just that he didn''t think it was necessary before, thus granting him the approval of Debauchery.


    This particr dinner was rather quiet by Debauchery standards, there was no raucous nor was there any of the antics usually pulled out at dinner time, therefore it was not hard to perfectly hear the wordsing out from between the pretty lips Leader had, and for her to suggest something to liven up the atmosphere was not ordinary at all, and who is the lucky or unlucky pair that gets to be married.


    "Why are you looking at me like that? it''s been almost 10 years since the engagement between Reina and Yunan, we should have a wedding". Mary defended her sanity with those words prompting sighs of relief across the table even from Yunan and Reina if Leader was going to pull off some stunt, everyone knew that Yunan was the subject thanks to his luck. "Well?" Mary was feeling very anxious right about now, if her own crew thought she was out of her mind then she might as well help everyone lose their minds as well, that was the way of Debauchery, all adhere to the same mental state.


    Yunan found his mouth spouting words like a torrent as if to wash away the newest thought that Leader had, he didn''t even know what he was saying but he didn''t try to stop his thering mouth because it might be his life being saved automatically at this moment.


    "Sure we should have a wedding, but what should we do, no one here has any knowledge about weddings, even Fae does not seem to have any ideas of her own about this, there should be a venue, a feast, many guests that we don''t even know about, we have to split the wedding in half, one part would be in the sun inds and the other back at the pearl kingdom, we need to invite the neighbouring big wigs and some of them I have never even tried to meet,dy Mito would make us go through another training, she would not go easy on us because we took so long and because you let me have a harem already, there is also the need to make gifts for those attending the wedding, providing high-level food and sweets, worst of all is that we have no idea where to start and I am not very keen on askingdy Mito for help with every big asion, I bet she still has it for me for not going to her ce before my coronation ceremony".


    While Yunan was taking a well earned sip ofva wine to cool his burning throat and dried tongue, he was forced to make another spit take when he heard the glitter in Fae''s eyes turn from dim light to a blinding sun "we can make use of those wedding agencies, all the top brass use them, i always wanted to be able to go and tell them to make me a wedding that can never be topped by anyone else ever."


    "I preferdy Mito, i do not like to seek death" said Leader "if she got invited to her own daughter''s wedding like any other guest i believe we would be on the encyclopedia as the face of "those who angered their mother inw and paid dearly for it", and i like my current position outside of the encyclopedia all together", assenting nods passed around the table, even the fearless Debauchery had some things they wanted to avoid at any cost especially when it came to people who have previously proved they had the ability to cause enough headache for the troop.


    "Another thing we should be concerned about is the gods that would be showing up at the wedding, what do you feed gods? And how do you stop them from meddling with the ordinary guests, and knowing how mom thinks, anyone arriving without invitation is to be booted with extreme prejudice and that is the same for gods too, she would probably find it so hrious that my handmaids are my fellow harem members and there is a goddess among them, not to mention all the small details like the dance routines, the toasting, the best-man speech, the vows and so many other things, we would not be able to keep up with her at all"


    "We don''t have to keep up with her, we just have to focus on the training and let her do what she does best, make everything nice and proper, first we have to convince mister emperor to let go of her and lend her to us, then we should hire a guild employee to keep her well funded and she also needs ess to the genie to get all the materials from our vaults, we can let the genie use his creation mode to let her customize to her heart''s content".


    While all the family was pitching their own ideas for the wedding, Birdie the newest member in the family said out loud " I can understand that two engaged people would marry someday, but why do you have to take her orders and have your wedding when she mentioned it?", Ignis felt death knocking his cane and demanding her attention as almost every single person in the room except for Yunan and Leader were murdering her with their eyes, Leader diffuse the tension by Saying "if you have any idea that is as entertaining as a wedding where the chief bridesmaid is a goddess, the bride and her bridesmaids have been shagging the groom, the guests include gods, sentient beings, living treasures, and awakened monsters, there will be nuns and kings, the most powerful people in the world mingling with the royalty they despise, there will party crasher gods, beggars trying to sneak in, etcetera etcetera, if you can have an idea that can provide half as much fun we can give up on the wedding"

 Chapter 265: Ongoing preparations

    Chapter 265: Ongoing preparations


    Upon making contact, Yunan could tell how ecstaticdy Mito was, she managed to convince emperor Hoshi and got herself to the pearl in record time, she arrived so fast Yunan almost thought she was using phase shift herself. Upon arriving at the pce of light she took a full night of her time to berate Yunan and Reina for not inviting here even once, she made sure they knew also a few more points about not sharing this pce with her beforehand.


    Of course in the same room half of Debauchery were on their knees and repenting for not using the etiquettes that she spent time and effort to teach them, forcibly and against their will, but they graduated from under her hands and not acting properly was a sin in her eyes. Leader and Lucian were having a giggle at the repenting group, Birdie was enjoying the cuddles ofdy Mito who apparently had a weak spot for red things, seems like that was why it only took one night of telling off for Reina.


    Drogon and Sapphira has been through the schooling by Mito and they were snickering to themselves about the fun Ignis will have learning how to act all proper like a royal pet, and the fact that the treats given to her would be the ones actual pets get, not like the luxury meals she is used to having along the table of Debauchery, ording tody Mito, pets eat under the table and not above it, she probably will introduce a cage for Ignis to sit in because no king would be seen with a bird on his person unless he was hunting.


    Well it took little time fordy Mito to get started with nning and spending money and mana towards that illusory perfect wedding that every little girl dreamed of, so before anything, she started her school of proper behaviour inside the private dimension and hired Lucian and Leader as her guard dogs while she pushed the calcting powers of the genie to the limit by designing fancy things starting from napkins with unrealistic embroidery to teaspoons etched with impossible details to tables and chairs with carvings so vivid the genie rmended using the actual animals in the carvings.


    Lady Mito went as far as request the pce of light to be remodelled, something that got even the core control of the pce pissed off and it refused to cooperate with her, eventually the two came to apromise in the end, Lady Mito gets to design the ideal reception room, and the core would make her one after getting a nice donation of materials and mana from her, Yunan felt for her his vaults as they started to lose their jobs one by one bing empty after long years of service.


    As the main smiths, Yunan and Balin had to forge prototypes of every design that struck the fancy of Lady Mito and like all women folk in all of time, she could not help but stare at two identical pieces- identical to Yunan and Balin- and spend hours with Leader and Fae debating which was better, and then introduce a third identical one into the line up to see how things change, and there were hundreds upon hundreds of Designs that Lady mito thought were good enough to be used, so many in fact that the genie had to upgrade its processing power by ten times in three days just to keep up withdy Mito and her fertile imagination, both smiths swore not to forge for another wedding unless it was the absolutest design, the one that will be used, because the number of waste materials they had to go through would make any other smiths in the world curse at them for being wastrels and use them of being the enemies of all smiths who could not even dream about the lost materials let alone use them.


    When Yunan confronteddy Mito about the waste that was taking ce he was answered with a rather difficult conundrum "you wanna marry my daughter and think this little wastage is too much? Do you even understand the value of the perfect wedding for my dear daughter? There is not enough money in the world! If you start getting stingy with me I will chop off your pecker and sell it for money, so disrespectful"


    Yunan didn''t understand the need for such fancy stuff, he knew for sure the kind of wedding his wife-to-be wanted, a little family get together, a few friends and acquaintances, lots ofughs and happy smiles, cosey ce and a big bouncy fluffy bed for the night, and he agreed with her, a simple ceremony was all both of them needed to show they already belonged to each other, and that all this wedding business was to share the happiness with their closest ones.


    However, at this particr moment there was nothing happy or joyful about the wedding, it was going terribly for the two who should be happy, whendy Mito heard the two grumbling about how the ceremony being nned was not what they wanted or had in mind, she immediately caught the two by the ears and dragged them into the training hall for more punishment, although she did tell them something that they would forever keep in mind when dealing with royalty in the future.


    "Listen here kids, I know how much a simple ceremony would make not only you but your friends happy, we will have that after we put on a show for the outsiders, to the outside world, your happiness on this asion is directly proportional to how big the mountains of gold you spent in the preparation, the more you show off the happier they will be for you, as for the people who know that you two getting married is just a formality to be observed, they really do not care about the wedding and woulde to just see you take that formality. As for other guests like the neighborhood royalty or the guild employees, or the diplomatic agents, or even the gods and awakened, they all care about how fancy the wedding is, how theplexity of the embroidery does not lower the quality of the napkins, how the etching on the silverware would make the soup taste better just by existing, how bright the venue is with all the stained ss and windows around it, they would scrutinize the smallest detail while forgetting to notice how happy you, the most important ones, are with your wedding day, that is the way of kings, you must pay a mountain of gold to show how much you love your wife and pay two more to show you are so happy that you would force it on others who are not as happy as you are, this wedding is a show, the real wedding would be after all the guests go away and the real guests are left behind for the family-only dinner."

 Chapter 266: True purpose of the wedding

    Chapter 266: True purpose of the wedding


    While Lady Mito was making her arrangements for the wedding, Leader and Lucian were having the fun of their lives working as the instructors under the employ of Lady Mito, their favourite target was the wives of Yunan, the groom to be, and chief among them was Fortuna. As one could expect, Luna was a free spirit, one that could not care much about etiquettes nor about the ways of royalty, let alone imitate them or try to learn them. Luna was graceful by nature and thus never needed to be in a position where knowledge of the etiquettes was a must, not until recently when Yunan told her she was going to be the chief bridesmaid.


    As to be expected from any female ever, she was squealing with delight at the news, making her way to Yunan and friends in a matter of seconds, and started talking so fast about dresses and colorbination and things that Yunan seemed to omit from memory by virtue of being a man, he was there and was part of the conversation but whenever he looked back at it it was just white noise when the girls opened their mouths, at least he was smart enough to never show he wasn''t part of the conversation and understood almost nothing from hours of participation in the conversation.


    This white noise that Yunan experienced in his memories was his male brain refusing toprehend or store any part of that conversation, it was meaningless and thus most of the auditory data was deleted. And contrary to his belief, Luna was rather happy that he didn''t retain those memories, mostly because she was talking nonsensically trying to empress the little group of people, Yunan was both happy and worried, Lady Mito had a special hell for people acting like Fortuna, one that Dustan and Balin would swear on their lives they have never been through nor have they heard about it, it was simply so traumatic they just cut the whole thing out of memory.


    So whendy Mito met Luna for the first time, she was bbergasted, because what her daughter said about Fortuna being so fuzzy and in love waspletely true, Mito did not know that Fortuna had two modes, Luna when she was next to Yunan being all lovey dovey, and Fortuna when there was work to do, so meeting with Luna was like meeting a fresh breeze, and Lady Mito had mistakenly thought it would be so easy to train this one into a goody two shoes that is so pleasing to the eye.


    Well things did not go ording to the n, Fortuna really hated putting things in order and learning the proper order of things, she might be a god be she was definitely affiliated with chaos much more closely than with order, because luck works on minor details that should be outside the natural order, things with very low chance of happening can ur due to the presence of luck, thus getting Fortuna to actually care about the order of tableware and when to use them was harder than what one might think.


    The happiest about this situation were the two guard dogs hired by Lady Mito, because Mito herself wasn''t free enough to personally instruct Fortuna on the ways of royal behaviour and had to leave the job to her best students, she already had too much to do, and she really did not want to make Fortuna be as proper as her own daughter, especially because the two were loving the same man.


    Walking and dancing on eggs was used to introduce Fortuna to the world of light steps, cat walks were introduced to teach her the elegant and smutty way of walking, purely to see how many noses would be bloodied when she stood beside the bride and kept swaying her enchanting figure, the order of using the tableware was forgone for the betterment of her attractive gestures during a meal, and lo and behold two flies had already found themselves caught in this honey trap.


    Leader and Lucian did all they could to make each and every gesture made by the handmaids as sexy and blood boiling as possible, they were basically training geishas to change the wedding into a brawly type where the groom ends up punching a few repulsive guests and dering his dominion over the handmaids, naturally Fae was on board with the n and made her best efforts to keep Mito away from the training hall for as long as possible.


    Each time Mito arrived to observe she missed the subtle hints when she saw Fortuna making the correct moves at the right time and saying the correct words as a response, she missed the geisha training signs because the handmaids were all beautiful girls and were flowing with sexuality, thus she attributed the extra flow to them trying to win a wedding ring from Yunan as well, meanwhile Balin and Dustan were hovering over the girls like a pair of smitten teenagers who has seen their first naked woman, and were adamant in the belief that the horny feeling was true love.


    Being part of Debauchery for so long, swatting away Balin and Dustan had proven futility itself time and time again, thus the girls simply ignored the two and went on with their new training regimen on royal etiquettes, they knew full well what Leader and Lucian were intending to do and they just went with it because it would be fun to see some young masters try to muscle out Dustan and Balin away from the handmaids, more importantly will be the reaction of the female guests when they see the beautiful handmaids dancing andughing with someone as ugly as Dustan and as uncouth and vulgar as Balin.


    Would thedies of royalty agree to dance with the two if the prettiest girls in the room did so with broad smiles and resoundingughter, would the young masters and impressively fat and possessive perverts try to keep the gems from the filthy hands of those two? The answer to these questions made the little girl in each one of them giggle so hard with anticipation, but that was only if Bai did his job and yed the role of the shifty knight in shining armour correctly, he would be the control group, because he was somewhat handsome and had the aura of audacity about him when he dressed up, Lucian however would be on duty looking after Leader while Fae seduces her way through the pockets of any male she ushered inside the venue.


    What does looking after Leader even requires? She was a strong independent woman who could scare the Members of Debauchery by simply looking at them, she has the power, the education and the temperament to never need no man nor servants for that matter, but there is always someone giving her a service of some sort, even Anne the newest member was not spared from the useless "care for Leader" duty, even if she stayed naked most of her time with Debauchery, she had to put on clothes in this wedding, thus she sat still looking as antisocial as possible, mainly because she hated people and secondly because she hated putting on clothes for others to see.


    Leader truly did not need care, nor protection or any sort of looking after, she just like being the center of attention especially since her boyfriend met his maker in an unfortunate event of cheating and was caught red-handed by Lucian who went for the kill without even blinking, Leader might have done a bit more to the man before sending him to hell, so she appreciated Lucian when he said "you''d just ruin your purity" and the two had be closer ever since.


    Ever since then any prospective boyfriend was thoroughly lectured, warned and subsequently broken up with by the other members of Debauchery, ording to them Leader had the purest heart and any attempt at it must be regted to prevent corruption. That and someone who looked as pretty and as pure as Mary made most men get the urge to just corrupt her and turn her into a wicked thing, fortunately for those men, the bright smile that came from Fae was more attractive and thus they were saved from dying unknowingly by getting toyed with knowingly and dly.


    Back to the training hall, the girls were getting lessons about coquettish behaviour and all the ways to ensnare the hearts of men from all angles, from subtle hints and lip service to bold touches and uninvited proximity, meanwhile Dustan and Balin were learning how to buzz even more repulsively around the girls. The purpose of this training was to create a parallel feeling to the one they give around Mary. When an outsider sees how the males of Debauchery stand beside Leader they will automatically think what loyalpanions she found, what they were aiming for was that every single person seeing the two around the girls would think the same thing "how dare they exist on the same, breath the same air and even speak using the samenguage". That was the whole point of the wedding, to cause as much trouble as possible.

 Chapter 267: Guest list

    Chapter 267: Guest list


    The wedding ceremony was slowly taking the desired shape that Lady Mito has envisioned for it, first the venue was a new part created by the core of the bright pce, it was 100 by 100 as in 10000 square meters of space, all built by the same magical granite and decorated with the same type of mind-boggling murals that filled the entrance hallway of the bright pce. Lady Mito had forgone the existence of any external sort of lighting other than the magical granite to avoid any unnecessary shadows and shades, as for the paintings and wall decoration it was left for the core to design a suitable murals depicting the union of the awakened that once dwelt in the bright pce, thus the murals had a theme of union, joy and peace where men, demi-humans and monsters shared the happy blissful day of the wedded.


    The guest list was rather extensive, with the help of guild master Martin and the head of the church of light pope Markus, Lady Mito made a list of over 1000 guests from all over the continent, all of those royalty known to be on the good side of both the guild and the church were included, some istionists and purists were also included simply because they were asking for an invitation, yes, there were people actually begging for invitations because Leader had made sure every corner of Burkan knew about the marriage between the youngest adventurer on the 50th floor (this only includes those who fought their way there) and the chosen one of the kitsune tribe, an istionists tribe wreathed in as much mysteries as the groom himself.


    As the emperor of the holy sun inds and father of the bride, emperor Hoshi was suddenly the man to befriend if one wanted an invitation, let''s not talk about how his daughter and her husband were both chosen to study under the catastrophe level B party, one of his wives and mother to the bride was the only one who could produce invitations, most of these were more precious than the kingdoms of the guests and would be national treasures after the wedding, but that is another case altogether.


    Among the invitations sent the earliest were those for people who had the best rtionship with both the guild and the church, and the first batch among those were the good friends of emperor Hoshi, that was why the diplomatic rtions officers in the holy sun inds got a sudden flood of missives and requested meetings and joint cooperation, emperor Hoshi told his officers to make use of this situation to see who is just asking for an invitation and those asking for an invitation to find a chance to get closer and work with the empire. As an istionist tribe, the holy sun inds had very few ventures outside of the dungeon and a few trade deals here and there, so cooperation with them was something that is as rare as could be, and the smartest would disguise their contact with the inds among the hordes who just wanted to witness the bright pce and the bright king.


    Lady Mito was rather bbergasted when Yunan introduced to her the one and only Hephaestus, a god so famous he probably was more worshipped than the actual creator, what Yunan wanted was to include a few of the awakened as guests, Lady Mito who had no idea about the subject went as far as dropping everything in her hands and just went away for a week with Hephaestus to meet and interview candidates from the poption of the awakened, she even took the time to find a few cute children to kidnap and use as part of the wedding ceremony, most of them only had to smile as cutely as they could while spreading flower petals and gems and pearls all over the venue and the guests, she even got herself a ring bearer.


    Most of the awakened she chose were either humanoid or werepletely beastly, she opted to stay away from those in transition or with weird unconventional body shapes to keep the uproar to a reasonable minimum, inviting the werebeasts was already considered an insult to some of the guests, inviting the awakened was nothing short of shitting in their mouths, while to some, it was far better to vite half the kingdom than to have them be in the same venue as an awakened.


    Thus those who were ssified as cute, lovely and fluffy were the main invites from the awakened, not that the awakened actually cared about joining the celebration, they just wanted to see the bright pce that was built by their ancestors, most of those who joined the interviews were researchers and diplomats who had an interest in the bright pce, as for the kids that Lady Mito chose they were escorted by heavyweight champions because the awakened did not trust the humans with their future.


    Other than the royalty and the most influential people in the continent also came the old families, these families may have started as nobles once upon a time, they had deep legacies and deeper links with major organisations, these people were the embodiment of kings in the shadows, they had influence, power and money to back them up, and a very long history to boot. Most of the invited among the old families were those powerhouses from Tartarus, some were as strong as Martin or even stronger, and all of them were beyond the 80th floor.


    Thest group of the invited were those people whom Yunan himself asked for, and they were five in total, a nun he called mom, a barber, a tea maker, a certain chef and Leol. These five were not the people you would invite to your wedding when the roster included the pope and the guild master, and the leaders of three worlds, but that list arrived from more than 10 people as their requested guests, thus she had to concede to the popr demand, what made her think these five were some hidden monsters were the nods she received from Martin, Hephaestus and Markus when she asked if these were okay to have around such bigwigs.


    Mito could understand that Yunan wanted to have his adoptive mother by his side, and his best friend as well, but what did the other three have to offer to be invited as well, fun was the answer no one wanted to say out loud, the barber and the tea maker and the chef were there for the after party, not for the ceremony itself. What Lady Mito did not know was that the barber would be exclusively used to make others look as silly as possible guided by the hands of Fae herself.

 Chapter 268: Grub and chow

    Chapter 268: Grub and chow


    With the list of the guests getting bigger and longer theplexity of the ceremony also reached a simpler status, the culinary items were reduced in number in favour of unity and ease of preparation, but the vour was not underpromise, Lady Mito decided to forgo all the external sources of food and with the help of the servants choose some of the best meats, fish, fruits, vegetables, sea fruits, flowers and grains, since the garden in the private dimension made everything grow better and amplified taste and nutritional value, the servants decided to rear some of the most edible animals and food items in the garden, with so many biomes, as long as a specimen had some life to it, it could thrive in the garden, and since Yunan had never asked the servants to stop they got themselves a very big collection, one that once Lady Mito tasted she had her mind set on using for the wedding.


    The garden was a magnificent ce and with the help of the genie, it was easy to plough and nt, feed the animals, clean the pens and finally harvest or capture for ughter. Thus the feast menu was created, a seven-dish menu that would be remembered for eternity, first was a light appetizer soup made simply of the rarest and vegetables and herbs Yunan got his hands on, all of it was boiled in room-sized containers, then all of the ingredients in each soup container were minced into fine sand-sized grains, after cooking the soup a few more hours, the soup was left to rest resulting in a crystal clear soup and a big deposit of finely minced ingredients to be used as stuffing for other dishes.


    The next dish was a sd made of 77 different vegetables diced into bits small enough to fit the 77 kinds in the same portion, the sd did not have any kind of the usual vouring agents, not even salt, thebination of 77 different types of vegetables carried all the vour needed for the sd, making it rich and healthy at the same time. The sd was served after the soup because some people would order more and needed to ease their bellies for the main courses.


    Next came the meats, a stuffed pheasant-like bird as big as a swallow with bones so light and fragile they could be eaten without arm or fear of choking, each guest would get about 3 to 5 of these since the quantity was a limited, and no guest may be allowed more, afterwards was a deer kid stake, roasted with the Queen bee''s honey and on the mes from burning a very fragrant tree, next came the fatty pork ribs, cooked to the point one could suck the meat off of the bone like it was soup, the tender meat was sweet and gentle to relive the after-effects of the deer and honeybo.


    The fish dish was a collection of different things, slices of shark, orca, naga, and water drake, add in ms and oysters as big as a palm, crab and shellfish seasoned with seaweeds and other nts and you get a wonderful mix that makes you salivate from the smell of it alone. The final dish was dessert, a fruit sd, a fruitcake, pudding made by powdered fruits instead of ordinary flour. The apanying drinks were mainly juices extracted from the fruits, vegetables and fats of the prepared dishes, there were no alcoholic beverages served and the strongest thing was nothing butva wine, it was to be served between courses and during the main ceremony.


    Lava wine had not changed its look much since Yunan started dumping every dposable thing under the sun in that pit, it still looked like flowingva, veins of scarlet fire crisscrossing in the golden fluid, it looked thicker than it was and tasted like nothing it looked, it was sweet and sour, one gulp, salty and fishy the next, the vour changed with each gulp and not two people could get the same taste without trying out enoughva wine to fill the wedding venue.


    The copious amounts ofva wine that was stored finally had a ce to shine, since the current version of theva wine was ever so changing Lady Mito decided to use the previous versions from the older holding vats to cater to certain tastes that did not like the ever-changing taste of the wine, Mito seemed to take for granted that the novelty of theva wine would die fast, she has been drinking that stuff instead of water ever since the engagement and thus forgot how it felt to take the first gulp and feel drunk without influence of anything that clouds the mind.


    Lady Mito has been eating and drinking for weeks to make sure everything was perfectly made and stored, thanks to the genie there were no issues with that, even the servants were only needed to wear a ring designed by the genie and they could be granted ess based on the time and need, with this the food and venue were ready, next was the most boring part of the wedding nning, seating, decoration and dresses, Yunan and Balin were regretting ever learning to smith and forge, so they brought in Mina, the heart of the mountain to share some of their misery, meanwhile, Asterion and Helios were making flower bouquets while Yggdrasil was reduced to growing flowers in all shapes and colours to satisfy the requirements ofdy Mito, who was ordering them around likemon servants, she did not know who they were, she only knew they were here for the wedding and she made use of them as soon as they got in her sight even before asking for their names, anyone who was weed in the private dimension were trustworthy and reliable enough for her to put to work.


    Soon even the girls taking geisha training were also included in the preparations working hard ording to the orders of the grand observer. The excuse that they got to hear so many times from Lady Mito was "for the sake of my daughter''s wedding all must toil without rest nor respite". No one had it in them to argue with her or retort because they were nning on making the wedding into a big memorable mess for all the wrong reasons.

 Chapter 269: Arrangements

    Chapter 269: Arrangements


    With the extra hands helping here and there, the workload was shared and finished quickly, giving Debauchery family a full week before the promised day. Lady Mito even made the gang do a rehearsal to make sure all the moving parts clicked nicely together, especially the clothes and dressing part, something that kept Mito awake for days on end.


    Yunan as the groom and the bright king was to wear a ck formal suit and waistcoat, a white shirt and a ck top hat, he looked too fancy for his own liking, he was even more so assured when the stifled smiles and hidden snickers sounded behind his back, Reina, on the other hand, wore a white dress that was entuated by her fiery red hair and fluffy tails, the dress was rather too simple, with nothing but simple embroidery depicting a nine-tailed fox bathing in mes in light pink and gold colours.


    The boys each had their own formal suits and top hats, they looked like they were part of a performing band, Lucian was extra enchanting with his "do not approach" aura and silent demeanour, Bai looked like a gentleman, Dustan looked like a reformed criminal, and Balin looked like a nouveau-riche with his majestic beard neatly trimmed and well kept, the girls on the other hand looked like shining stars when standing behind the bride, Luna was prancing around in a shoulderless blue dress with revealing back and knee cut, Lili wore a grey dress that was very conservative covering her from feet to neck and all the way to the hands, Kitty was wearing a medium length skirt with frills floating around her, Sarah wore a robe that made her look slender and thin, while Ophelia wore a healer robes that just made her look alike a wingless angel.


    Fae wore a green dress matching with Yggdrasil, woven from the heart tree leaves, Leader wore a simple white robe with a ck vest on top, while Anne chose to wear something that looked like a formal dress but was even more revealing than Luna''s, the servants wore ck pants and waistcoats over red shirts with not a maid in sight, the kids chose to spread flower petals and gems and the like were all dressed up in cute little uniforms all of them were awakened and looked like were-beasts.


    The chosen ring bearers were a wolf and a cat-girl, the wolf had silver fur and bright intelligent blue eyes referred to affectionately as Little Finn, the cat-girl had a mane of grey hair and her name was Plutia, liked to be called Plu and had a cute speech quirk, she would add a "nya" here in there when talking or in the middle of words, both kids performed so well that Mito could not help but give them hugs as the rehearsal ended.


    When the wedding day came, the guests were ushered in to the venue and were announced by a herald, afterwards a servant would appear and lead the guests to their table, and arranged seats, the guests were separated into three sections arranged in 3 semi-circles, at the furthest parts were those who were in there to fill up the empty tables, as you get closer to the altar where the marriage would be officiated you get to see the most important people and those that should not be offended.


    The closest table to the altar was where the bride and groom sat, facing the crowd, besides them the boys and the girls paired with each other, Lucian had Leader, Bai got Fae, Dustan took hold of Ophelia and Balin was with Anne, Luna and Hephaestus were paired as well, Lili and Leol were together, Muscles was in the nearest table with Kitty, Sarah and mother Theresa, with Lady Mito


    As the tables began to fill the three tables nearest to the groom and bride also filled after some odd heralding, the first table was already seated with the loose girls, the second table rather strange. The first to be seated was the barber, he was announced by the Herald in an unusual fashion "mister Robert, a barber" next came the second odd call " Madame Grace, tea maker", "drogon, pet dragon", "Ignis, pet phoenix", "Sapphira, awakened pet cat". Yes, you read it correctly, a pet was seated closer than both the pope and the guild leader as well as the father of the bride.


    Thetest arrival of the day was the emperor and empress of the holy sun inds, Hana was standing tall and proud, she looked like she was the most important person in the room, that did notst long, when she saw that her table contained other people she snorted at the servant in a bid to introduce her neighbours, what brought her back to reality was not the fact that there were two tables closer than hers, it was that animals were having special seats on a table with two old people who seemed to be beggars in her eyes, however she almost wanted to rage when she saw Mito, the kindly Theresa and Muscles in the nearest table.


    Knowing the temperament of his wife best, Hoshi caught her hand and gestured at the the servant to make introductions, the poor guy really did not know what to do so he voiced with a rather fearful voice as if speaking the names he was about to drained more energy than usual, "here is pope Markus, besides him is mister Martin, leaders of the church of light and the guild of adventurers respectively, here is the emperor and empress of the holy sun inds".


    The servant fled afterwards not willing to witness what would happen next, behind him he heard a very old sigh and "sit younguns, no need for ceremony, after all your daughter has punched me a few times already" the words pope Markus said made both of them shrink and sit like obedient children while Hoshi could not help but show a proud look in his eyes thinking "my daughter can punch the pope and he can do nothing about it!".


    The rest of the guests were really having a bad time holding in their rage at the seemingly insulting seating arrangements, but the ones that mattered knew better than to get mad about such small things, even the invitation itself was a form of being polite, ording to the intelligence gathered about the bride and groom they did not even need to have a wedding, and if they had one, invitations were really not needed because those who could attend needed no invitation.

 Chapter 270: Done already?

    Chapter 270: Done already?


    The dissatisfaction polluting the atmosphere brought some agitation to Lady Mito, on the contrary, it brought wide expectant smiles to the big table with the bride and groom, bridesmaids and best men.


    As scheduled Leol stood up and pped his hands thrice tomand silence and bring attention to him, his speech, however, was not what was prepared previously, he started by saying "dear guests, today we celebrate the joining by marriage of my best friend and his second favourite girl in the harem, also a damn good girl and a fine beauty, Yunan here is a boorish guy who does not feel love nor care for people he has no rtionship with, and thus the issue with the seating, as a groom he demanded he could see and converse with those close to him at all times and that is what ended up happening, the guy really has no tact at all".


    Nods of solemn agreement presented themselves in the first four tables, even the pope nodded his head in understanding, all but Hana knew it was the truth, hence the nods even from Yunan himself. Leol took a second to let the insult sink in, he just told everyone that was not in the nodding tables in the most diplomatic way "we do not care if you exist so shut up and be thankful we even invited you" and soon enough all the petty people had scowling aggressive expressions, that was the cue to continue the speech.


    "Today we have gods, dragons, phoenixes, awakened, were-beasts and humans, even artefacts are present in this hall to witness the union, now that''s what I call a pairing apuded by fate, the world, and creation itself, and being part of it makes me so giddy and nervous, for god''s sake there are gods in this room and they are not seated in the best seats, how tactless can this boy be!". That was the second insult, "you bunch of ungrateful people think you can gather around you gods, extinct species and all the three sentient races? There are gods sitting in the back with you and you stillin? This wedding is on a whole new level of importance so grit your teeth and smile for my best friend".


    Leol has evolved his diplomatic speech gift so much after getting a kingdom, therefore the insulted needed time to digest his words. Some of the self-important people wanted to stand up and leave before they felt something wrong, even gods sat in their allocated seats with the beasts and there was not a grunt from them, there was no indication that gods were even present before the best man mentioned it, thus those who wanted to leave sat even firmly in their seats and grit their teeth making internal vows on how to do this and that but no action was taken.


    "Since everyone is here, then let us open the ceremony, we have Helios, the heart of prophecy to officiate the union, pleasee forth, by his side are two awakened children, cute Little wolfy Finn and the adorable Plu, a kitty cat." The walls of the locations sank into the floor opening the view and showing off that this ce was nothing but the seating area, behind the altar was a vast expanse of dance floors, tforms for performance and the best murals and carvings to look upon. The guests were brought back to reality by the voice of Leol, "Dear guests please rise for the holy matrimony."


    Yunan and Reina rose first, hand in hand, and walked their way to the altar with steady steps, behind them followed those who were considered family, it took a heartbeat before everyone else stood up and walked to either side of the altar, along the walk the uniformed children made the venue look like a typical cherry blossom festival, flower petals floated from the sky making the already memorable venue feel like something else, the keenly eyed guests noticed that not only flower petals rained on them, there were gems and pearls shaped and carved in the shape of flower petals that also fell down from the hands of those kids. There were some who even went on their knees and scooped handfuls to fill their rings or pockets.


    That was how you show off being rich, you rain gems and valuables with flower petals like it''s the same thing, some of those on their knees missed the most important part because of how simple it was. "Yunan, Reina, do you want to get married, live a life of love, respect and mutual appreciation?" Helios asked with a gorgeous smile on his pretty face "Yes" both of them answered sincerely, "then make the strongest vows to each other". "Faithfully yours, to the end of time". The two said as they looked each other in the eyes, both took a ring from their ring bearer and ced it on the hand of the other, the rings were not too fancy or eye-catching but they were beyond value, Reina''s ring was made from wrought pearls, spirit stone and mithril, while Yunan''s ring was nothing but crude iron, the rings came as a set, once the hands of the couple joined and the rings neared each other they will shine like the stars and gently illuminate the ce for them.


    Some guests thought they saw a divine light sh in the room when the rings were worn, thinking this was truly a marriage supported by the creator. That was how the legend of the love even the creator had to acknowledge was born, there was nothing fancy in the words said and the nature of the matrimony was preserved by simple vows that can actually be fulfilled, it was simple, gentle and humble, there was love between the two and they did not need long speeches norplicated vows, it was so fast in fact that many missed the moment by simply going down to scoop up some gems. When they stood up they came to the gentle voice of Helios "I pronounce you husband and wife"

 Chapter 271: Infiltrator

    Chapter 271: Infiltrator


    There was some apuse from the guests and some cheering but nothing too excessive. Yunan took a moment to look at the faces of the guests, all 1000 of them, he then raised his voice and said "my thanks to all esteemed guests for bearing witness to our holy matrimony, please rx and have fun, food will be served momentarily, afterwards feel free to dance, talk and mingle, the seating order is no longer of importance, and please let our servants know about anything that you require, we will do our best to guarantee a good time."


    As for who will be having the good time, well that was left for the fates to decide, after his voice died Yunan and Reina were showered with congrattions and happy wishes and many "when is my turning?" came from the rest of his wives, after the closest friends and family came the congrattions from the rest of the guests, the ones who actually cared, the rest just returned to their seats or talked with others they were familiar with.


    When Yunan was epting congrattions, he spotted a female servant walking around as she belonged but she dodged every guest that tried to ask her for something, he winked at Reina and then nodded towards the female, "I thought your mom was very adamant about not using females, who is that one?", "She passed Bai''s security so she is not too shabby, he most likely let her in to spice things up". Yunan cast a nce at Bai and Fae and they gestured to him that it was fine.


    After the congrattions were over Yunan led the way to the tables to enjoy a hearty meal, the four tables were joined into a big one where everyone sat together and chatted happily awaiting how the infiltrator would change things, they also made sure to y their own prepared game, Bai acted the like your run of the mill noble who has nothing but women and fornicating on his brain, Dustan and Balin yed their roles of perverted assholes like professional actors, and the girls also yed the unfortunate maidens that got stuck in the web of the three men, Lucian was on Leader duty with his "do not approach" aura turned to maximum output.


    The food was soon served and the with it exmation and shouts of "bring more" arrived with it, the servants were mostly declining because the portions were already big and they would use the excuse of " if after the full course one was still in the mood for more, they could eat at the open buffet that will be brought outter on with all the avable dishes open to take from". The infiltrator seemed interested in a rather saintly looking man who was identified by Mito as a leader of some religious band that runs a few countries and liked topare themselves with the church of light, he was invited on rmendation from one of the guests who were hoping to see a confrontation between him and the pope, unfortunately for them the pope was uncharacteristically chummy with the newlyweds and their big unsightly family.


    If the guests here knew that Yunan had ess to two daughters of the pope and one of them was not even his official wife, they would have a nasty case of a migraine. It was mind-boggling to many of the guests why the two most influential people in the continent had the time to share food and drink, and look extremely happy, less of a nervous wreck in the case of Martin, but both being chummy with a bunch of kids did not taste well for many who wanted to be close to the duo.


    While eating, the religious target was praising his god loudly for the hearty meal and the tasty food he was shoving down his throat like he was justing out from a famine, Yunan was getting information about both him and the female targeting him, he had forgotten that the rings given to the servants were restrictedmunication devices so after some deliberation with his co-conspirators he started talking to her through the ring saying things like "you do not belong in this ce", "why are you trying to kill him?" And the infamous "how about you die and marry me? I will dly kill you so we can be together". More of these messages were sent to the mind of the poor woman each one pushing her closer to acting in desperation, she thought she was being tracked because someone found the body of the servant she seduced and druggedst night.


    Although she found it weird she was the only female, she thought it would go unnoticed if she doesn''t move too much or attract attention, perhaps she wasn''t the only infiltrator and the other person was panicking too, but in the end she decided not to risk it and pushed a needle into the arm of the target who soon passed out and she pretended to help him out by taking him to the infirmary, the other servants were ordered not to interfere and reassure the other guests that the man was being taken away instead of bringing a doctor to keep the guests from panicking and acting in a harmful manner.


    When the female made it to the servants door to leave the venue she suddenly felt that it was too easy, even the other servants did not say anything, when she tried to open the door it would not budge, she tried and tried to no avail, suddenly she noticed the voices in her head stop and she suddenly felt like something was very wrong and she tried to open the door again, this time it worked but when she pulled the target outside of the venue she looked around to see herself face to face with the dining guests, some looked at her dragging the man and stopped eating while others did not even give her a second nce as they kept shoving food in their faces, She snapped out of her confusion and saw that the people at the VIP table have stood up, some wereing towards her some were keeping the aggressive guests at bay, she finally heard the groom speak.


    "Us not paying attention to what you think was infiltration is one thing, but trying to kill a guest under my protection is something else entirely, you should have waited until he left the venue, it would be easier to kill him then" the female did not even think before she moved and put a knife to the groom''s throat, however, the only ones who showed fear were Mito and Theresa, the rest of the VIPs looked at her like they were watching the newest y in the theatre.

 Chapter 272: First blood

    Chapter 272: First blood


    "I will put the dagger through your neck if you refuse my orders, it is simple we both live or we both die" the woman was trying her best to sound confident but she could not help but shiver when she found her threat did nothing more than disappointing her audience, she tried pressing the dagger to get a small cut but no matter how hard she tried the skin of her captive did not even stretch let alone be cut or bleed, she started panicking because she chose the wrong person to threaten and there was no second chance, her next move away from him is her walking into a trap to be captured.


    Seeing his captor on the verge of breaking down Yunan simply pushed the knife away from him and used the ring in her hand to teleport the infiltrator into one of the cells he had in his private dimension, she was lost and there was no joy in seeing a broken person trying hard to kill themselves. Yunan put his clothes in order and said to the pope "would you mind healing him, your holiness? He seems to be under some sedatives" Yunan pointed at the religious leader sleeping on the floor in a rather embarrassing way.


    The pope did not say much, he just took a step to arrive at the location of the sedated man and with a wave of his hand the man was waking up like nothing happened, a servant came to exin the situation and lead the man back to his seat. The man had an ugly expression on his face, he himself and many others were just bragging about how they had their men sessfully infiltrate the wedding preparations, what hurt him most was that Yunan has known about all of them, and just let it be because he thought they would do nothing but leak useless information. However, there was one that tried to kill him and she might have worked for one of his friends and allies, on top of that he was healed by the leader of the organisation he wanted to rival. It was like the pope wasn''t even aware of this self-appointed rival.


    After the feast many left the venue, mostly either afraid of assassination or taking their own infiltrator and leaving, promoting several sighs of displeasure from the Debauchery family, most of those that ran away were good targets, but those that stayed could also work as well, thus the VIP table did not wait long after the feast was over to lead the way to the dance floor and start the festivities for everyone, putting the finishing touches on the n they had been disying bit by bit from early on.


    As the Debauchery family started their dancing and singing and even musical theatrics along with the hired band, the other guests also approached, some wanted to talk about work with the King and Queen of the pearl kingdom, some tried to get a few words with Martin and Markus, the rest were gathered on the dance floor or around it chattering and watching the dancers with jealous eyes.


    It did not take long before the first white knight made his way to defend the girls and separate them from the buzzing mosquitoes called Balin and Dustan, the duo took the hint and changed targets to the otherdies, after all, none could refuse to dance with them because the first one who did, got to hear a stinger "the prettiest girls in the room danced with us withoutint and ugly you gets to even reject us, how funny". The duo were not limiting themselves to just dancing, sexual harassment was their main reason for even doing such a thing, although thedies tried their best to keep from exploding, they still could not help but feel wronged.


    Most of these women have been living under the thumbs of the ones that brought them, and sexual harassment was not new to them, they just took offence because of the unscrupulous way Dustan and Balin did it. Some who were a bit more dignified and were treated well by their husbands and owners, t out rejected the duo, showing off their own standing in their households rather than beauty, those were soon fawning on Yunan and Baipletely under their charm spells.


    Thanks to the efforts of Fae and some of the wine starved guests, alcoholic beverages started cirction, it was at this point that Yunan sent his mom and Lady Mito to the portable house to avoid the uing fun, and soon the first alcohol boosted courage took over someone and they challenged Balin to a duel for the honour of Yunan''s wives, he was soon sitting on his posterior with his sword hanging like a ne around his neck with tears in his eyes.


    Another fatso tried to woo Fortuna who has been using her newly learned arts of seduction to tease Yunan across the room, the fatso made his proposal starting with "what is so good about a married brat with nothing but fame, I can make you a queen instead of a side chick" even Dustan gasped at the man, fatso only saw the angry re from Fortuna before taking a step back, stepping on his own clothes andnding face first on thep of the still weeping knight with his sword turned into a ne.


    "A side chick? Who do you think I am? At best I get to be his sex relief and wish to be upgraded to sex ve now and then, humph, you think being a queen is better than being his sex ve? Idiot" what hurt the feelings of the crowd were the nods that even Balin and Dustan performed, even if Yunan was a god of love, he would not have that kind of charm right? And soon more and more proposals found themselves at the feet of the girls promising to appoint them as goddesses and holy maidens and what not.


    The girls yed their part and let the propositions go unanswered or responded ambiguously, finally getting one of the impatient ones toy his hands on Ophelia and try to drag her somewhere, he was salivating, sweating and visibly aroused and about to fulfil some idea on his head.

 Chapter 273: Girly display

    Chapter 273: Girly disy


    Cold! That was the first thing the slimy bastard noticed when he took the first step with Ophelia''s arm in his hand, the next thing he felt was a shiver long forgotten, then he could he heard as Death itself licked its scythe before swinging the de at him. The de stopping an inch from his neck, the man gulped feeling the cold de of death begging to bite into his tender flesh and drink the warm blood coursing beneath.


    He let go of the soft little arm and covered his neck, the cold dissipated and the avatar of death looked disappointed at the soul that escaped its grasp, the man looked around as the vision of his death receded back to the venue he knew he was in, no one else seemed to realise what happened to him, only the little girl was now crying slumped on the floor with a bruised arm, and there was a man looking at him in a way promising that death would feel tantalised by the many times it would almost im his soul.


    A blink and the man was no longer there, he looked again at the crying girl, he didn''t use enough strength to cause a bruise when he caught and dragged her, he did not pull hard enough to force her to the floor and certainly there was not enough cause for her to cry, she was but a bridesmaid and must expect to be wanted by such powerful men, it was her honour that he chose her, the man thought.


    "Exin yourself sir or my hospitality will be withdrawn at this moment" Yunan cut his conversation with a rather strong adventurer, the man had enough sense to know how strong Ophelia was and how impossible was for the slimy fool to even touch her unwarranted, he also had met Debauchery before and knew how they sought to liven things up asionally, the man was an adventurer himself who has reached the 94th floor, and when he saw the farce he heard a telepathic " enjoy the show" from Fae, thus he did not me Yunan for leaving mid conversation, some people must be dealt with by irresistible force, that and even if the girl could resist the man, she could not do it without permission of the host.


    The slimy man did not know what was wrong so he tried to look as regal as he could " i am Sillius Sodus, the heir of Flores kingdom, may i know what you require, sir?", Yunan has been using his illusion spells on this guy the moment he started being pushy around Ophelia, making him believe he had the right to take her as he willed, even the grim reaper vision was especially realistic thanks to Yunan. "You caused harm to one of my guests, under my protection, it seems you think my protection does not cover for your deeds". Yunan had long mastered the acting skills needed to pull of the authoritarian air a ruler needed and now he was using the same skill to make the man feel like he was the ve of a peasant in front of the most ruthless emperor in history.


    The man opened and closed his mouth, he gulped some air and resisted the urge to kneel like he was raised to, "she is nothing but a bridesmaid, her ilk would have been used at will in anynd, what is all the fuss about?", The smile he forced at the end of the phrase turned into a thin line as he tried his best not let his teeth tter audibly. There was rage in Yunan''s eyes "you mean to say, that guests under your protection can be forced against their will, harmed and even bruised? I guess mister Silly Sod has never heard the notion of honor before, please leave my grounds before i curse my wedding day with your blood". Yunan turned around helped Ophelia and healed her bruise, however, before the slimy guy wanted to escape he heard a sobbing "i want him dead" and suddenly there were so many eyes with killing intent directed at him, he did not know where they were but he felt the knives stabbing into his back, thus he went back to his seat and sat there shivering, he knew well that as long as he was in the venue he was safe.


    After the whole thing Yunan returned to finish his conversation with the elite who was now chuckling along with Leader and Lucian, "you did good boy" whispered Leader before even Yunan got to ask, the three of them were looking at a recording of the incident captured by the genie of the house, Lucian sneakily gave Yunan a two thumbs up and there was even a recognition nod from Bai. Ophelia at this moment was surrounded by hypocrites and opportunists who smelled a vulnerable girl to be taken advantage of. Balin and Dustan chief among them.


    Some other mighty ones who caught on to the ploy also gathered around Yunan and hispanions, they watched andmented on Yunan''s use of illusions, how well he hid it, as well as some other things, until Fae brought barber Robert to the group to ask for permission to start their job.


    "Who''s this barber that gets to have a better seat than the pope?" Asked one of the mighty ones as they chatted, the reply really made the man think that Debauchery had taught their students perfectly "he is a fun barber", right after Yunan said that the nose hairs on one of the presentpany started elongating and changing color as they got longer, shorter, silky smooth or a shocking frizz, thepany couldn''t help but burst intoughter as they understood why the man was worth so much to Debauchery, he really was a fun creation kit at their disposal. Soon enough some strange things started showing in the most stuck up and down looking people, and the giddy Fae was running around with the old man here and there whispering in his ear and giggling uncontrobly, those who did not know who she was they would certainly be fooled by this disy of her girly soul.

 Chapter 274: True wedding

    Chapter 274: True wedding


    True to the nature of Debauchery, Fae and barber Robert made the rounds in the venue and whenever they passed by a stuck up, high and mighty looking guest they would secretly do something to the body hair of their target. Fae was responsible for picking the style and Robert would obliged her on whatever she wanted.


    It was the epitome of entertainment watching a group of people with sticks up their bumms trying not tough or point out oddities that appeared in those who conversed with them, imagine seeing the girl beside you with enough makeup to bake a cake grow a fuzz of hair on her upper lip matching the color of her lipstick, then imagine looking at herpanion to see his neatly trimmed beard turn the color of bean sprouts then gently braid itself into a field of bean sprouts.


    Colorful nose hair in the shape of flowers, armpit hair thicker than a carpet, sideburns shaped like animals, hair turning into slithering snakes, and anything in between, a special mention to girls suddenly growing goat legs, or having lion manes sprout on their naked shoulders and cleavage. Amd best of all was that no one told their partners what was going on while struggling to keep a straight face.


    Those who acted freely and friendly did not suffer the affliction that those prideful ones did, however they yed along because no one disliked seeing someone act high and mighty with nose hair longer then their beards, as to why no one of the stuck up ones talked, they seemed to think it was either an illusion or there was something wrong with them. And none of them cared to know which was which, if they were under illusion, it was no big deal since the host has only intervened when harm was done, he would not act for a prank used most likely to make them act out of character. However, if they were not under any illusory arts but there was something wrong with them, they would absolutely not make it known in thepany that includes the most powerful people in the world.


    Fae soon had her fill and returned with Robert to where Yunan, Lucian, Leader and the mighty ones were sniggering to themselves as they talked about experiences in the dungeon. All presentplimented barber Robert on his marvelous and well performed work, to seamlessly cast his spell so many times and go undetected was a good feat, and they too requested to have a little help in looking a bit better and improved.


    The event went on for a few more hours, Dustan and Balin were now the most hated among the female guests, they have forced begged and manipted their way to dance with every woman in the hall, performing not very subtle perverted moves, Lili, Ophelia and Sarah had caused enough fist fights between suiters, aggressors and white knights, Yunan did not interfere because there was no harm done to anyone and it was fun watching a guy with his wife trying to beat up another guy who for some reason thought that married men should stick to their wives.


    Meanwhile Yunan was feeling a headache from the amount of information he received from the mighty ones on ways to train and improve when it was hard to go forward, gain attribute points and bnce out the attributes. Most of them apuded his choice of maxing out all attributes in each floor while making sure to use skills and spells to reach higher levels of mastery, they all suggested one thing for him to experience since he was already plowing through Tartarus with minimal effort, the guy had reached the 50th floor in less than twenty years after all, and he started from scratch.


    Yunan was advised to skip on wither the 50s or the 60s to understand what it was to fight an uphill battle with a difference of more than 10 floors in attribute points, it was just a thing that he was to experience, but he didn''t want to do it, unless if Hephaestus offered to help him return back to the floor he missed, Tartarus would not refuse a word from her father after all, so Yunan thought he should first discuss with Hephaestus, who at this moment was enjoying tea time with Luna and madam grace, and seemed to be doing extremely well, chatting happily like a youngster with the two of them.


    It was about time to send the guests away, Debauchery had their fun and were getting bored of this ce, the mighty ones were also getting itchy to head back to the dungeon and try out some of the techniques and skills the way Yunan used them,stly the guests have lost some of the energy they came with, thus after pping his hands, Yunan said on top of his voice "I thank all of you, esteemed guests foring to witness my marriage, as a show of sincerity you will all receive a small gift from us as you exit the venue, our servants will be responsible for the next part, we hope you enjoy our gifts, thanks again and goodbye".


    It was utterly preposterous for a king at Yunan''s age, the king of a newly stabilised kingdom to act this way towards this calibre of guests, however the mighty ones were first to leave as of trying to get away from something, when they received the fine craftsmanship used as gifts the rest started to move as fast as possible to the exit, some heads of organisations took the time to have a small word about sending delegates for cooperation and some other things, but all the guests had to queue up for the gifts, greed always made people forget insults they received.


    Once the hall was empty from all guest, Yunan took Reina with hil to chat with Hoshi and Hana, the emperor and empress of the sun inds. Hana looked like she was jewel in a stable, lifting her nose and trying to assume a dominant form, Hoshi on the other hand was smiling from ear to ear at his daughter and her husband. "How about joining us for some tea, Mommy and Mom will be there this time, it''s going to be family only".


    Reina did not react to her step-mother nor the attitude she was giving and talked to two as she always did, kindly and gently, Yunan on the other hand was in a bit of a hurry, madam Grace has been brewing tea all evening and he had not gotten even a single cup, thus he teleported everyone to the portable home into the garden. He chose a nice spot with vines and flowers and good scenery for them. The teleportation brought with it the irresistible wafting scents of tea that madame Grace was brewing, soon the garden was filled with happyughter and loud chit-chatting, it was the true wedding in the Debauchery family.

 Chapter 275: Sending off

    Chapter 275: Sending off


    Come next morning, Yunan sent away his guests back to their homes, he took the chance to appear in public with Reina and ept the good will of the public, something that caught the eyes of many tourists was the fact that Yunan was walking the streets like he was just anothermoner, and themon folk did not care much about him, those who crossed paths with him gave him their blessings for the wedding the rest just walked like he was not even there.


    Yunan was a good king to the poption of the Twilight Pearl Kingdom, in the past decade or so he managed to keep the kingdom running like it did before, he even expanded its trade, increased security and made life a bit more happy for the citizens, and even his marriage did nothing to disrupt the life of the kingdom, the capitol itself felt nothing if it was not for the extravagant convoys asking for directions to the bright pce.


    To the public, Yunan and his wife were just like them, there was only difference in where they lived and what they did for a job, her being a kind and elegant beautiful fox did help tremendously with her poprity, even if it was known that the king had at least 3 more wives, since she was the one appointed Queen many were happy about it, as for a king with a harem of only 4 or 5, Yunan was praised for being loyal and picky about who he chose to be beside him, especially for a guy his age, 30 something and nothing like what most kings are.


    When returning home Yunan was faced with a surprise, his girls had decided to retire from the life adventurers and focus on being trophy wives, they would be his public face in the Pearl, spend his money on anything they liked and represent him in diplomatic rtions. The reason they gave was that they being dungeon explorers was not the mostdy like thing to do, and it was not a good ce to have children, yes, Mito and Theresa had been asking for a grandchild and the thought might have seeped too deep in the minds of the girls.


    Yunan epted this new decision, like always, he never questioned or argued with what they decided to do, as for having children, it was not that Yunan was actively taking prevention measures, he too disregarded the fact both he and his wives were dungeon explorers and forgot about the usual precautions. This idea of having children meant only one thing for Yunan, there would be too much passion in his life in the next few years, and too many sleepless nights looming over the horizon.


    The other pleasant surprise was that Hephaestus gave Yunan the right to a solitary month in the 80s, to experience how most talented adventurers feel when they were taken to higher floor, except Yunan had the ability to return back to the 50s after the month was over, Hephaestus was rather happy after the amount of good tea he chugged in the wedding party, that and he wasn''t really against doing that for other explorers, no one had asked before thus he never had to do it for them, meanwhile ck Fate was having seizures at the idea and the absurdity of it, even using the genie of the house as its voice to speak out its counter argument and trying to prevent such a massive rule breaking.


    It was in vain, all it did was get Hephaestus more into it, simply because Hephaestus was not the kind to break his own rules, and telling someone that they should not break a rule they put themselves into practice, is nothing but telling them to go ahead and make a point of breaking it.


    All in all, Yunan gained the married status, he also gained a one month where he could travel to any floor in the Dungeon except thest one, and a group of trophy wives aiming to have his children, not a bad thing at all, as for the expenses he paid for the wedding and what not, well, it was worth it, what in the world was equivalent to the happy faces and smiles of his own family and friends, to Yunan there was none.


    The first to leave the house were Fortuna and Hephaestus, God paperwork was piling up and neither of them had any dedicated priesthood or religion that they can dump some of the paperwork on, when the girls offered to help out, both of them just smiled and said nothing, offering to help a god you do not worship was not the biggest insult but it was nheless in poor taste, the girls offered to help simply because they thought one was their friend and the other was the love rival, they had stopped treating the two as deities since the second or third time they met them. It was for that reason that neither Fortuna nor Hephaestus felt wronged by the offer, as well as the reason they could really rx and just have fun, godhood was not what got them in this family and it certainly did not affect how they were treated.


    After Hephaestus and Fortuna left for their jobs, barber Robert and madam Grace were invited to set up shop in the bright pce, with their skills, they would get so much work they would not feel a dull moment for years toe, but both declined, they chose to return to their retirement. Yunan asked since they were retired why not seek out other craftsmen with the same level of skill and set up an academy or something, he even offered to fund the academy himself, but the two of them just shrugged it off, they would not do more than just work asionally and rest their old bones.


    After sending those two it was time for the problem couple, Mito and Hana, one was the official empress, the other was the acting empress and the favourite girl of their husband, they did not get along well mostly because Mito was not focused on her status and liked to showcase her own achievements as her identity, even if most of those got credited to Hoshi and not herself. Hana, on the other hand, liked to show off her bloodline and her superior status in the ruling family, she was the empress and all had to bow to her, and she carried that air around her even outside the sun inds where she is effectively a peasant.


    Hoshi had long ago washed his hands from this war, he really was not willing to get between the two of them, one was too rigid to reason with and the other was too smart for reasoning, the best he could do was to limit the scope of their quarrelling to only the two of them, making sure it would not affect the royal family nor the sun inds. Those two were sent away while huffing and puffing at each other, while Hoshi was sighing and eptingforting looks from Dustan and Balin.

 Chapter 276: Love is better in fantasy

    Chapter 276: Love is better in fantasy


    Back in the private dimension, Yunan had a meeting with Debauchery, usually, adventurers would be taken to the 30s or the 40s and added in a group capable of protecting them, Yunan on the other hand was going to the 80s where no one can guarantee safety, the 80th floor being thest safe haven in the dungeon, was not a big problem, the problem would be when he and Debauchery had to fight their way in the 81st floor.


    To secure safety at all times, Yunan was to be in the safest spot in the formation, near Leader, he would be the next big challenge for Debauchery in the 81st floor, they needed to keep an eye on him at all times as well as fight their way through the floor, it was not as bad as it would be if Yunan was not able to buff them to kingdome, not to mention his own prowess in spells and rangedbat, when protection targets were concerned Yunan was from the best kind in the spectrum.


    "... so, you need to stick to my dearest Mary like your life depends on it" says Balin, "your life will depend on it anyway so stick close enough, i would rmend you hide under the skirt". Dustan received a knock on his noggin, he did not know or care where it came from. Fae and Bai were discussing something and looking at Yunan with a gleam he identified as scheming and nning something evil. He has been with these people for 20 odd years and he knew how they worked, thus he made a mental note to keep a bit of his battle senses focused on the two and their possible pranks.


    Lucian was a lot more serious than his teammates, "Leader is in the safest spot not because we try to protect her nor it is because she is the most powerful among us, the reason only has to do with our formation, she is in there to keep monsters from invading our weakest spot, we all move and act on different things at different times, however, we all keep the weak point of our formation covered, Leader is thest line of defence, if she starts getting involved in close rangebat, we have failed, therefore, you staying there is effectively halving the efforts needed to protect you". Lucian as always was better at dealing with strategy meetings, his own job as the scout benefits him well when working out a strategy.


    Lucian is a ranger, scouting is only the surface of what he does, him being second inmand did not stem from his ability to gather information and patch a good strategy to choose the next move, it mainly indicated he was able to do so in the midst of a battle, he could keep gathering information, changing the n and taking the best possible path based on information that changed by the second. Lucian always treated Yunan as his best student, ranging and strategic nning were something that was hard to learn, yet Yunan worked hard to achieve a position where he could use such endless, seasless amounts of information to solo a dungeon he knew nothing about.


    Leader did not say much, she joked with Yunan about what kinds of things they should do while the rest of the party ved for them, effectively turning Yunan into public enemy number one, even Dustan was not happy to hear about how "we should y a kissing game, or even better a striping game, the kids can watch while they keep both of us safe enough to get naked without worries". Anne as the dedicated Healer anddy pervert perked her ears when talk of nudity was afoot, she had been slowly returning to being a decent woman, but she still had her wild moods. "Leader! You said we can not get naked in the dungeon anymore, howe he gets to go in his birthday suit on his first outing with us, not fair".


    The meeting soon degraded into who should get naked and who should paint on them, Yunan didn''t really mind, it was after all the Debauchery way, getting serious already would have been torment for them, and he would gain more information about how to act in the formation as soon as battle began, that was the way it was, even when they were only training the 10 year old kids, they always gave all the information one needed but not all of it was given before battle.


    After leaving the boisterous Debauchery to their own devices, Yunan went back to his own bedroom, he wanted to rest and rx his body and mind before facing a stressful time that could literally shorten his lifespan, the girls were there, each of them had a stack of documents sitting next to her and one in each hand, they were taking the thing about being his agents seriously and that made him smile. It is noteworthy to mention that the changing frown on Lili''s face was more interesting to watch, she had be a knucklehead, even if she was still as smart as she was, reading and studying the old fashioned way seems to have be a chore for her. Kitty was napping on the bed, she seemed to resolve to be the muscles of the group and do all the dirty work.


    Yunan chose Reina''sp for a pillow and she obliged him by letting her 5 tails smother him into sleep, he has gotten used to being pampered as ofte, especially since Ignis pulled her stunt, the girls have been even more attentive to his state of being, losing the man they loved seemed to have be an idea that they thought about more than they should, not that Yunan wasining, he was happy and content, two feelings half the world could only dream about. The reason he could rx around his wives this much is because he trusted them to be on their best behaviour, just like they trusted him to love and care for them for all his days, it was something mutual, and the girls knew it more than anyone else, for him they protect each other, help each other and get along as best as possible, to them, their happiness was about making Yunan happy, and Yunan was more than happy to do the same, this kind of fantastical love was the bond that helped this ragtag band of misfits to work so harmoniously in this lovely group.

 Chapter 277: Planet floor?

    Chapter 277: floor?


    The next morning Yunan woke up to the trumpeting calls of Dustan, even the servants were scrambling here and there to get breakfast ready for their masters, meanwhile Yunan decided to just answer the call because he feared that both Kitty and Lili who were getting restless might go actually beat up the orc, it was then he heard: "if they pummel him enough, his face might change to look a bit less ugly i suppose" said Sarah from under the nkets, a few assenting "hmm, hmm" responded to her, Yunan could only smile at his wives, seeking death was nothing strange for them.


    "It is my first day exploring with them, give him a bit of ck, now let me get up and get cleaned up, you girls get some more beauty sleep, all of you have panda eyes from studying until it waste". As expected, Yunan left his bed under a stream of yful fists and some vocal abuse, he had just called his wives ugly or at least in need of beautification, a serious crime against all womanhood. And here i am baiting feminazis, aren''t i a good author?


    Well, the man left the warmth of his wives and dropped into a big cleansing pool to clean up before telling the servants to take their time preparing breakfast, he still had to feel the chill of Death when Debauchery got serious, it has been so long yet the memory of them killing and destroying was vivid, the chill he felt when he was among them was still carved in his mind. He was not keen on experiencing that memory once more, so he took his time, it was too early and even if he had to suffer making Debauchery wait, he was still willing to dy that moment.


    After getting out of the bath and heading to the dining room, Yunan was dumbfounded to see that Bai and Fae were as giddy as little children waiting to open their presents on Christmas morning, while Dustan and Balin where even more solemn than Lucian, Leader was smiling her enchanting smile like she was not even preparing for mortalbat, and Lucian was on edge, something that Yunan never thought was possible, even Anne was tightening her battle medic attire and even adding additionalyers.


    It turned out that some bets were won and some were lost and all in all, Dustan and Balin had a very bad day ahead of them, Lucian being on edge was a result of his mind working at full speed trying topensate for the lost bets, it was too much for the man since the bet was as follows: the loser must not use a weapon until noon, and they must participate inbat against a group of monsters no less than three times, shields and gauntlets were allowed, as well as the use of anything attached to the armor, anything else that could be used as a weapon was forbidden.


    Yunan face-palmed twice, first when he was told about the bet and the second time was when he was told that neither Dustan nor Balin would be wearing armor because they were not going to fulfill the bet half heartedly, his mind started working on all the spells he could use on the two to make them as immune to getting killed as possible, not that his buffs would do much but the difference between life and death was always a precaution that has been deemed unnecessary.


    If that was all there was to it, Yunan would have had much less to worry about, the giddiness that Bai and Fae had shown got him really nervous, those two were too happy to be closer to death and they still didn''t care much. Thus with his mind working on overdrive, Yunan was teleported to the 80th floor. The moment his feet touched the ground he knew this ce was aplete world. Maybe it was his instinct at work or Tartarus herself providing that feeling, it was still an undeniable fact that he could feel this floor was different.


    To put the feeling into words, each floor was a fragment of a world, the 10s were simple subterranean mazes, the 20 were ins, the 30s were oceans, the 40s were a desert, the 50s were a forests. Yunan could feel all these types of biomes existing in this floor, and then an idea scrambled his thoughts, this was a rest floor, just like all other rest floors, it did not indicate the environment in following floors, however, the feeling that from now on the rest of the floors would be the same as this one dominated the thought process. Still there was another feeling that Yunan discarded to the back of his mind seemingly too unbelievable to be explored at the moment.


    "You can already feel it?" Bai was impressed, Lucian was still fidgeting and counting with his fingers, Fae was looking for something while Balin and Dustan had shields in each hand. "I never thought you would realise it this fast, usually people would never know unless told or read the maps" said Leader patting Yunan on the shoulder "it is exactly as you can feel, this is aplete, it is part of a sr system and is part of a gxy, but this dimension is not as big as our real world, each floor from now on is aplete, each in a different sr system, all floors are strewn in across the same gxy, getting closer to the centre of the gxy with each floor, many think that the centre of this gxy is where the heart of Tartarus is".

 Chapter 278: Blood lust

    Chapter 278: Blood lust


    "No, we are already in the heart" said Yunan "it''s like getting close to the control room with each floor, the heart of Tartarus is a miniature universe" Yunan was speaking with disbelief. He knew why he felt the change in this ce, he was creation as it was intended, the blood of a phoenix and the blood of a dragon, and he could feel the power of creation in this ce. Hephaestus was a master craftsman indeed, if he could craft a pocket universe simply by watching what the creator god made, there was no end to his talent, and that same guy was just in Yunan''s own wedding drinking tea like an ordinary human.


    "We also met the hearts before, we can tell we are closer to the heart of Tartarus, howe you can tell we are inside it?" Asked Leader, she didn''t fuss about what Yunan said or the implications of Tartarus being a fully functional pocket universe. "It''s the bloodlines inside me, i have the origin of creation coursing through me, i can tell when something has that energy, and this ce feels more like a beating heart than just any or pocket dimension". Leader nodded her head, she was in the outside world enough times to know the feel of an ordinary in an ordinary system, and she had lived in Yunan''s dimension long enough to know the difference between it and a real universe.


    This ce felt off, but that was not the main point to an explorer, the closest to the lowest floor was the winner, this new information added by Yunan was a bit of a head scratcher, thus Leader dropped this line of questioning, whether Yunan was correct or not, it had nothing to do with their current position, they were here to fight and help Yunan try his luck at surviving in a ce too strong for him, the rest of Debauchery did the same, there was no need to waste mental energy on something that was of no use nor worth anything to them.


    "Forget about the trivial things, since you can already tell that this floor can change scenery just like the outside world, there is no need to linger here for you to witness it, let''s move down to the next floor and see how it goes" Lucian took the lead to walk down the stairs that linked the floors with each other, he was followed by Dustan and Balin, Fae then Anne, Leader, Yunan and Bai brought the rear, the biome theynded on was simr to the one they just left, the only difference was a tiny little bird that was waiting for them, it seems the little thing still had a grudge and was now warning other monsters who have made nests in the open from the approaching Debauchery.


    The bird flew to Yunan''s shoulder and chirped at him, it was thanks to Yunan that it got its revenge on Debauchery and it took him for a good friend from then on, especially after Yunan advocated for its release back home. Debauchery were heaving sighs of relief when they saw the birdnd on Yunan''s shoulder and immediately startedining about how this little bird unintentionally made their lives harder because it alerted monsters to them, making it harder for them to sneak by or ambush anything, it also did not help that monsters tended to attack them more frequently when this bird was leading the way.


    Yunan brought out Sapphira, Drogon and Ignis to y and left them for the bird to show them around, when the four monsters left the group, Balin and Dustan were on their knees thanking every deity they could name, with the little bugger staying out of their way, they had much easier time fulfilling the bet, and they could act a bit more rxed now that there was no beacon pointing all monsters to their location. The party of eight marched in a direction, slowly but surely, Lucian was far ahead leaving marks for them to follow and scouting the way. Balin and Dustan took out their shields and led the rest, Bai disappeared somewhere, Fae and Anne walked in the back while Yunan and Leader took the center of the formation, Yunan was already applying buffs and resistance as much as he could stack them.


    After walking for about half an hour Lucian and Bai arrived at the same time, and a chill in the air came with them, "a nasty piece of monster is heading to this location, I reckon we can kill it if all goes well". 50 km away, Yunan detected a monster and immediately understood why Lucian called it nasty, it was oozing bloodlust, it was looking for a kill, there was no hunger or thirst, this one was just like a mad beast, it was just looking to kill and it wasing for them.


    Yunan cast his mana Syphon at the maximum range, and started to drain the massive reserve bit by bit, he allocated the majority of the stolen mana to help his teammates and the rest was sent to the private dimension to be a part of its storage. He injected the mana to his teammates through the rings in their hands, he then sent a message to his pets not to seek them out and be carefull, it was the first time Yunan met such a bloodthirsty monster in the dungeon, he realised that these floors were much more than justs, they had the variety of one too.

 Chapter 279: Automated battle mode

    Chapter 279: Automated battle mode


    The iing monster was a lean, mean, foul, four legged creature, it looked like a spotted hyena, short hind-legs paired with longer and stronger fore-legs, big muscled chest and an elongated maw that was full of sharp canines, it had forward pointing eyes and looked like it was a chaser and brawler instead of an ambusher. Feeling its mana being sapped at high speed only angered it causing it to howle to the sky, fear struck Yunan so hard his mind switched to unconscious battle mode, while he was still in the trance from the howle, Yunan had casted every single spell that could hinder the monster as well as applying all kinds of status effects to weaken the monster.


    This unconscious battle mode was something Yunan developed when he was training in the earlier floors trying to make his skills and spells as natural as breathing, he was aware of it especially in the floors that had too many monsters like the rat floor and the oceanic floors, he did not however think it would work with him stunned or unconscious. He thought that as long as he could think properly this automated battle mode would function, but he was pleasantly surprised when he came to from his stun and the monster was already weakened and debuffed in every way possible.


    Range was something that Yunan had the advantage in, even in the 81st floor he could start a fight before the opponent was in range of sight, this kind of supreme battle range made Yunan a force not to be reckoned with, he could literally kill his enemies from so far away, he would be as far as 100 km away and making life hard for them, Debauchery have known about that range of his but didn''t get to see it in action.


    It is to be noted that Yunan with his massive range detected only one single monster in the 81st floor, the one that did not try to hide and was about to fight Debauchery, even if his detection skills were top notch, he was did not have enough attribute points to detect something that wanted to hide in floors more than 10 levels ahead of him. Lucian on the other hand could detect hidden monsters and as the good ranger he was, he could tell that the monster that howled was already in the middle of battle.


    "Boy" said Leader "did you have to anger it from that far? Also how were you casting while stunned by the howling?" Debauchery had taught Yunan how to hide his casting, it stood to reason that they could detect silent casting if they could hide it so well, and it felt like casting while stunned might be a bit too far fetched, since stuns were able to override trained battle actions, so it was hard to believe they witness a stunned man casting.


    "Automated battle mode" answered Yunan still dealing with the fear left over by the howle. "I was trying to make all my spells and skills to be as natural as breathing in order to make more space in my mental capacity, it''s the first time i have been under a stun so i did not know that i seeded to this point, it was especially helpful when i was pushing my limits of stamina and endurance but i was always conscious of it activating". After a few moments of silence he continued "i have attached a mana syphon, a 30% stat debuff, and some other status effects like reduced regeneration, reduced healing and some other stuff, it should be vulnerable to bleeding and wind magic most, also illusions will work 50% better, and all other types of magic should have a 15% better effect".


    Fae and Leader nodded, he seemed to have been correct about the list of spells he cast, but they could not identify the actual effects because the disparity between levels. "Also, use your rings to regen mana, and gain ess to the battle supply room, there are all kinds of healing items and stamina regeneration foods, try to stick to the Queen bee honey and theva wine since they work best, all the rest were made by Ophelia and they work just fine", he wanted to keep talking but was stopped by Leader.


    "Boy, we raised you well, we already know that so stop trying to make us blush, also, we already knew, from the moment you gave us ess and linked us to the mana storage, so let''s get ready to fight. Balin, Dustan put on your armor and take out your weapons, this is a lone monster, the bet was about fighting groups of them, Fae, start nting your magical traps ording to the retreat route, Bai go ahead and start buzzing around the monster and make sure it uses its energy, Lucian, hide and learn its patterns and weaknesses then report when the monster is 1000 meters away, Anne you start the buffs and prepare your best healing magic, also think about disinfectants and possible contamination from what ever made the monster go mad".


    With everyone getting their orders and starting to work on them, Yunan was left standing looking at Leader smiling so proudly, she whispered to him while blushing ever so slightly "it feels like we are wasting your talent if we only get to have you here for a month, get stronger fast, i need you by my side". Yunan did not know what to say as an answer, he just nodded his head slightly and then focused on the iing monster, he wanted to know if his debuffs were as good as he hoped, yet he did not have any expectations, he knew he was far outside his own league, even if he could shave 1% from the monster it was already a win. He knew he had gotten a big upgrade from Ignis and he had yet to check his status, he had not checked his status for 5 or so years ever since he got the phoenix legacy quest, he decided it would best to check it after he participates in his first kill in the 80s.

 Chapter 280: New attack

    Chapter 280: New attack


    Even with Bai buzzing around the monster and annoying it into an even deeper state of madness and rage, it only took less than 5 minutes to reach Debauchery who have been working hard on their preparation, Yunan stayed besides leader and did not do anything, there were many monsters around them and they might fancy a bite out of the weaker Yunan, even if they did not feel like taking all of Debauchery, they might be tempted with a weak prey that was effortless to capture or kill.


    Soon Lucian returned with news, the monster was notpletely mad, it was probably a parasite that mistakenly invaded its brain and this blood lust was a side effect because the parasite was not meant for its kind, Lucian also reported the sess of Yunan''s spells, it was truly having troubles with stopping bleeding and healing itself, around 7% of what should be its natural power, its striking speed and damage was 10% lower and its reaction speed was reduced up to 20%, magic was 4% more effective and sharp magic was 9% more effective (sharp magic is the spells that can forme des like wind, space etc).


    Yunan was happy that his debuffs were actually working, the only problem was that mind spells were not as effective thanks to the side effects of the parasite, it had forced the brain of the monster into overdrive at all times, other than destroying its rationale and boosting its aggression, it also made it harder to fall under mind spells and sensory illusion, ording to Lucian, this parasite is killing the monster by frying its brain through overwork.


    Parasites are the deadliest type of organisms out there, they evolve to rely on a certain species and be perfect for a life of symbiosis with said species, but what would happen if it got into any other species? It bes a deadly rtionship with both host and parasite killing each other. When talking about evolution, parasites are masters of selective evolution, they focus on one specific niche and there is little to nopetition between different parasites, they can be named as the masters of exclusivity, because when parasites enter a suitable host they form a symbiotic rtionship, if they enter the wrong host both of them die while killing each other.


    With the monster arriving in range Lucian went to assist Bai in dealing as much damage as they could to the monster, Balin and Dustan faced it with tower shields and hammers in hand, Fae started bombarding it with magic while leader took her crossbow and started shooting the monster, Anne began casting buffers and shields on Debauchery to protect them, meanwhile Yunan started using bullets filled with his signature venom, the bullets were small and made of ice that can be broken on contact, he aimed for the giant eyes and nose as well as any open wounds he could shoot at, he was then hit with an idea that can improve his venom, so he let automated battle mode take over and started thinking about creating his next weapon.


    In automated battle mode many tentacles shot out of Yunan''s body and turned into hands, each pair of hands was equipped with a powerful bow, and started making arrows no thicker than threads and shoot them at the open wounds. The bullets containing the venom were now filled with an assortment of different toxins and putrid materials, the earth beneath the monster would change and move, turning to bogs, or quicksand, sometimes it bes moltenva and when the beast sank in it froze trapping its limbs inside. There were some feelers that attached to the monster and helped syphon the mana from it, battle mode Yunan was carefully moving with Leader while using as much of the stolen mana to cast spells.


    it took only 20 minutes for the monster to start exhibiting the tell tale signs of extreme poisoning, it started to spasm, have a hard time breathing, losing sight, and so on, being pumped full of toxins and a wide range at that, was very bad, and with amounts of mana at hand the volume of toxins shot into the monster were as much as a tenth of its body mass, no matter how good it was at breaking down toxic materials, it could never keep up with such arge amount, such high delivery speed or the sheer variety of toxin invading directly into the bloodstream.


    With the monster slowing down, losing copious amounts of blood, the umted damage over taking the natural healing speed, Debauchery took the chance to go all out and try to kill it as soon as possible, they went as far as having Balin and Dustan wrestle the huge monster to the ground where it was confined by Yunan''s earth shift leaving its vulnerable weak spots in to see and hit. At this point Yunan had finally formted his newest attack, instead of toxins he could try to use his telekic prowess to send in grain sized eggs that contain bits of his own feelers, these feelers would feed on the mana in the monster and grow in size rapidly, consequently bursting the vital organs and harming them beyond repair, the idea was fine, but to program his feelers to feed on mana, multiply, reach certain organs, grown wildly and deal damage, reach the vital organs and the critical number of eggs and then bursting would take long, however it was worth considering if it was a possibility to take out monsters beyond one''s power level.


    Witnessing the downed monster in itsst legs, Yunan stopped attacking and only provided support, before long the monster was dead and motionless, Leader gave the order to burn its corpse instead of leaving it behind, if the parasite inside it had mutated and sessfully left behind eggs during the fight things can get very dangerous in this ce, therefore fire was the best possible way to deal with the problem. Yunan was sad to see his first kill burning in his own hell mes, he watched as the mes turned flesh and blood and bone into ash, Yunan was told to burn even the blood patches left behind from the fight, contamination from a different eco system was not to be tolerated, especially in a where cross-contamination could happen naturally.

 Chapter 281: Ambushed

    Chapter 281: Ambushed


    Fighting against the mad bloodthirsty monster was no indication of how thebat against the the ordinary monsters can go, especially when ites to groups. Thankfully, Debauchery had been in the 80s long enough to get a chance to try many different possible oues, making their fight against the mad monster end fast with minimal damages. Leader was especially proud of Yunan for noticing that the monster was having problems with its immune system and attacking using the toxins to drive it faster into death embrace.


    In reality the choice to go with the multitude of toxins was a response from automated battle mode to the ineffectiveness of the usual venom, Yunan could only feel happy about his luck and praise his automated battle mode for keeping in tandem with Debauchery even if Yunan was not conscious about keeping up with them. Another thing that made Yunan happy was the fact that he was able to affect the monster with his spells, debuffs and status effects, it was a very pleasant surprise to know he had so many things going just right for him.


    While leaving the location of the fight and watching the pirs of smoke left behind by hell mes, Yunan was caught off guard when his group was ambushed by a pride of lions. The lions were not as massive as the mad monster but they were as strong as it if not stronger the lions were of normal size, 2 meter height at the shoulders and 4 meter from head to hiney, the tail was a meter and a half long. Two maned males and 5 females. The first attack came from a female that aimed for Balin who bashed it in the head with his shield halting its momentum.


    The two lions went against Dustan since he looked like he was the strongest simply due to body size and was the primary target in order for the rest of the group to submit. One can not fault the lions if they thought this way, usually in a group of the same species the biggest was the strongest, and strength wise, Dustan was the strongest if we go by only numbers.


    The other targets were Lucian, Bai and Fae, Lucian and Bai got to contend with one lioness each, while Fae had to deal with two, it seemed this group could see beyond the harmless front Fae put up and marked her as even more dangerous than Balin. Dustan did not waste time pummeling the two lions with Balin, who seemed to think giving his back to a lioness was not a very bad idea, luckily for him, Leader, had taken the liberty to stun the lioness that went for him, Yunan was still taking in the action when Lucian was by his side telling him to start fighting or start running.


    Bai had already finished his lioness as well and was helping Fae abuse her two charges, Leader was casting her buffs and heals in tandem with Anne, meanwhile Dustan and Balin were going toe to toe, in a contest of strength, with monsters that has achieved an explosive number of 33000 strength or the equivalent strength of 3300 normal humans, Yunan was jerked into action and saw the position he needed to fill, ranged support.


    Not knowing how the lions would react to being shot from range, Yunan started with a full set of debuffs, then started pelting the lioness that was stunned by Leader with his ice spears until it almost froze solid, Lucian took the chance to slice its throat while Yunan turned his attention back to the male lions who were now making preparations for escape, he trapped them in vines and shifting earth to slow them down, he them looked back to see Fae dropping a mangled corpse and walking like blood thirsty beast toward the trapped lions and started to pummel them into oblivion, fists were thrown so viciously that the male lions started to cry out in pain and begging for release, a few minutester Fae returned with an ugly w mark on her face, she slumped on the ground beside Leader and started crying like a little girl being bullied by her ymates.


    Leader and Anne did a good job patching up the w mark, but Fae still sulked for the rest of the day. Vulnerable Fae was a heartbreaker, if Yunan did not know her real temperament he would have been shedding tears along with her.


    With this battle Yunan understood what thebat in this floor would be, one could face giant monsters so big they cover the sun, or smallpact groups of monsters, ambush as well as chase and hunting were just part 8f the natural order, and thus h should expect the same hunting styles in the outside world to be prominent in this floor as well. The natural way of things tends to repeat itself, sessful adaptations can be acquired independent of species and habitat, just like how all carnivores have sharp teeth and how all herbivores have t jagged teeth, the same thing is applicable for the ways of hunt and hiding.


    With this notion in mind Yunan stored the bodies of the dead lions while being thankful that his teachers were strong enough to end fights fast enough, he stayed as alert as he could while resuming the exploration of the floor, he got to fight twice and survived both, he froze in the ambush but that was to be expected, he have been able to notice anythinging at him from such a big range, being attacked from a blind spot due to his own inadequacy would stun any one, he might freeze again but next time he would regain his senses much faster.

 Chapter 282: Reflections in camp

    Chapter 282: Reflections in camp


    When noon hade, Yunan was tired, mentally not physically, he has been able to understand how dangerous it was to be in a floor almost 30 levels above his level, as far as he knew. They had fought a total of 9 times, 5rge monsters and 4 monster packs, therger monsters were the hardest to kill because of their sturdy nature and healing ability, even if the modest 5% less healing that Yunan could apply helped it was not much in the grand scheme of things, even his toxin flood was only enough to cause them to slow down a bit more and show symptoms of a fever.


    The packs of smaller monsters were much easier to deal with, they required all the party to work together and help each other, the most troublesome part was that they could try to run away from the battle and Debauchery would have very little to nothing to do to stop them, a good example was a herd of mountain goats that seemed able to fly, they could jump high from almost any position, and they could jump on anything that could support their weight. There was almost 30 of them and they attacked Debauchery by jumping up high and then falling horns first at the target, but if one was dodged or hit, they would just jump away as fast as they dropped from the sky, Yunan was apuded for his quick thinking when he did catch one thanks to his Dragonborn form, and just simply dangled it by the horn in the sky where the best it could do was try to twist and turn to reach him but failed miserably.


    The one Yunan caught was served as lunch in the 80th floor because it was much more dangerous to sit and eat in the 81st than it was to look for monsters. Upon leaving the floor Sapphira seemed like she wanted to take the tiny troublesome bird with her back to her home, it seemed that the three pets have made a deal with the little critter and they were going to show it the outside world, since the bird was almost matchless outside of the awakened ind, it was safe to take out with them. There were no rules against monsters leaving the Dungeon, after all many of the current monster nests in the outside world were descendants of monsters that left the dungeon, the only point was to keep it from attacking and for that Yunan forged amunication ring for it to wear on its leg, the ring was a safety to force it to teleport away in case of aggression.


    Sapphira wanted to take the opportunity to show Yunan and the other two pets around the awakened ind but Yunan rejected her stating that she could take his wives if she wanted to take humans, as for he himself, he would be staying a few more days to try and gain some enlightenment before returning to his own floor, Sapphira did not leave until she got a promise from Yunan that he would let her guide him through her home once he was done with the 50s, something that was going to be extremely easy from this point onwards.


    After the pets and their new friend left for the portable home to then teleport to the Pearl and from there fly their way to the ind. Yunan sat down and tried to rest while food was being prepared, he saw the usual Debauchery sitting solemn and focused, Balin was repairing armor and sharpening weapons, Leader was casting her healing and nurturing spells on the party, Anne was maintaining her staff, Fae was sulking in the crude tent she had raised for herself and the otherdies, Lucian was dealing with the food and Bai was securing the parameter, meanwhile Dustan was snoring already.


    It was theplete opposite of what they did when they were home or having a festive time, even though the 80th floor was a safe haven, Debauchery still took all the measures of safety, it was against other explorers, monsters followed the non aggression rule but explorers did not, Yunan noted that all this morning they didn''t meet a single explorer, he knew that it was rare for explorer to meet each other after the 50s, Yunan has been used to not meeting a single explorer for months on end ever since entered the 40s, so he did not find it odd, it was until now that he remembered that there should be a considerable number of old explorers in this floor.


    Explorers who reached this ce had natural life spans that can be considered long, 10 thousand years and they were hard to kill, there should be a poption in this ce, even if there were few who reached this ce each year, a span of a thousand years would be enough to create a town, an outpost even, but even the guild did not create one, the answer then became obvious, those who reached this ce were very keen on reducingpetition for reaching thest floor, especially those who were incapable of further advancement, they would act like roadblocks and keep the uing generation from going beyond them.


    It was fairly understandable at this point why Debauchery party kept their vignce about them at all times, monsters were the easiest to deal with, adventurers on the other hand were the phantom menace in this ce, Yunan decided to go spend his time with Fae, Balin wouldn''t let him help in maintenance because he had a certain process to go through, Lucian was not in need of extra hands and was not the most talkative, Leader and Anne would be maintaining their items too after the healing process was done and Bai really hated when his own teammates triggered his rm so sulking Fae was the only option.


    Yunan entered the crudely made tent and hugged Fae from behind, he then brought out some of the cleansing milk and the healing honey and gently applied it to where the phantom scars of the w were left, 4 faint rosey lines that stretched from her left temple to her right breast, passing by her cheek, nose, lips, neck and vicle bones, it would have spelled death on anyone who was not being pumped with 3 casters worth of protection and healing magic, although Anne did a marvelous job and no scar tissue was left, the phantom scars were still mentally tormenting Fae.

 Chapter 283: Comforting Fae

    Chapter 283: Comforting Fae


    Yunan slowly and gently applied the healing salve made by mixing the healing honey and the cleansing milk to the ce where the faint pink traces were. "With this it would looks as good as new, so stop sulking and smile again, seeing you like this makes us all feel worried, after all, you are always full ofughter and energy, you might even get wrinkles early if you keep this look up, and then everyone will be sad to see your beautiful skin turn old and icky".


    Comforting Fae was not an easy thing especially since she was the type to base her entire life on the state of her skin, even phantom scars that were already healing would sour her mood, what made her sulk this bad was being seen with such an ugly scar. Fae was sensitive, even if it was about the wrong things, but she was still a little girl at heart, she is yful, likes pranking, does not care much about others, she is strong and willful but unexpectedly fragile when it came her weak point.


    "This skin, it''s not mine" said Fae under her breath "my mom always said i was born ugly and misshapen, my father almost killed us both because he thought i was the offspring of another man from another race, my father never talks about it and everyone else in the vige says my mom was just telling me things to make me behave. My mom always said that she went to the heart tree daily to pray to the heart, but the priesthood always threw her out of the heart tree and the temples dedicated to Yggdrasil, they said that i was an abomination, a dirty polluting existence to be kept away from the purest tree and from the purest temples".


    Yunan listened well as he kept applying the salve methodically, he thought as well it was just a story to frighten the little girl into being a good elf, what was the best way to make a girl obey than to tell her that her beauty was not yers and if she did not behave it can be taken from her. Still Fae seemed to believe it, and that was more than enough for him to let her finish her story, it may be the first time she openly talked about this matter, and as he was trying tofort her, he did not n to let her feel mistaken for sharing with him.


    "She said that for the first year of my life i was shunned by my kind, i have shown rare talent among the elves and acute magical sensitivity, but they all still refused to share the same space with me, if it was not for my parents, i would have been thrown to the monsters in the nearest nest. Mom said that one day when she was praying to Yggdrasil, she heard her plea and came floating down from the sky, she then touched my head and smiled saying that i had a big future waiting for me and my looks were not up to par with that future, a light shown and i be an ordinary looking baby girl, my old name was changed to Fae by Yggdrasil because she said that this new name fit me more than our ancestors"


    "No one mentions my old name, but i know it, the fair race is magical and our names can never be changed, they are almost carved into our being, giving a member of the fair race andw name was in an insult to the fair gods, but since the one who changed my name was Yggdrasil, none dared disobey and call me by my name. This skin and this body are not mine, and one day i will give them back to Yggdrasil, when i am strong enough that this body is nothing but a hindrance i will return it to her, until then, it must stay in the best condition"


    Yunan could tell Fae believed what she was saying, it was hard for Fae to speak the words out, and when she was done he could feel a bit of a shudder run through her body, so he answered "if you really are going to give it back, you shouldn''t take so much care of it, this was something forced on you, so a scar here and there won''t be the end of the world, it would be a little revenge that only you know about".


    Yunan was done with applying the salce so he helped the girl dress up and then took her again in his embrace he jokingly said "shame such a beautiful body is not getting any good use, i would know a naughty thing or two to show our utmost appreciation for Yggdrasil", Fae giggled a bit but stayed silent, and so Yunan didn''t say anything more until they heard Dustan stop snoring suddenly. Yunan and fayed stayed still and hid their presence as much as they could, Dustan was an rm when he slept, he could identify any amount of danger and wake up ready for battle.


    The others in the camp went on alert and before long one of Bai rms was activated, and then more and more activated as well, facing the tent was Lucian who was still looking after the food, he winked at the two as if telling them to stay inside and keep hiding, not long after 4 individual appeared in Yunan''s range, he did not know if they were enemies or but out of caution he started to syphon out their mana just in case, he discovered that all of them were preparing to cast magic and ryed the information through themunication rings, he did not dare make his syphon obvious and certainly did not dare to spy on their mana cores for too long.


    One of the four took a step forward when he saw that Debauchery party did note take any action other than being on alert "we are peaceful, we only wanted to trade some news and information, we have just returned from a prolonged hunt and have no idea what the state of the world have been for thest decade, will you kindly share your intelligence and we will repay you" the man rxed while talking and took two more steps forward with his hands spread out for all to see.

 Chapter 284: Sudden fight

    Chapter 284: Sudden fight


    Dustan, and Balin took a neutral stance and looked at Bai, Leader and Anne walked near the tent and sat there while Lucian only lifted his head for a moment before looking back at what he was doing, it may have looked like they were taking it easy and trying to avoid a fight but themunication rings were sending messages non stop.


    "Yunan, can you use your mana syphon to keep tabs on them?" Asked Lucian through the rings "as long as anything with mana appears in my range of 100 km i can tag them with mana syphon instantly, as long as i don''t break the syphon i can keep them under surveince, i can only tell location and if they are preparing to cast magic, anything more and they would discover it, i can hide it as natural mana consumption as long as they are in my range, from the looks of these four they can prepare and use one volley of magic before i can empty their cores".


    Bai took the notion and said to the man that talked first "can you tell your friends to stop hiding, too many of my rms have been activated, i need to know your friends so we won''t attack if they approach" the meaning was clear, anyone who has triggered an rm has been tagged with those around them being tagged was well a great possibility, trap masters always worked with master trackers and it was always possible to tag a group with just one rm, the other message was that Debauchery were capable of fighting and winning against a pincer attack of greater numbers, a bluff no one wanted to call prematurely.


    The man nodded and said loudly "all my friends will remove their hiding techniques for a bit so that you can confirm we mean no harm, they are hiding just in case this is an ambush, and will only act if we are attacked" as soon as he finished his words a total of 19 hidden figure popped in Yunan''s range and he did not wait to attach his syphon to all of them. After sending confirmation to Lucian that all the figures in range were tagged, Lucian nodded his head towards Bai, he made it look like he was the one in charge of detection.


    Soon after the figures hidden themselves against they all moved fast towards the camp, Yunan was able tomunicate their locations and their readiness for battle. "Leaders only" said Bai and moved forward towards the man who came forward as well, both had their hands out as they walked closer to meet about ten paces away from the cooking fire. Bai saw a smirk on the lips of the man, and the tell tale signs in his muscles that he was preparing to attack, so Bai just walked like an oblivious man to his death, he even started talking "what kind of information you need to know about, and what do you have to give us in return".


    "we mostly want to know about the guild, how did the thing with the cult go and who is the guild master currently, and if they got a bitx about auctioning tamed monsters" said the man as he stood facing Bai with hands behind his back. "This is not even worth anything so we will not take payment" answered Bai "Martin is still guild master, the cult thing has been brought to an end and as for the regtion concerning monsters they got even tighter, seems like there are too many people trying to buy monsters they can not control, and the guild has been getting headaches from escaping monsters that aren''t registered or proven to be tamed".


    Bai told the truth and stood there waiting for the man to leave the man however got closer to Bai "there is one more thing, can you die for me" said the man as he pulled out a dagger and nted it in Bai''s heart, Bai did not even flinch as he sliced the man''s neck in two. Yunan immediately activated his mana syphon at full capacity while he teleported Fae and Leader behind the enemy lines, Lucian shed behind the three that were now casting their prepared magic bombarding the campsite.


    Yunan took Anne with him and teleported to the portable home to avoid the original impact, meanwhile Bai was thrown by Dustan in the direction of some enemies, Balin was running into a different direction while Dustan stood there and took the st head on while armoured like a tank. Since mana syphon was connected to the portable home through themunication ring it did not get cut off when Yunan teleported, and continued to empty everyst drop of mana from the tagged enemies.


    By the time Yunan returned with Anne, Lucian has decapitated three people, Bai was standing in the middle of 5 people screaming in agony, Fae was running after 2 guys while 3 others were already knocked out and downed. Leader was dragging 2 behind her, Balin had dismantled 4 and Dustan had broken 3 like twigs. After a while Fae also returned with three people in ropes in total there were 16 captives taken in. 7 females and 9 males, the two that ran away away from Fae exposed the location of the true leader and thus he was brought back as well by yye good graces of Fae who wasn''t thinking about delivering them to the guild but more about torturing them to release some of her bottled up feelings, it was so because they interrupted her cuddling therapy with Yunan.


    Debauchery gathered everyone and returned back to the private dimension, every single captive was detained in a cell that turned them as weak as ordinary people, questions and what not would be askedter on, first was looting the bloody bastards.


    Like always being drained of mana when you had full tank just a moment before was taxing on the brain, the fastest ones to act were Debauchery, they attacked in the time they were being bombarded by magic, the way they acted further stunned the attackers, they were decisive and didn''t hesitate going into action, something that was out of calction, and since Debauchery were that good at handling being outnumbered the fight took only a few seconds to be over.

 Chapter 285: Trying at ruling

    Chapter 285: Trying at ruling


    With Debauchery losing the will for any further exploration, they just returned home with Yunan and took the rest the day off and shared their own lunch with the girls, thereafter the lot of them headed for the baths to rx and talk about what Yunan experienced in his first day as an 80th floor explorer.


    ording to Leader "this boy has some marvelous luck, ever since we entered the 80s we haven''t had this much fighting nor have we had met a big group of enemies, all the adventurers we met were good folks, luckily you came by and baited a few bad apples for us" in the 80s it was a bit hard to meet with other adventurers, let alone meeting a big band of aggressive ones, as for the monster fights, they were lucky not to end up with too much damage and the fights ending rather fast and without too many surprises.Yunan was d that his first day was on the good side of the spectrum, he was nning to spend a few more days and he hoped they would go well for him.


    Returning back to the morning time, Reina and Sarah left bed not long after Yunan teleported away to Tartarus, the two pushed the others off of the bed, Ophelia went to herb to work on whatever concoction she deemed necessary to work on, Kitty and Lili helped Reina prepare for formalities, while Sarah started picking up the paperwork they needed for what they nned to do. After sunrise they teleported to the bright pce in bid to meet with the service personnel and talk with the ministers of the government to see what they can interfere with and help smooth things for them.


    As the Queen of the Pearl and her retinue, Reina met the old ministers of both official and underground governments to discuss how could her help be provided. She knew Yunan was a hand off kind of king but he still actively joined in when big things came up, like the time with the big bad assassin, or the time he sent Drogon to burn pirates into oblivion, however since their wedding and her attaining the official title of Queen, Reina decided that she can try to change the way the poption looked at the royal family.


    The king was a good guy that helped build a better kingdom, it was still small but it was safer and more prosperous, even upholding the no magicw and enforcing it on all equally, including himself, that gave a good look towards the no hands king who''s only interference was to defuse a situation or create an improvement. Reina wanted that to change, she wanted to nt the idea that the royal family was not hands off, it just chose not to interfere with the lowest end of political work, however, they still kept a firm outlook on the whole process in order to better understand and improve the kingdom.


    Her first meeting was the underground government, they had been slowly losing their grip on the underworld due to a recent flood of informants that have infiltrated and are making the uncontroble lowest level thugs agitated causing a rise in petty crime, Reina and Sarah provided some thoughts on how to flush out the informants, they wanted to use real intelligence about the royal family and the business situation around the pearl, opening a few spots for those informants to try and grab a foot hold.


    The information Sarah provided was of no use nor could it cause harm to the pearl, for example the size of trade with the guild and the items traded, and the situation of the underground world and the weak spots to break the bnce between different factions, all these information had immense value to outsiders but could not be used against the Pearl in any way, shape or form. The items provided by the Pearl were unique and the guild would never buy them elsewhere, the weak spots of the underground government were there especially for the express purpose of attracting all the pressure from the criminal world.


    The underground government was also having trouble with financing themselves and keeping their employees well paid, especially with the increasing costs thanks to the recent events, Reina, gave them a choice, they could sell all the illegal items, drugs, and all stolen property to her and she had her own ways of dealing with them, since the underground government were being financed using illegal items and their cirction, it was best if those things were taken of the market gradually, after offering these two pieces of aid the representative of the underground government left with a smile on his face.


    Afterwards came a few ministers with big stacks of problems that they thought that they could dump on this meddling Queen to discourage her, after some talks Reina diplomatically solved a few problems by enlisting the help of the underground government in exchange for financial assistance, the underground government could use its manpower to provide the official government with statistics, urate information about the effects of policies and practices, as well as support in the enforcement ofws and regtions. The meeting ended with both branches of government taking more time to work on the proposed items.


    Lastly they met up with the guild representative in this kingdom. Usually when the guild sells a kingdom they would pull away their employees and give the sold kingdom autonomy, but Yunan has made it so that the guild would still work marginally side by side with the kingdom, the meetingsted until noon, they discussed how to make use of the guild''s presence, expand the trade market and the possibility of creating diplomatic rtions through the guild, given that the nominated kingdoms were ones that could provide some mutually beneficial alliance.

 Chapter 286: Kingly exotic taste?

    Chapter 286: Kingly exotic taste?


    The morning work was rather tiring for the girls, although Lili and Kitty did nothing but look ready to protect Reina and Sarah, keeping that intimidating factor up for a long morning was draining on anyone. As for Reina and Sarah they were exhausted by the amount of thinking they had to do as well as their inexperienced handling of matters, luckily they provided functional solutions that had low repercussions and could be implemented until better solutions where agreed upon.


    The afternoon was mostly spent having azy time in the portable home, even a pic was arrangedter that evening for some star gazing. Yunan thought it would be nice to have a fresh air sortie with some good snacks and drinks to spend a fun evening. The one who benefited most from the star gazing eve was fae who seemed to have returned to her usual self and was no longer down or depressed, Yunan even spent a bit of his luck to cause a meteor shower, further uplifting the mood and turning the quiet time into a contest for who could wish the most and the loudest.


    After dinner Yunan went to the holding cells to try and pry out some loot out of his newest prisoners, he wanted to practice a bit of his torture techniques, if he got some good information it would be a good bonus. Even if torture was inhumane and ultimately nothing but sadistic behaviour, they tried to kill him first, thus signing their own death warrants, and giving Yunan the right to practice on their bodies.


    Inside the prison he found Fae there with Lucian, they were looking through the memories of the prisoners to see what they might find, upon seeing the two, Yunan, who has been wanting to learn memory magic immediately changed his mind and decided to ask for a lesson on the magic he had never gotten from Tartarus.


    "Hello there, did you guys find anything useful?". Yunan announced his approach to his two teachers, it has been a long time since theyst taught him something but he still had that respect that only teachers can elicit from their students. He might have been casual with them but he always knew that he had to show them respect no matter how strong he got.


    "Yunan, you came just in time, wanna practice some torture with me? It has been a long while since we did something so sexy together" Fae winked at one of the prisoners when she responded, the woman visibly shuddered in her cell and crawled as far away as she could from the bars of her cell. Lucian just replied with a "hello" and kept looking at the expressions of the prisoners trying to see who looked most likely to be hiding something or stashing a treasure trove or two.


    "I wasing to practice a little bit but since both of you are here i have a favour to ask, i want to learn memory magic but i have not had the luck to find a book so far, so i was thinking you maybe able to teach me the old fashioned way" Yunan was thinking that him Learning memory magic immediately was never an issue nor did he need to use it ever, unlike Bai, Lucian or Fae he never really needed to learn that mgic at all, after all, he was a solo adventurer and never needed to fight in a faction against another, not in his adventuring days anyway, and all his conflict with other adventurers was mostly solved immediately and never grew to a faction war.


    "The old fashioned way? The magical construct is rather tooplicated, even for you, i suppose that you think you will kill a few while trying to get a grip on it but you might kill yourself as well" Lucian always struck the heart of the matter "you let us worry about finding you a magic book for memory magic, if the guild does not have one there are many others that would keep such a book when one is avable, so forget about trying your hand at it half-heartedly and getting yourself killed doing so" Lucian then walked to some prisoner to scan their memory leaving behind Fae and Yunan alone.


    "No need to feel discouraged my boy, look at how many girls we have! What say you? Shall we go help you relieve some stress? I think they would be so happy to serve a king like yourself, if not there was never a woman who called her king a rapist, they call it exotic kingly taste". Both Yunan and Fae cringed at that word and shook their heads, they remembered the time when they found the ugly side behind the twisted lordly exotic tastes and they did not care to join that club, Yunan preferred to be called rapist then be put in the same category as those people who have been twisted too far by lust and "exotica".


    "Nah, i prefer to be a rapist" responded Yunan before looking at one of the females prisoners, she had a look of someone who did not even care about herself, her worry was projected on another female, so Yunan approached her with Fae following behind him. Fae has always found the way Yunan acted was more interesting than it really was, she was fascinated how their best attempts at turning him into someone like Debauchery members have failed.


    To Fae Yunan was an unpredictable enigma, he was a cross between an unfeeling goal minded person and a gentleman with borders that must never be crossed, he never shied away from inflicting pain or causing death but he also stood for his values and never broke them, he always had that mindset and that made him all the more entertaining to watch and observe. Lucian did not share the same fascination because to him Yunan was just a normal guy that did not care to learn how the world view or reacted to him, his close family and friends were all that really mattered and that was why his actions were obvious to Lucian, they were almost kin.

 Chapter 287: Who would say no to more fun

    Chapter 287: Who would say no to more fun


    "Hello there" stated Yunan as he closed on the prisoner that was worried about another "can you tell me why i should release you, or anyone else in this prison? If i agree with your logic then i will release you or the person who you choose to rescue" Yunan squatted down by the bars of the cell and watched the prisoner and her facial expressions intently, he was telling her he knew that she was fearful for the life of another more than her own and he would like to know why.


    "Is the release you speak of death? I heard your friend talking about relieving some stress, torture and ****, are any of those included in your "release"?" The woman wasn''t buying what Yunan said at all, unlike her teammates that were already falling in despair, she kept a level head and listened to her captors and tried to not fall into the obvious traps set by the captor.


    "Not at all, you see, i never lie or twist words when i have no need to do so, just like now, if you manage to get me to agree to your reason as to why i should let anyone in this room go, i would do that, i will not deliver you to the guild nor will i cause any harm, i will not even dy, i will immediately send you or her or him or who ever you chose back to where you tried to ambush us, how about that". Yunan was talking sincerely, he was waiting to know why did this woman care more for another, usually friendship in these types of gangs were broken almost as soon as danger was afoot.


    "I want a meal for two, i do not care about leaving or being released, i just want another to join my cell. Is that possible?" Asked the woman, Yunan was evidently surprised but did notugh or degrade the woman so he replied "as long as you can convince me of your logic, i can do whatever you want, but if you lie to me there will be consequences, consider this my only warning, i don''t think you need many of them". By this time the rest of Debauchery party came to watch bringing with them the girls, they wanted to see how Yunan was going to cate the wives while hitting on other women.


    "We don''t belong to their party, we joined them for protection, i pay the fee for both of us, all we sought was a chance to survive, being inside your prison is much safer than us leaving, therefore i asked for the meal and her to join me, I vowed to her father that i would pay my life for hers, that deal is one i will always take". The woman pointed at another prisoner, the other girl was already having tears in her eyes, she did not dare look at Yunan out of fear, there was no prison in this world that could strip level 80 adventurers of their power, but this man had one.


    Yunan snapped his finger and the two women were sitting together with a table full of food and drink, he stood up and said to them both "like i promised, joint cell and food for two, i think we three will have some fun together, now if you can tell me who is the richest one here we can arrange for you girls to even havefortable warm beds tonight, you see, that ugly orc over there loves gold more than his own soul, if you get us a good haul he will owe you one, how about it?".


    The two immediately pointed at rather shifty looking male "he is the treasurer, he has been embezzling long before we joined, even the boss knew but he could not find evidence of it, he has a treasure trove twice as big as this prison and it''s filled with storage rings of high quality, i was taken there for paying the fees a few times, he always took me on a bed made of gold coins". Lucian who was scanning another man stopped and looked at the guy, he had almost scanned him but felt the guy looked too shifty even for rogues and was probably a decoy.


    After scanning the treasurer Lucian nodded at Yunan while the shifty guy swore the foulest ofnguage at the two women promising to teach them about their true ce among other things, he was silenced not long after with a thick orcish fist that dislocated his jaw and knocked him unconscious, Dustan then smiled at his newest patrons before grabbing hold of Lucian and dragging him out of prison. Yunan snapped his fingers again and the small cell was now big enough to house a king size bed and even a functional bathroom. He then turned around to leave the prison and rest for the next day of exploration.


    "Why?" There was a small whimper behind him, the girl who was under protection asked under her breath, she was most likely used to sitting in the shadows even though she was much stronger than her friend and was the one in charge, but after leaving everything to her friend, she became reclusive like she pretended to be, however, she found herself unable to resist asking this question. Without turning back to face them, Yunan said while walking to his wives and friends with Fae behind him " i have a weak spot in me for loyalty, like i said we are going to have some fun together".


    As the Debauchery family left the prison Yunan asked a weird question "what would you guys think if i recruited them to work in a trade post in the 80th floor? How hard would it be to start our own faction?" leaving those words for his family to think about, Yunan felt a pat on his back and looked at Leader who had the most amazing and the brightest smile he had ever seen "i like the way you think, kid, s you already have a harem". Giggles and chuckles and eventuallyughter filled the private dimension as the inhabitants returned to their own beds, it was going to be fun again, they have not started to get bored yet but who would say no to more fun.

 Chapter 288: Bleating in response

    Chapter 288: Bleating in response


    "So you want to establish an outpost where even the guild did not dare make one, are you an idiot or are you insane" says Bai while poking his head from between the ribs of some super armored monster he was currently digging inside to reach the heart. "Mate, you are part of the only party that can take actions, actions that can only be described as idiotically insane,pared to you, i am a visionary" replied Yunan while using an ice drill twice his size trying to pierce the ear of that damnedest monster.


    The party was currently fighting an armored giant pangolin, basically an armor ted armadillo, it was almost impossible to take down, the monster was so skewed to defence that it had no attacking capacity other than using its weight to tten it''s foes or roll into a ball and bulldoze its way to safety, it was somehow possible for them to break the skin under its armpit where the two tes from its back and shoulder meet and sneak Bai inside to try and kill the monster from within, the task was proven as hard to do since its meat was stringy and hard to slice through, even Bai got bored slicing a few inches at the time.


    "Are you saying we''re both idiots and crazy?" Asked Dustan mid swing, his hammer ricocheted (yes it''s a real word) off of the armored pangolin leaving behind a slight scratch. Dustan was not very happy that he was incapable of prating the defence of this monster that he almost went berserk trying to inflict more damage with each swing. "No, i am saying that Debauchery is known for doing idiotic stuff that walks the border between craziness and utter ludicrousness, and yes sometimes i feel like i''m walking with a bunch of idiots, however only Fae gives me the feeling of being a bit crazy".


    "Hey, that is so uncool, why am i the crazy one? Is that how you see me, Yunan, tsk tsk, and i was even thinking about warming your bed sometime soon". Fae did not seem to really be bothered with getting named as the crazy one, she however took the opportunity to tease Yunan a little bit. "Aye, thess has a screw or two loose in her noggin but you have to admit, criminal insanity does suit her well, that psychotic smile of hers still gives me the chills and i have been with her long enough to have gotten used to it" Balin added his take on the conversation, he was currently hammering a sword into the te in the back of the pangolin''s head.


    "Of anyone can be called psychotic in this party has to be Leader, i have been with you lot in this party for three decades and the emotional range she showed during this time can be described ascking, to put it inyman terms, she has an emotional range inferior to that of a goat" said Dustan before he realised who he was talking about, luckily for him, they were in the middle of battle and Leader was in a good mood so she only bleated (bleat, making goat/sheep sound) at him from the background.


    "So, you think it will work?" Asked Lucian as he materialised from thin air while panting, he took a swig of cold refreshing Lava wine before returning to the thick of battle, doing all he can to prevent the monster from turning to a ball and running away. "We need a bit of help to set the ce up, but ultimately we are not the ones doing the bartering, we just get paid for being the middleman" responded Yunan " we might have to offer a few sacrifices to Hephaestus and Tartarus, but convincing them is the easy part, the hardest part is to make the people trust us".


    "How about we set up a safe space, just like our personal prison, everyone inside the outpost who does not have the rings of authority are stripped from their power and turned ordinary men, we also can create a no fighting zone in a certain radius that inhibits aggression, we can also use good behaviour points to give out discounts on merchandise and other services, so that those who are well behaved get better business and get to return to do more business, and those with negative points will have to start behaving or be subject to penalties that make it impossible for them to trade sessfully" Leader already had the solution ready but it was not feasible to create without the helpful Hephaestus, still there were a few more things to iron out before the outline waspleted, but for now these were enough as a start.


    "Sounds good to me, but how are we gonna stop other adventurers from opening shop in our safe zone? Can we do something like a territory where we can throw away any vitors and the patrons can be safely extracted from conflict?" Asked Anne, she was not really sure about this idea because she hated outsiders and having contact with them, so she wa trying to find ways to get herself out of meeting anyone and moving others away.


    "That all can be discussedter, i was thinking about currency, we need a fee to help others trade and what not, they can use gold, but what we need is not gold or materials not even items, we have enough of everything, our goal is to establish a faction, thus we need power, and the universal currency we can use as power is either mana or men, very and favours are not my kind of thing so i want to use mana, we can disguise it as a precaution, for example we say that we are making sure that any attack using mana is impossible and therefore all physical attacks can be seen through and promptly dealt with within the territory, and as long as people are inside the territory they are drained out of mana, we can use small and negligible amounts of gold to cover our fees". With the mana syphoned from top level adventurers, Yunan could amass enough power to create a strong faction, being rich was not the only thing one needed when establishing a faction, and this way of doing things ensures a steady supply of both gold and mana.

 Chapter 289: Inner 8 year olds taking over

    Chapter 289: Inner 8 year olds taking over


    "That is all well and good, but what are you going to build with so much mana? The amounts we are talking about are easily ssified as catastrophic harbouring on apocalyptic, one tiny mistake and we could be causing the second great mana cmity in Burkan". Balin was immediately interested when the use of mana for creation was put on the table.


    Suddenly the pangolin stopped moving before it copsed, Bai''s voice was heard after the dust settled down "one monster heart ready, who wants some? Also The core in this thing is about 5 times the normal size, master smithse take a look at it, also how do we spread the message about our little outpost, if we cannot solve that, there is no need to even think about what we can make from exploiting the customers" Yunan and Balin made their way to see the oversized monster core, it was 3 meters in diameter and radiating mana like a sun, it was sent to theboratories for further examination in a safer environment.


    "I fail to see what the problem is? We have a luck goddess and a smith capable of imitating the freaking one true God, what is there to fear, do not forget that Yunan has ess to a few divinity shards, we can absolutely exploit any of these factors to gain what we need, that and we can just use the guild to spread the information, since we have a direct channel to the guild, we can just sell them the things that our patrons will try to get rid of or want to liquidate into cash, plus, who would hate a supply station this near to the hardest floors?" Lucian was squatting like a sitting good boy and recovering his breath, beside him, Leader was wiping the sweat away from his face and scratching his wolf ears when she came near them.


    "The only thing we can say for sure is it will either take so much time to establish an outpost or it will be done fast, we need to focus on stability and not speed, so we don''t want to announce it before it was finished building and especially not before all the spell work is finished, we can spread rumours about the current construction but that would just be stupid if it ends up taking too long to build, anyway that thing gives off some serious mana, the core i mean, the best theory i can think of is it was so old it was awakening forcefully" Balin interjected. Yunan nodded "there is the possibility of evolution, like my own Drogon did a few times after growing too fast in very little time, also, i think it was preparing to move to the 82nd floor, its armour was already in that level, so who knows".


    After leaving the dead body of the pangolin, Yunan teleported the big monster to the preservation room, he instructed the servants to cook something with the heart for the girls, Dustan already had started to work on barbecue slices from the heart, he was rather keen on eating the thing and enjoying it too.


    "A flying battle fortress that would appear only when we assault other factions" Yunan started to exin his vision, "that would be something neat, just the 9 of us walking up to a faction to dere war and suddenly the sky darkens and our battle fortress just bombards the ce into oblivion, a level 90 battle fortress would be best but for the express purpose of starting a faction i think a level 80 flying battle fortress would be like entering a crossbow tournament while using a scorpion ballista to shoot".


    The little boys in each of the 4 men were just tickled the right way, sparkles were shooting out of their eyes but they were doused by Anne almost immediately. "A sky fortress is well and good but how do we survive on the ground, we are talking about assaulting a faction here, we will be pulverised before we get to see what the fortress can actually do". Yunan however was not impressed, since he was the one connected to his inner child the most, he had a counter measure to ensure the protection of individual lives. "Giant, mechanical, pilotable, golems" Yunan said slowly emphasizing each word, the questioning looks he received were answered with "we are going to build giant robots and fight from inside them".


    It took a second for the 8 year old children inside each present person to understand the importance of the words being said, however when those 8 year old kids wrapped their heads around the idea, sparkles and delighted squealing filled the patch of forest where Debauchery was walking startling many monsters. Everybody loves giant robots, that is a universal truth that transcends time and space and dimensions, in all the universes in all the time-lines, giant battle suits were a dream every boy had at least one time.


    "Did you work out the schematics and the spell work?" Asked an 8 year old "how big are we talking? Twice as big or 100 times as big?" Asked another "can we make thembine into a super mega battle form? Can we?" Asked a little girl hopping from excitement "i wanna ride the first one, mine has to be the fastest and the sneakiest, i want a ninja robot". "Get in line idiot, i want mine to look like the prettiest pretty princess and it should be able to fly with angel wings". "I want mine to be so big and strong i can cause earthquakes just by stomping my feet". The demands grew more and more absurd with each 8 year old, so much so that Yunan did not know how to deal with these idiots, so, he just took a notebook and started writing down what each of them wanted, to make sure they were kept in line he would change the course of the conversation to cooler upgrades that were actually useful in a battle mech, ever since Yunan got the creation skill and the create golem spell, he was tinkering with the idea in his mind forming the groundwork for this day.

 Chapter 290: Inside the vaults

    Chapter 290: Inside the vaults


    After Yunan managed to calm the hyper active kids in everyone, they took a few minutes to rest before heading towards the next target. Debauchery was able to fight 5rge monsters by lunch time, they even managed to get their hands on some eggs that were as big as a person, they decided to go back to the 80th floor to look for the vaults they were able to extract from memory, instead of risking the parent of the eggs to hunt them down.


    Yunan had just had enough experience in the ways of battle and the huge disparity between monsters of the same biome and monster from different biomes, one battle was monotonous and can be nned to perfection, sticking to one n was the best course of action. The other type of battle was dynamic and ever changing, following one n was the worst thing to do, one had to evolve his n with each situation, sometimes with each step taken, that was why mental prowess was much needed, and even a party like Debauchery were struggling to get by at first because theycked just a small amount, someone like Yunan who was on his own would need to train his mental capacity and capabilities to the sharpest point he was capable of beforehand.


    Since battle was no longer needed, Yunan decided to focus the rest of his time in the 80th floor on creating a faction, Debauchery has only arrived in the 80s only recently and did not meet enough people to get in touch with factions, this was a great deficiency that needed to be covered before Debauchery upgraded to the 89th floor, reaching that far without a faction was something akin to going blind into a den of wolves.


    Fortunately he has sixteen captives with enough knowledge about factions, two of them were probably the survivors of an annihted faction. Yunan was able to know about the existence of warring factions from different clues, the most important being the absence of a guild post in the 80th floor even though it was a safe haven. This means that the guild risked something with the establishment of a guild post, most likely the trust from different factions. The guild had the ability to call on all adventurers to protect the outside world, and being in a stand off against the most powerful factions was not the best way to make sure they would answer when called to action.


    With that in mind, if the guild, who is the greatest faction in Tartarus happened to establish a faction in the 80th floor, they would hog all the talents and before long absorb all other factions, simply because no one in their right mind would go against a faction of that magnitude. But if the guild left those talented, strong and capable adventurers to join different factions, fight and keep their own number in check, that would help the guild very much, after all with a natural life span of multiple millennia there is bound to be a great number of adventurers stuck in the 80s because numbers alone did not help advancement. Thus having factions reduce the useless old poption who has no future and bo ability to advance further and rece them with capable adventurers was the best possible scenario.


    And after reaching the 90s, mist adventurers would leave these factions effectively keeping the factions fairly limited in power, the mighty ones who reach the 90th floor usually either retire, die or start providing their services for the guild, because in the 90s it was impossible to team up without risking the death of the whole party, therefore Yunan did not feel anything between the mighty ones that were invited to his wedding. All in all the guild would allow the factions of the 80s nurture capable adventurers and help them advance to the 90s where they do not be a threat to other adventurers, they focus on something and advance it to near perfection, ultimately bing key members for the guild once more.


    That was a trade the established factions were fine with, most of these factions were created to protect against the bitter older factions stuck without the ability to reach further, therefore most factions just avoided each other and were friendly, but some were aggressive, and these ones were the real threat, still the aggressive factions could only attack small groups and ambush those nave ones, it may happen that two factions would sh, when these wars urred there was at least one faction that was annihted and absorbed by the rest of the factions.


    Arriving at the vaults brought great joy to Dustan, the wealth here was really something, most of the materials were sent to the private dimension to be integrated into the system, as for the items they were all sent to the guild to sell and trade. Yunan was examining the contents of some storage ring when he felt a tap on his shoulder. Lucian was standing behind him with a smile "remember when i promised we get you a magic book about memory magic? consider my promise fulfilled". Lucian opened his hand to show a few rings in his palm "take them, you will like what is inside".


    Yunan gave Lucian a bear hug before he took the rings to a corner and started taking out the shelves full of books, all of them were golden books, and all of them were things Yunan did not even think he needed, he started by absorbing the ones dealing with memory magic, titles like "editing memory", "memory extraction", "true memory and false memory", " remote memory searching" and many others that dealt with the art of memory maniption.


    Among the books were other things like "precision and finesse", "mental efficiency", "detecting the hidden", "hiding from detection", "toxicology and biological warfare", "pathogens and war", "life and death by neurology". Many of these were books that dealt with obscure knowledge that was most useful in the pre-mana era, things that were extremely useful for Yunan especially with his style of fighting. These books must have been worthless to the factions because if an embezzling bastard was able to horde them, it meant he knew their worth and pretended to sell them as useless junk, as to why the guy did not learn them, it must have been about leaving them behind for someone else, that or the existence of partners, because it was hard to believe only one person could have amassed this much alone, this was probably the fortune stolen over generations from the different factions, someone was trying to create their own faction.

 Chapter 291: A mission

    Chapter 291: A mission


    Yunan shared some of the books he had with his teammates and wives, he was surprised to hear about something that he never thought about before. It was called magical memory capacity, one person could not learn too many magics, the reason being that like ordinary memory, magical memory would rece one thing with another and reallocate those useless memories to deletion or to the back of the mind, and keep the magics one uses in the front, in total Yunan did not know too many magics because they have been fused into bigger overarching categories, that and Yunan did not learn those magics himself but taught them to and used them through Dragonification, thus he did not have to allocate magical memory to anything more than the use of the magic itself, when Dragonification was fused with Yunan, it did not transfer to him fragments of magical memory, instead it fused all the magics it had learnt into big all epassing magics that would not take too much memory and could be updated by adding further magics, meaning Yunan would never run out of magical memory because he had almost all categories of magic and since his magical memory already learned how topress different magics into the same magic all these books would be alsopressed under theirprehensive tree.


    Yunan was really lucky, many have had the idea of teaching sentient items magic but growing sentient items were too few and no one even thought about absorbing such a valuable thing, a string of coincidences led to Yunan discovering a method to bypass the limits of magical memory, unfortunately it was toote for Debauchery to use it and there was no use of sharing the method with others because no one would be wasteful enough to use it, thus this new discovery was left to Tartarus to leave behind in history.


    While Debauchery were looking through the books and having Yunan learn as much of them as possible, they were found by someone who was most likely another embezzler or thief, he was enraged to find outsiders in his obviously emptied out vaults, but he stopped himself from attacking because they did not break in nor left any signs behind them, meaning that someone brought them inside or they were given the key to the ce, so it was bad if he fought with prospective helpers, but that was the only mistake he needed to make before being drained out of mana and sent to prison beside his partner.


    In total Yunan captured 4 rogues afterunch, right after making sure that everything inside the vaults was transported to the private dimension, Debauchery decided to leave for home, they did not think there would be more roguesing and if anyone came they would attack first so there was no need to stay and risk danger, besides, they had to work on the n of creating the faction, especially since Yunan was no longer in need of practical experience with being in higher floors.


    In the bath, Yunan was mulling over his newly learned magic and skills, he was thinking how to integrate them into his range and domain, especially since they could be applied at range, his mind was working at high capacity, he didn''t even notice when the rest left for dinner and only woke up from his thoughts when Reina took pity on him and told him toe to bed, the girls had another long night of study and they didn''t feel like doing so with Yunan away from them, he was their motive after all.


    During the day the girls toured the diplomatic section of the bright pce and were learning about the current job they chose to do, Yunan would have been happy of they just stayed by his side, he didn''t need them to be his diplomats but he could not tell them to drop it, so he listened as they told him about how they learned from watching and helping around the diplomatic section, their presence was weed there since they have proven to be helpful already. They learned lots and even got some homework to do to help their learning process.


    After the girls returned to their studies Yunan touched the ck Fate and asked to show his current status. The ck Fate did not answer immediately, it instead created a link between Yunan and Tartarus, a hologram of the familiar little girl who was once sitting on the knees of her father was standing in front of Yunan. The two stared at each other for a long while before the girl opened her mouth.


    "You are needed, go to Dreamscape, you will find all you need to know there, Dad does not have enough hands to handle everything, he is asking for your help, we can discuss about your outpost after you handle the situation, if you seed you will gain much more than you can think of, also Dad says to not believe what you see, Dreamscape has been warped too much since thest time the divinity of dreams has been there, hurry up and do a good job, disappointing Dad will not go unpunished".


    Yunan smiled in response "you are such a good girl, i will do my best, say hi to your Dad for me, i will head out as soon as i read my status, thanks for taking the time to talk to me face to face, on another note your dissatisfied expression is so cute pouting looks good on you, maybe you can show me your smile someday" there was a harrumph before the girl disappeared from his sight, well it was the first time that Hephaestus asked for help on something rted to the divine, while Yunan has been getting all kinds of help all the time, he wanted to look at his status when Fortuna materialised in a skimpy night-dress and threw herself at Yunan "we need your help" Yunan hugged her and did not let her finish by saying "i was about to head out to Dreamscape just now, but since you are here, i have another thought in mind".

 Chapter 292: Troubleshooting Dreamscape

    Chapter 292: Troubleshooting Dreamscape


    After making love to his lucky wife Yunan stood up and left kisses for his other wives, he then walked towards the back-yard mountain climbing towards the peak where the spiritual cave was sitting in serenity. During his walk, Yunan was looking at his own status, he thought long about the magical memory limit and decided to keep the rest of the space he has free, learning anything more would just be useless as he already has enough to make his way through the dungeon unhindered.


    Name: Yunan the wise prowler


    Title: Lucky bastard


    Attributes : Strength: 17k, Constitution: 17k, Dexterity: 17k, Wisdom: 17k. (k=kilo=1000).


    Skills:bat mastery: grand master. heavenly smithing: level 80, appraisal: level 90, ranging: level 70, multi-wielding, multi-casting, lucky cover, tactician, leader, schr, invulnerable body, true sight, voice control, sound mastery, cooking, cleaning, therapeutic massage, traceless casting, mapping, regeneration, climbing, water breathing, flying, draconic presence, magical body, elemental body, aerodynamic, hidden(upgraded), absorption, shapeshift, detection(upgraded), metallurgy, beast taming, toxicology(upgraded), pathology, navigation, puppetry, weaving, enhanced senses, riding, artist, assassination.


    Spells : healing, all attribute buff, all attribute debuff, toxin flush, pyrokinesis, automated looting, negative status effect application and removal, teleport, spatial shift, spatial lock, cryokinesis, electrokinesis, aerokinesis, geokinesis, spell break, elemental coating, mana syphon, maelstrom, camouge, invisibility, Illusion, extra sensory perception, hallowed light, twistedher, divination, shape, raise undead, summon, memory maniption, biological creation.


    Pets: Drogon, Ignis, Sapphira.


    Armour: Dragonification, level: 80.


    The status did not look too much different from thest one, and there were so many omitted information, most likely because ck Fate was being stingy, it didn''t even add in the new bloodline nor the perfect divinity Yunan received, still Yunan knew himself better than to need to know his status, he wanted to confirm the thing about his magical memory upgrading existing magic instead of upying new space like it is with everyone else, and the fact that the new magics he learned concerning the creation of toxins, viruses and other types of biological materials were listed as a one entity called biological creation.


    Also having 17 thousand in all four stats must be from the help of Drogon, a bloodline like the phoenix should be skewed towards wisdom and the disparity would have been too big if he had topensate for it himself, he thanked Drogon for his consideration in his mind, he should repay the Dragon somehow, maybe help it evolve into its next phase would be a good thing for the dragon.


    Standing at the entrance of the cave and bathing in the spring of spiritual energy seeping out of the cave Yunan stopped thinking about unrted things and focused on the task at hand, he walked inside slowly trying not to subject himself to too much pressure very fast, however the pressure he felt was not only suppressing him, it was also nurturing him. Thanks to the phoenix bloodline and the spirituality it entailed, Yunan could convert spiritual pressure into bodily growth, the higher the pressure the better the results.


    Walking to the room deepest in the cave Yunan did not feel much hindrance, he could also feel the dream divinity reacting to alleviate the pressure he was feeling, it even felt good being in the room, it was like being inside a warm bath, not indulging too much in the good feeling Yunany down on the simple bed and focused his mind on the dream divinity, once he established a connection hemanded it to take him to Dreamscape, momentster Yunan was standing outside a wooden cabin, on his right was a small flower garden and on his left two old trees with a hammock swinging between them. Surrounding the garden was a white picket fence, and beyond it was a turmoil of monsters and beings throwing attacks at each other, it was a melee with no winner in sight.


    The amounts of emotional energy was rampant and it was making the beings living in Dreamscape going berserk, this surge of emotions was the cause of the problem, the levels of the energy was too high for the ordinary being with each type of emotional energy affecting the opposite kind of being and making them act in a way to help consume or decrease the energy in any way possible.


    The downside to this thing is that for the next few years, the poption of Burkan will suffer from the effects of insomnia, being unable to sleep and enter Dreamscape would make their lives harder resulting in much more paperwork for the gods to deal with, other than that, this surge of energy can be seen as a good thing, it helps bnce the power of emotions in Dreamscape and influence the lives of the people of Burkan to a better emotional state and stability.


    Once inside Dreamscape the dream divinity gave Yunan what he needed to do, there were to choices, first, he could conquer the beings that are affected by the energy surge making it so that they would calm down after their numbers are reduced, secin, he could absorb the surging emotional energy to create a divinity, that would also cause the created divinity to absorb the rampaging monsters, effectively dealing with two problems facing Dreamscape at once.


    Yunan chose the second choice, he told the dream divinity to absorb the rampaging energy and refine it before feeding it to the other shards in his sea of soul, as a perfect divinity, the dream divinity could not grow more powerful by absorbing such low level energy, it needs pure faith power from those who literally worshipped dreams, and not too many beings did that in the current age.


    While waiting for the absorption to finish Yunan decided to tend to the garden and the cabin, he took his time to clean, water, and fertilize the nts, since he was in Dreamscape everything he could think of was part of someone''s dream therefore ready for him to use at anytime, after he finished cleaning the cabin and was airing it, he found Ignis outside the cabin looking at him in a weird way. He wanted to ask her how she got in but was surprised at what he could feel from her. She had epted him as master fully, and was now angrily staring at him as if she wanted to deny the situation. "Why did youe to this ce without telling me, i am your master, do you understand".

 Chapter 293: Playing with the pets

    Chapter 293: ying with the pets


    "Ignis, what are you doing here? This ce is dangerous, i thought you were with Sapphira touring the awakened ind" Yunan did not really care about how Ignis tried to warp their rtionship, she was his pet and he would not go against her when it was something as harmless as her ying the tsundere, he was more concerned about her safety, he was protected by the power of the dream divinity while she was not.


    "I felt your souling to this ce and i was worried about you, even Drogon is getting worried, we are bound by soul, how dare you make us worry about you, if anything happens to take over your soul we are going to be in so much danger!" although she was scolding Yunan, he could only feel that she was relieved he was safe and was not pulled here during a sleeping encounter. She pped her wings and in a whoosh of mes she turned into a beautiful teen in red robes and stuck close to Yunan''s arm.


    "Worry not sweetie, i am here on a job, besides no denizen of Dreamscape can harm me, i have the origin in my sea of soul, so i am going to grab this berserk energy and clean up before heading back, also it''s good that you came to keep mepany, next time i will bring you out for fun, just you and me" Yunan gently brushed Ignis''s fiery red hair and tried to calm her down, he could tell her mood much better now that she had fully epted him as her master, just like Drogon, they could now feel each other.


    Yunan''s words and mood had the intended effect of helping the phoenix calm down and rx a little bit. Not long after the two of them calmed down and were still exploring the new bond they had a dragonborn showed up standing beside them, ck and scarlet, strong physique and well toned body, a spiky tail and unfurled skin wings. "Congrattions" said Drogon before sitting with his back leaning on Yunan.


    "So this is Dreamscape, huh, it was easier reaching here than Birdie made it sound, i only had to follow your soul beacon" Drogon''s voice was deep and soothing, since he did not talk much using his voice Yunan almost forgot what his best friend sounded like. "Don''t call her Birdie when you are with other people, only us three should know about her special nickname, she is your sister now" Yunan chose to forgo the story about reaching this ce and instead make the two of them get along.


    "Yes, yes, anyway, should we go fight those monsters there?" Drogon was not really willing to fight at this moment but he still asked, he didn''t know why Yunan was here, even if he dide willingly. "No, there is no need for that, this is the first time all three of us have been together, let''s enjoy the moment instead".


    Before long both of thepanions were talking andughing with Yunan. Among the things they talked about was how much of a soft hearted kid was Ignis. "Listen here, me taking you as master was because i panicked trying to save your life, i still hold the lofty position of a magnificent phoenix, you hear? I am a ss above you, especially with your dirty dragon bloodline". Ignis was waving her hands and making as grand of a show she could make to impress her twopanions.


    "Yes mistress" said the two boys watching her performance "you are the loftiest Birdie in the universe and we are nothing but humble servants" the three of themughed and yed around at the idea of Ignis being their Queen, she made them walk silly and dance like morons, she even rode Yunan like a horse made his crawl around the garden.


    One thing that Yunan could feel from both hispanions was the having fun, Drogon had yed with Yunan and his friends for years, Ignis was just a newborn, she only had Sapphira And Drogon to y with, her daddy was very busy and the girls yed with her only when she sought them out, on the other hand Drogon had not had any y time at all for a very long time, his best quality time with Yunan was when the two were alone in the dungeon fighting their way among hordes of monsters.


    Yunan was thinking about how to deal with this problem, if hispanions were not having as much fun as they should it meant he was doing a big mistake, therefore for now he tried to y with them as much as possible and chat about this and that, they were currently in the awakened ind and they were like celebrities there, thest dragon, thest phoenix and a non awakened monster, it was a great experience for both parties, it gave Yunan somefort that hispanions were not having a bad time.


    Suddenly the shape of a man with a serpent for a crown the man was dressed impably and although he did not announce himself he stopped outside the white picket fence "i thought it was strange to hearughter in this ce, where is the old man? He has not been here for a while, look at how disorderly did the ce get". There was nothing threatening about the man, and Yunan de not really know what was going on, but he could tell the man was not going to approach unless invited inside, thankfully Yunan was not nave, there would be no chance that someone ordinary would not gasp watching a dragonborn and a teen and a human ying around in the turbulent and dangerous Dreamscape.


    "The old man told me toe by and tend for the garden, he''s been busy, can you tell me your name so that i can tell the old man about you, he mighte visit his neighbour if he knew you were still around" without responded the man melted into the background with a dissatisfied look on his face, really Yunan should not believe what he sees.

 Chapter 294: That is the wrong way

    Chapter 294: That is the wrong way


    "Who was that?" Asked Ignis after the man disappeared, she didn''t like to see Yunan twisting facts and sound like he was lying, so she directed her hatred on the man because she thought he was the root of the problem. Yunan thought for a moment before answering "probably someone who actually knows the old man, that or it was someone who wanted to get his hands on the divinity of the old man". The conclusion wasn''t hard to reach especially from the annoyed look the man left with, either way Yunan knew it was safest to stay within the picket fence.


    The three continued to y for a while but were still conscious about the possible danger that lurked around this ce. After spending a few exhausting hours, three took a rest by the hammock, Yunan, sleepless as he was decided to practice a long forgotten book in his possession, Apotheosis, the contents of the book were not something Yunan could have practiced, ordinarily that is, however, now, at this moment, Yunan was in a world practically made from the power of emotions, so Yunan decided to try and refine that power but instead of condensing a new shard of divinity he could use it to strengthen himself and his pets or the other shards of divinity.


    ording to the book and its author Apophis, emotions were raw energy tainted by the nature of emotion, that power was something the creator god himself bestowed upon sentient beings, the power to shape destiny and fate. The raw unprocessed power of emotions was too overwhelming that is why it is hard to refine it from inside one'' self, the only option was the ambient power spread out and diluted by applying good or evil intent on it.


    Good emotions are easy to absorb, they require a firm heart and a mind with a conscious, as for evil emotions, they were the simplest and easiest to absorb, there was no requirement to absorb them, thus one who has a mild nature can absorb both, yet most just focus on one or the other, faith users focus on the positive emotion of belief and the evildoers focus on the various negative emotions, which leads to the next problem those who focus on faith lose the ability to use the negative emotions and those who focus on evil lose the ability to absorb positive emotions, and with absolute good and absolute eviles a warped sense of justice that can not be left to roam the world freely.


    To get past this problem one must absorb both sides of the figurative coin equally, if one could absorb them simultaneously, it would be preferred, thus, one can escape the influence of the absorbed emotions on themselves. Yunan followed the instructions in the book and slowly started to absorb bits of emotional energy from the surrounding area, it went on for so long since he started meditation and his pets had woke up from their naps but did not disturb him.


    When Yunan opened his eyes after absorbing the first bits of energy he was told the two pets should return to their bodies, they were not originally from here and did not have a dream divinity, they could stay this long without harm because they were connected to Yunan''s soul itself, that connection protected them for as long as they stayed but they did not want to push it to its limits, it was best toe backter than risk any danger now, Yunan sent away his pets and then started to read the second volume of the book.


    It was about refining the gathered energy and using it to empower the body and the mind, creating the shard required great control that can only be acquired through endless practice, and Yunan was only thinking about using the energy to strengthen himself and had no intention to create a divinity, therefore, there were no downsides for him to take his time learning to purify the power of emotions. After reading intently for a few more hours he closed the book and started to refine the bit of emotional energy he had collected, he took his sweet time applying the purification steps to ensure that no mistake was possible.


    "That is the wrong way to do it, too slow, toote and too small". Those words sounded as soon as Yunan finished the purification process, he had yet to absorb the purified energy when he heard those words. Strangely the same man with a snake for a crown had returned, this time there was no annoyance in his tone or his eyes.


    "And you know that because..?" Asked Yunan, the man was right, Yunan was taking his sweet time, he was not doing anything wrong but the process itself should have been different, he should perform the gathering, the purification and absorption at the same time, Yunan did separated the steps to make sure he had a basic grasp on the methods before doing it the correct way.


    "You are using my own technique, i thought that damnedest Yggdrasil destroyed all the records i left behind when she painted me as a demon, still, i would have to say for a beginner like you to go this far is quite the achievement" said the man before jumping above the picket fence andnding on the hammock in a trained fashion. When the man got close, Yunan could feel the divinity inside him, after some thought, he exined himself.


    "This is my first time trying your technique, demon Apophis, i am trying to get a feel for each process and seed in performing it without a hitch, then i would try to perform everything at once only when i know i can perform all three perfectly". Yunan closed his eyes and started to absorb the refined energy stored inside him. Apophis nodded his head and started swinging in his hammock, leaving Yunan alone, he did not want to disrupt the boy who was using his own self-made technique.

 Chapter 295: Returning home

    Chapter 295: Returning home


    After Yunan finished absorbing the energy he felt himself gain a bit of nourishment, it was just a trace, but it was enough to be noticeable, Yunan understood how someone like the Pope could live so long and be so strong with only the power of faith, just a sliver of the power of emotion had granted him a noticeable upgrade, even if it was minute, it was a lotpared to the original amount.


    "So you now understand why Yggdrasil did not want my books and notes to spread after i became an ascended, this kind of power needed regtion and strict standards to be taught, even if i left it behind it was too hard to use it to form divinity, at best people could only do bodily enhancement" the man kept swinging nonchntly before saying something that took Yunan by surprise. "You lied to me, boy"


    "Sorry about that, but as you can tell, i am too weak to defend myself, i have to take precautions" Yunan responded softly, the man beside him did not seem like the demon he was portrayed as but still there was no harm in being cautious about talking to strangers, being calm and not running away from this location was already better than what many would do.


    "How did he die? Did you kill him?" Apophis asked this time with a bit of hostility in his voice, however Yunan stayed calm and collected "nope, the man himself was already dead, the one i met was his will that was left behind on the divinity, the poor thing was too old and desired death for so long, he begged me to kill him, even if he was just a will, he voluntarily helped me absorb his divinity before perishing away, i owe him my life in fact".


    "Sounds like the old man, even the creator forgot his name, he was very old and very kind, we shared food and drink and quality talk in this little garden, it''s sad to see someone like him disappear from the world, i bet the creator would be sad when he returns" after saying those words Apophis took out a ss and a bottle of wine and started drinking in sorrow. Yunan left the man to grieve for his friend and continued his practice on the way to refine and absorb emotions, he did not fear this elf anymore, after all was said and done, to Apophis, Yunan was a thief who stole his friends divinity and was now sitting in his friends house like he owned the ce.


    Apophis drank himself to sleep while Yunan slowly but surely increased his efficiency with the emotional energy and was currently purifying energy for the shards of divinity he had on him, the dream divinity was working at a faster pace as long as Yunan was absorbing and refining the energy, after what felt like a year Yunan finally finished clearing the berserk emotional energy and with it the dream beings that were fighting like maniacs.


    Yunan was curious as to why he didn''t get a visit from his pets after so long and was about to call to them when he felt a withered hand on his shoulder, behind his back a drunken voice asked a question "why do you not ascend? You have so many shards, a full divinity, you even had the chance to start making another one but you did not, why?". Yunan sighed and stood up from his spot, he left a bottle of Lava wine besides the hammock before looking around and saying as he intended to leave.


    "I feel that the time for my ascension has not arrived yet, so i am holding back until then, and until that moment arrived, i would just live in the best way i can". Yunan then told the dream divinity to send him back home, he looked back at the pitiful Apophis, waving at him as he disappeared from Dreamscape and returned to the simple bed in the spiritual cave. After exiting the cave he found Fortuna sitting at the door of the cave, she did not want to get too close in fear that her divinity might interfere with his. She almost jumped at Yunan when she noticed himing out of the cave.


    "Miss me already?" Yunan patted Luna on her back in aforting manner "did i make you wait too long? No need to worry, i won''t die as long as you find it in you to miss me every time we separate". The two left each other''s embrace after a moment. Luna had relief on her face as she inspected Yunan from head to toe " these were the longest three days of my life, i was so worried about you, what took you so long? even Hephaestus was getting restless about itt".


    "You forget that i am still a mere mortal even with the divinity i have on me, so it took a bit more time to clean up, did you get contact from Drogon or Ignis?". "That reminds me, they said not to worry since you were safe and what not, but who was that guy who anyway?". While talking Yunan returned with Luna to the living room and slumped on the extrafort couch, the rest were sitting there and ying a board game and didn''t even look back at him.


    "That was Apophis, strangely he was friends with the god of dreams, the one that created Dreamscape, anyway, he was just asking about his old friend, broke his heart when he heard about how his friend died and how the will wanted to die too, he even helped me out secretly when i was learning to digest the power of faith". Yunan knew without a doubt that he could not achieve such degree of practical experience with the power of emotions from his own talent, especially the exponential growth he saw when he linked himself with the dream divinity.


    "You met Apophis?" Fae was grabbing Yunan by the cor immediately after she heard his words "where is he, what did he look like? Is he as insane and demonic as Yggdrasil says he is?"

 Chapter 296: We will sell them safety

    Chapter 296: We will sell them safety


    "He was still drunk from grieving about his friend, he looked so pitiful, otherwise he looked as ordinary as Luna or Hephaestus, from what i could understand, he was spared from the effects of the power of emotions because he absorbed both good and bad, if you absorb only good things like faith you get afflicted as much as you would when absorbing the bad things like regrets or greed or lust, the individual emotions brand you, but if you take anything you get your hands on nothing happens to you". Yunan exin in detail his meeting and the words he exchanged with Apophis and assured Fae that the elf was just like any other ascended.


    It was not strange for Fae to act so aggressively about something, but the fact was that she showed too much interest in the well being of a demon, or who should be a demonic being to her and her people, still if Fae was adamant on giving back her mortal body to Yggdrasil, she needed the help of demons and not angels to grow beyond the reach of Yggdrasil. After Yunan and Fae ended their conversation the girls had him talk about the cabin and garden surrounded by the white picket fence, and why did he promise Ignis to go there alone with her.


    The girls even quoted Ignis being in a form of a teen-ager to proim cheating and demand forpensation. "It has nothing to do with Ignis being a looker in her teen-ager form" Yunan tried to exin "it has to do with her affinity for the spiritual and the fact that she can power up just by being inside Dreamscape, also Drogon looked like this in his spirit form" Yunan took the liberty to draw Drogon in all his draconic glory as a dragonborn.


    It was Drogon who snitched on him, so it stood to chance that he would retaliate, and now that the girls knew how sexy Drogon looked, both pets would be up for cuddles by everyone, especially Reina who had a secret crush on Yunan''s dragonborn form and wished he looked like that all the time. Easing the hearts of his wives was never hard for Yunan, he knew all this fuss was because they too wanted to visit the cabin and have some "steamy dreams" in their sleep, how lucky Yunan was if his wives loved him so much they had wet dreams about him as they shared the same bed. The lucky bastard. Thrice repeated.


    Once the jealousy questionnaire was over Yunan was dragged by Lucian and was taken to an office like room, there were stacks of paper on the office and Leader was filling up more while sitting there, Yunan walked behind her chair and stood there reading over her shoulder, she was writing down all the things they need to start to establish a faction. Debauchery were not as rich as the rest of the 80th floor adventurers mostly due to theirvish lifestyle and using their materials for crafting and repair, that and they liked leaving the dungeon for extended periods of time after finding themselves stuck at some point.


    Yunan took a piece of paper from the stack on the right and scanned it, he found most the things named there were useless to their goal and were just things that all factions were collecting or using as bait to recruit more adventurers to their side. Yunan kept scanning the paperwork and found it was just a big list of anything and everything that came to mind about the making and sustenance of a faction and even if most of those were not useful For Yunan and Debauchery, they were good things to keep in mind about other factions.


    Leader finished inputting thest line and looked with a broken heart at the disorderly stack after Yunan went through it, she wanted to say something but stopped when she saw Yunan shaking his head, so she waited for him to finish reading thest piece of paper on the office before smiling at him "your thoughts? It seems we taught you so well you even shake your head at our handy work".


    Yunan just smiled and moved Leader, sat in her ce then sat her on his knee and started talking "that exhaustive list is not bad, in fact it is very good for any other faction, the only exception is we don''t wish to recruit yet, and we are not rich enough to make this a reality" he then picked up a random paper and started pointing out things "we do not require a defensible territory because we can make our territory a nobat zone, and from the range we will use, hitting our building will be as challenging as ambushing our guests, therefore, we need mana supply instead of a dedicated hunting ground to bring in the cash, this bit here is usefulter down the line, diplomats are needed but not very necessary in the beginning, mostly because no one would treat us seriously until we use our superior fire power to bring a faction or three to their knees. Also we do not need to be keeping the faction in order, my hands off approach to ruling by appointing capable people would give us the opportunity to focus on leveling up while our faction takes in trade and new recruits".


    The two talked for a long time about the vision they had for the faction they wanted to create, they agreed on only one thing, the faction does not keep them from leveling up but disagreed on almost everything else. Yunan had to use thezy Debauchery logic to make his point across and convince Leader. The school of ruling taught bydy Mito was a great help to their current aspirations. "All we need to do is build a trade outpost, one that offers unique service and is ced next to the stairs, we will sell safety to all factions"

 Chapter 297: Starting the ground work

    Chapter 297: Starting the ground work


    "But safety is not enough for coaxing them into trading with us" replied Lucian "the stairs have a safe zone attached to them, it is small but it is a safe zone nheless, if we are selling them safety to reach the staircase we need a very big territory". Yunan shook his head coolly. "That should not be the case, we can make our territory like a big circle that includes the stairs and can offer safety as long as one was inside it, they can not attack or be attacked, what we will take will be mana, a renewable resource that is useless when walking in a safe location, we can even im that the mana will be used to operate the massive formation that powered the safety zone, as for coaxing them to trade with us, we can start selling two items immediately, ess to the spiritual cave for training wisdom and most spirit type magic and skills, as well as Lava wine, an instant boost to all stats that trumps the unbnced points given by eating monsters"


    Lucian and Leader nodded at the same time, using their direct channel with the guild to promote Lava wine was the best idea, have Martin serve his guests with Lava wine and watch as the product be so requested that even Martin himself will be targeted to sell it at great sums of money, when the Lava wine is treated the same as the heavenly jewellery made from starry pearls they could start offering to sell at a moderate pace, they can sell out the lowest quality and slowly create a client base that will be willing to trade anything to get their hands on the best stuff.


    As for the spiritual cave, using the guild to advertise it was not a good idea, they needed someone with a high spirituality value that would find obvious benefits from just passing by the cave, let alone cultivate inside it, for that Pope Markus was the best advertisement possible, if a guy like him talked about using a spiritual cave, there will be millions trying to find it and billions willing to spend all their money to be in the same ce, the exclusivity trick will again make the useless cave sitting in the mountain unused, the most requested location for spiritual cultivation.


    When the trading post opens up in the future, it will sell only two items, the exchange rate is fixed and it would prioritize the trade with materials and fresh monster carcasses instead of gold coins, as for the safety zone it will be an eptable sacrifice to get hands on any of the two products. Lastly the trading post can be used as a holding safe or auction house, people can deposit things and name a price for it, if someone wants it, he has to provide something of equal value or the things that the seller desires, the trading post will notify the seller when their item is sold and cash in a small sum in return for using the trade post.


    Yunan wanted the trade post to be a gate for them to acquire materials whenever possible, they can collect materials that are sold for gold and use these to trade for the other materials and so on and so forth until they umted enough to officially create a faction, the trade post will be using the genie and its control interface to interact with the customers, the receptionist position will be just to show the clientele how to operate the interface, or help them use it, the receptionist will also note down the person''s name and their faction, if a client wants to, we can offer the amunication ring that can directly absorb mana from them at all times while providing them with news about their items and the possibility to do business without needing to go to the trading post. Membership rings will be costly and they would require mana injections to work, that is what they would be told, while in reality it works a spy tool as long as they are in proximity to mana.


    The genie was already capable of operating awork of billions ofmunication rings and sort them out without much troubleshooting, but Yunan still told the genie to upgrade itself with all the mana in storage, it was better to be safe than sorry, what Yunan was afraid of was someone using the rings to take control of the genie and effectively take away everything from Yunan, the genie was made by Hephaestus and it was no easy feat to take over, but, as long as there was a possibility, it was best to take precautions.


    With the ground work and the objective set up, it was time to work on the details, Martin was more than happy to promote Lava wine as long as he could drink it in every meeting, and Markus was willing to give Yunan the Pope position when he first arrived at the cave, after 3 days inside he was so happy to rmend this ce to all his friends and colleagues. Why would the two act this way? Because the products were worth it, Martin would forever be the person to suck up to for a swig of Lava wine and the Pope would forever be thanked as the one who introduced the cave of miracles to the rest of the world, how could these two people not rmend something that was of undeniable quality and had tangible benefits from the first interaction.


    Martin and Markus were never happier in their lives to be acquainted with a group like Debauchery, who else would grant such useful things to you just because you are friends with them, both knew the term friend of Debauchery was iparable with anything simr in the whole world, no one gave people things of this massive value without looking for a way to get something back or cheat you out of something else.

 Chapter 298: Starting with the interface

    Chapter 298: Starting with the interface


    It did not take a week before Martin was being begged for a supply of the Lava wine, especially from those guests who had been to Yunan and Reina''s wedding, the wine that was served there had made a big impression the guests, as much as the meat and the other dishes, but it was thought to be a brew especially made for the asion and could not be obtained again, many breweries worked something like that, a one asion only brew. The thing that was most celebrated about the Lava wine was the fact it could be used instead of food, drink, anti-venom and more, it was not alcoholic nor did it make one drunk on it, it was a great boost to stats and even helped the mental health of the drinker, it was the philosopher''s stone of drinks, nothing but benefits.


    As for the spiritual cave, Pope Markus was granted the power to invite any 10 people, only once, to experience the spiritual cave and as expected, he too was bombarded with requests to visit the ce and cultivate there, his response was the same that Martin gave, "the owner of these items are not willing to spend their time making Lava wine and setting up scheduling for the spiritual cave, one person per week can use the spiritual cave and only the failed and low quality Lava wine would be sold, as for the good stuff, only one bottle per week would be auctioned".


    With this kind of exclusivity, news were spread faster and got even more exaggerated by the day, the one bottle of Lava wine that was sold would rake in bundles of money, as for the low quality stuff, it was sold even faster because the price was not determined by auction but by a number of materials, the materials changed with each bottle and the variety of materials requested as a price made people think that this Lava wine was originally meant to be an all healing panacea, but ended in a failure that resulted in such a wonderful creation.


    During the time when the Lava wine and the spiritual cave were gaining poprity Yunan was with Debauchery interrogating the prisoners about all the information they knew regarding any and all factions they knew about, some cooperated in a bid to improve the state of their imprisonment, some refused to cooperate and were coerced to, memory magic was not perfect, it can work when the subject was limited, but for a wordsearch like faction in the brain of an adventurer, it was much less effective and one would need to sift through too many memories that may or may not be useful at all.


    The two girls that Yunan took a liking to were extremely helpful, they offered information without asking for anything in return, they were just grateful for being fed good food, the warm bed and the functioning bathroom, unlike the rest of the captives who ate food that not even animals would approach, had to sleep on the cold hard ground with only their clothes to provide protection, and the had to sleep in the same space where they pissed and shat.


    Yunan wasn''t even conflicting about the different kinds of treatment he offered his captives, some deserved being kind to and some did not, especially those who were stronger and unted that without this prison Yunan was not even worth a look. Arrogance was something beaten out of Yunan, it was a tool to fool someone and not something to feel himself, thus he gave those a bit more pain when he interrogated them.


    When Yunan extracted all the information he could get out from them, he and Debauchery delivered them to the guild to deal with, Yunan was not stupid enough to hand them intact, so he made sure they had broken bones, dislocations that were near impossible to treat and made sure to share some of the information he got with the guild, that way they would be used by the guild in some mine or the other, no faction would wee injured adventurers especially after they spilled the beans about their old faction, there was even the possibility that their old faction would just send someone to kill them before they share even more information.


    The information itself may have been worthless but it was a warning to all the adventurers in any faction, if any leak of information was responded to with a death penalty, no one would dare to share any information no matter how small, because fearing death is stronger than fearing pain, after all, death was the end, pain would stop one day or the other, be healed or recovered from, but death could not be healed, it was a one time thing only.


    After sending away most of the captives Yunan set up a new lodging for his newest servants, he didn''t make them use the very mark and only just employed them with a small sry with housing and food included. The two females were given new names and were taught the basics of using the interface that the genie designed for the trading post, it was rather simple, it had three tabs: buy, sell and auction, each tab would show a different screen, the buy tab would show three items, membership rings, Lava wine and one week in the spiritual cave. The sell function had two tabs: deposit and retrieve, auction had the same tabs as the sell function with one extra tab named bidding.


    The membership rings were extremely expensive, they allowed one to know about the situation of their items in real-time, to deposit and retrieve items directly without need to go to the trading post, they also could be used to reserve certain items when they appear and get notified about them, the rings could serve as amunication system between two members who are trading, of course allmunication would be monitored to prevent the misuse of the rings. Although the rings would be expensive each faction would buy at least one to do secure business, like selling items that were too risky to sell before, and that would also make the ordinary members think about selling their own items at the trading post if their bosses trusted it.

 Chapter 299: I feel hurt you know

    Chapter 299: I feel hurt you know


    There were some more rules for those buying and selling, for example any items unimed after one week would be taken by the trading post, if an item does not sell after a month and the seller does not return to im, it would be taken by the house. Any auctioned items that didn''t meet the minimum price the seller asked for must be retrieved by the end of the day or it will be forfeited, items that are to be auctioned can be put in the advertising section for no more than one month, during this month if the price of the seller is met the item will be treated as sold normally, however if the item was not sold and failed to reach the requested price, it must be collected or it will be taken by the house, any item that is paid for but not imed after one week will be taken by the house.


    Rules like that were meant to stop people from using the trading post as a warehouse and leave their items there unsold and unwanted for a very long time, it was also an excuse to help clients to abandon items with questionable origins, the clients may also abandon items after they fail to sell, especially for items that would cost only gold, for those, Yunan asked for a team of bankers to be present in his private dimension to handle such transactions, and to even make matters easier for the membership ring users the ring will be the identification of the person, meaning that when a purchase is made through the membership rings one does not have to go to the guild bank to make a transaction, it would be done automatically, granted that the buyer had enough money in their ount.


    Yunan was even thinking about introducing a surrogate currency that can be bought using gold and can be used in the trading post''s internal banking system, this virtual currency can be converted to gold or materials at anytime, but that would be left for a few years down the line, it was an innovative solution that required trust and respect to be functional, very much so since it was a mary system that had real tangible value, even if the currency was not.


    As for the location where trading can be done, it was a newly created section in the private diment, that offers anonymity and privacy for the two sellers, there were rooms that can amodate any type of transaction, there were even bankers on demand waiting to serve at any time. The buyers and sellers would only need to stand in a cubicle to be teleported to a room where they can privately browse or showcase their items, when two rooms make a deal they are joined and the trade can be performed. These rooms were free to use with only mana syphoned from the upiers to guarantee no magical harm, any harm done to the room would cklist the user for sure.


    For those who do not wish to enter any room and only require gold payment, they can be served directly by the two receptionists, the same for those who wish to withdraw items and those who only wish to deposit as fast as possible. Another rule was that any and all items that will be traded in the trade post must be inside a storage ring, the item can only be verified by the buyer or in the case of the house, the genie will do that.


    Counterfeit goods were strictly prohibited unless stated as counterfeit goods in the description of the item, any item discovered to be fake after it was deposited will put a mark on the client, 3 marks and the client is cklisted for ever, all items that are proven to be counterfeits that escaped the notice of the system will be fully reimbursed and the seller will be cklisted immediately.


    cklisted clients can appeal to the house to lift the status from them, otherwise they will be removed automatically from the cklist after 10 years, all clients that fail to seed in appealing to remove this status three time will be permanently banned from the system. All sessful appeals will afford the client an apology from the house and apensation depending on the the harm done to the client.


    There were many rules to be observed when trading in the post and can be viewed anytime from the terminal being used, the most important rules were exined to the clients by the two receptionists, who had the ability to waive off some rules if they could serve clients faster that way, however, most rules were not to be waived or bypassed at any moment, the risk was permanent ban instead of cklisting.


    It took Yunan and his team a week to write these rules and make the system work as intended, all that was left was to secure a circr zone with a radius of 1000 meter, this center of this zone would be less that 50 meters away from the staircase leading up and down the dungeon floors, turn the zone into a nobat zone and make it a syphon mana zone, building the location of the post was the easiest part, the only needed the genie to design a ce for them and just take it outter on and ce it in the safe zone.


    The negotiations with Hephaestus about the safe zone did notst long and ended fast as well, Tartarus asked for 30% of the mana gathered by the post as a total in order to provide the safe zone and make an announcement for all adventurers who reached the 80th floor, even those retired in the outside world, Yunan was about to agree but Hephaestus lowered the amount to 10% and to be allowed use of the spiritual cave and Lava wine whenever he wanted. Yunan looked at him like he was missing something and said "who stopped you from going to the cave or from drinking Lava wine? You are our friend, thosee with the title, the food, the parties, tye drinks, the use of this dimension and anything inside it, you are wee to at anytime, i feel hurt you know"

 Chapter 300: Open for business

    Chapter 300: Open for business


    With the deal finalized, Yunan had to pay 10% of the collected mana to Tartarus and she will provide both a safe no fighting zone and an announcement for the trade post to anyone who reached the 80th floor, Hephaestus was invited to attend the nning and design meetings for the sky fortress and the battle robots, two notions that grabbed the man''s attention almost immediately. If it wasn''t for the fact that the materials would be provided overtime by Yunan and co, he would have stole the idea of the project and started working on it.


    3 days before the end of the month, the trading post named lucky''s trading, was set up in ce, the safe zone initiated and the receptionist were in position, the announcement rang at dawn and every adventurers that passed by the 80th floor inside or outside the dungeon heard it. "Announcement, an explorer has sessfully created a trading outpost on the 80th floor, please be advised that the trading outpost is ready to start business and has a 1km radius safe zone, the outpost is situated near the staircase leading to the next or the previous floors. Announcement  " the announcement rang three times making the factions turn upside down trying to figure out the hows and whats of the situation.


    The trading post in itself wasn''t a problem, the problem was that it was announced, had a safe zone attached to it and came out of nowhere, there should have been some chatter within the intelligencemunity if something this big was being prepared, worst of all, who ever made that trading post was able to stay in the shadows long enough to work unhindered, gain a safe zone and even knew how to announce it using the Dungeon itself, thatst bit alone would be worth a few factions.


    Worst of it all, they were able to stay anonymous, and survive long enough in the 80s without a faction, determine the heavy need for a safe trading location, and make the damnable thing without being spotted or noticed at all. It infuriating for many of the factions having to send men there to check on the ce, and know about it, and worst of all unless they could negate the safe zone, they can never take over or destroy the ce, meaning even if the factions all chose to not use the trading post, the loose adventurers would use it, the individual adventurers would be using it too because most factions did not have a trade system that can change the carcasses of monsters with herbs or minerals, and vice versa, trading items was a much better prospect than selling them to the faction and wait in line to buy a needed material.


    What was more infuriating for the far seers was that they will be watching this little outpost grow safely into a rivaling faction, even if they banned their members from trading there, thanks to the safe zone, this can not be enforced, they had nothing they could do about it, and that sense of helplessness was worse than death to these factions who had the ability to do as they please. Meanwhile Yunan and Leader were sitting in the control room of the private dimension watching how would the events unfold.


    It did not take longer than 10 minutes before the first person came by asking questions, within the first 30 minutes over 100 items were traded sessfully, the inquisitive scouts had already returned with the information required, including the explosive news about the avability of the two most exclusive items requested on the, not to mention the ease of use and revolutionary interface, the ce was assumed to be using so much mana that it was farming living monsters, the information about the safe zone needing to empty out the mana from all clients in order to enforce the no fighting was epted almost immediately, to inhibit aggression one had to inject their own mana into the body, that would fail if one had any mana in their core.


    It was a very problematic for the factions when the rates of the trading post were brought back, any adventurer could afford the meager sum of money that the post asked for in return for using its services, it was like this new ce was working on quantity not quality, and the response to the rules about abandoned items gave some Leader a very bad feeling. If any item can be dropped off and left there to be taken by the house, how many people are going to fall under this rule and lose their items, its was hard to know how long a hunt will take when one joined a faction, and the option to extend the deadline was not open yet, that makes it so much harder for adventurers to abandon their items because they can take a pause from a hunt, get their items and return within an hour or even less.


    Order will be lost in many a faction, and many more will have to make scheduled hunts depending on the deadlines of their members, life was going to change to revolve around this ce and in the near future, it was going to take a lot of from these factions to get to the bottom of this and change their routines to suit the way this trading post worked.


    Yunan and Leader smiled at each other, although Yunan did not forsee how far the disturbances from this small stone would reach but Leader knew all too well, but she didn''t want to tell him about it, he had to see for himself the extent of his own actions, her smile wasing from a ce of pride and joy, her own pupil had grown up and was able to create waves on her level, what else could she do but smile at him with all her heart, this kid truly made her heart flutter to see what woulde out next from gis sleeves.

 Chapter 301: Are you kidding me?

    Chapter 301: Are you kidding me?


    Bad days had a stink to them, or believed Matthew, and today stank worst in hisst decade, he was up a whole hour before daybreak, his bunker mate was still snoring softly while he clung to his body pillow. Matthew left the room and found the mess room in the hideout, his faction had just established this ce to pile up even more resources and he was sent here as part of the lookouts to find all the valuable materials in this area, it was still unimednd even though they had built the base and started to survey thend.


    He asked for the breakfast of champions, meat, meat, and more meat, all piled up in a dish too small for the amount of food put on it. Matthew knew clearly why the small dishes, they helped reduce the amount of wastage as well as conserve a few coins for the kitchen staff to pilfer, everyone knew even the bosses did, but no one wanted to be on a feud with a chef, deadly bastards the lot of them, if they don''t like you they spit in your beer, if they hate you, eating shit is not out of the question but if they really have it in for you, death will be the best possible scenario for you.


    Just after finishing his breakfast and stepping out of the mess hall to take a puff of smoke, he dropped the cigarette from his lips when the announcement rang in his ear, the second time the lighter slipped from his finger and made a nging in the silent morning, the third announcement rang as he was running to themunication room in a hurry to contact his supervisor, he was not alone, he bumped into a few of his fellow surveyors along the way, there was no need for words, from the haste they showed, there was nothing to talk about, everyone had heard the same thing.


    The supervisor was shouting back at the person on the other side of themunication device "who bloody cares!" Said the supervisor while spittle hurld onto the faces of the ones who barged in first "we have had no information regarding this, why are you freaking asking me? We survey thend you listen to the bloody whispers, that was the arrangement". The shouting matchsted for a while, there was evidently more than one person contacted to the formation because a me game took ce for a long hour before the big boss himself ordered one person from every intelligence agency to go check this new ce built by the arse who thought it fun to ruin the steady life of others.


    Matthew could feel the stink of the day intensify when his supervisor was looking at him like a dead man walking, so without saying much he went to his room and changed his clothes and set out to the 80th floor. There was no need to hear the supervisor, that look was always there when they had to send someone behind enemy lines to scout the geographical topography, most never returned, therefore it became like a death sentence to receive such a look on such a stinky day.


    He was going to the den of the enemy and ask them to grant him information as well as answer his questions, a bad idea if he ever heard one but what else could he do, he had a wife and kid he needed to provide for and these things payed most. Before leaving he did not forget to go by the vault and pick up somethings to trade with, the guys guarding the vault gave him a salute and muttered a prayer for his soul, he was grateful for them, they were grateful for his sacrifice too, so grateful in fact they didn''t record what he took with him.


    He arrived about an hourter, there were so many people lining up to learn about the system and to use it that he only got his chance around midday, as soon as he stepped 5to the free booth he was greeted with a smiling face "hello and wee to lucky''s trading post,how can i help you sir". It was odd, very odd, not even the guild would receive someone who looked like him enthusiastically, he was dirty, unshaven and had nothing on him that was worth much, even the storage ring he had was of low quality.


    "I would like information" said Matthew, he was not sure how the receptionist would answer his queries so he did not hold much hope, to his surprise the female brought out a ring and put it on her finger, she showed him how to use it and then told him to head to the cubicle for a private room, where he can read at leisure and discover the best tradingpany in the 80th floor, the patience the receptionist showed, when she was exining the interface to him, was beyond what he could believe a clerk would do, but he still followed the instructions and got into the cubicle.


    A sudden change of scenery and he was in apletely sealed room with no doors or windows, the was a chair and a small tea table and nothing more. ording to the instructions of the ring he sat on the chair and put his storage ring on the table, it was scanned and then there was a new screen before himbeled my items, he then immersed himself in learning the system, trying to trade, meeting interested parties, making a gold transfer, and so on and so forth.


    The ce was exactly what it promised to be a trading post with remarkable spell work and even better capabilities, suddenly he had an idea, there was a button named help on the main interface so he pressed it, when the small fairy hologram popped up instead of asking questions he said " i would like to meet the manager of the post". After a second another hologram of a genie showed up and greeted him like any manager would. "good day to you dear client, i am the manager of the trading post, you may refer to me as genie, how may i help you?".


    "Are you kidding me?", "I most certainly am not" responded the genie "this out post is runpletely by artificial intelligent constructs like myself, it is to eliminate the possibility of human error as much as possible, the only humans in this facility are those working for the bank and handle mary transactions between ounts, other then the receptionist outside we have no humans working in this trade post".

 Chapter 302: New home

    Chapter 302: New home


    "You have got to be kidding me, there is no way that some prodigious character capable of creating such a thing is unknown in the world, if that was not bad enough he made something thisplex without a hint leaking to the outside world" Matthew forgot he was talking to a genie and started rambling. The genie, however, almost gave him a heart attack. " I would find it very troublesome of information about this project leaked out when it was only conceived less 26 days ago".


    "Bullshit" was the only answer that Matthew coulde up with to such a im "there is no way a project this big could possibly be conceived, nned, executed within a freaking one short month, that is absolutely unbelievable, just the amount of time needed to umte the required materials is beyond one measly month, not to speak about the nning time, the spell work is a different beast all together, that is the reality of it".


    "Sir, this is the 1457th time i am hearing the same argument today and i have given the same answer, if your faction is not capable of doing it, why is it others are unable to, and just to give you some perspective, most of that month was organising the humans, the project would have been finished much earlier otherwise, my owner is both spontaneous and capable, if your boss is not capable enough do not project his shorings on my owner."


    Matthewughed for while, if he could not hear about a prodigy climbing the dungeon, if such a prodigy had dodged recognition of all factions and made his way down like a shooting star, it made sense no information about him made it this far down. That was one thing but toe to this ce and just open up a trading post is certainly a deration of war against all factions, it was meant to disrupt the lives and sow dissent and discord, this faction was safe while the others were not, he could attack and then retreat to safety, in a prolonged war, he would win without recruiting a sing adventurer.


    "Is you boss recruiting? Any position is fine, even a ve should be preferable to my current job, i can even offer my wife and kid too" Matthew asked a random question and did not even think there would be a response to it. He was wrong. "My owner does not usually seek things like servants or ves, the receptionists for example were a meeting of fate, but if there''s an open recruitment it will be announced publicly".


    Feeling a lot betterpared to when he went in, Matthew sent the genie away and started working on trading his items and tye items he brought from his faction, after less than an hour he left the trading post and looked at the bigger line of people waiting to try this new service. He took his time returning, he was sure the same information he came to was already sent back to the headquarters, however he knew something more valuable that no one else knew about, the power behind the trading post is invisible, capable and ready to expand in the future, that and the fact that this man was not the typical genius, he wasn''t unting his talent and was surely ying a game that he did not intend to win nor to lose.


    When he reached the base and started to repeat the same thing the others already reported he was cut off, he did even get the chance to talk about the notions he picked up from the words of the genie, since he was not given the chance to finish he decided to keep those notions to himself, if the day came and he got his chance to join this uing faction, he would have a better idea what to expect than most.


    Like always a party was going on in Yunan''s private dimension, the excuse this time was the sessfulunch of the trading post and the overwhelming amount of profit gained from it. the outpost would be open from sunrise to sunset because only two receptionists were currently on the job, and frankly keeping people waiting gave more value to the new trading post. Therefore, the new girls were now sitting at the table with their jaws open as far as they could drop, they never thought it possible to see people acting this way while eating, the girls were really baffled at the way these people did things, the weak guy was the one calling the shots, the one called Leader was just a decorative Leader, the youngdies all fluttered around the weak leader, there were people referred to as pope and guild leader, there was an ordinary woman called mon, there were two enigmatic people that did not talk much and just enjoyed the show, it was a miracle these people were the ones to rattle all factions by simply building a trading post.


    Still this faction felt much better, there was nothing to be afraid of, the brute orc and the vulgar dwarf made too many passes at the girls but took the no each time, they returned after each no but they never went overboard. Over thest month they had watched both of them use the prisoners in the cells, but they always asked first. It was a fresh feeling being part of this faction, they could be home here, at least they can act like themselves, they had dignity in this ce and that was worth much more than safety, especially for those two who had scarified their dignity too many times for the sake of safety.

 Chapter 303: In the eyes of outsiders

    Chapter 303: In the eyes of outsiders


    With the new trade post all set up and functional, gaining reputation was inevitable for Yunan who has been rather unknown in the world of adventurers, he may be recognised as the kid who was trained under the unscrupulous Debauchery party, but nothing else has been known about him, even his legends began to fade in the earliest floors because he had taken the route of obscurity, most adventurers wouldn''t.


    He was recently known as the guy who could invite some of the most powerful people in the world to his wedding, that and being able to get a kitsune to be his wife made him a bit special, but there was nothing to make him famous. That did not go for his items and his deeds. His armour was still as iconic in the 30s and 40s, it signified unparalleled power, his pearl based jewellery were the object of greed far and wide, and most recently, his wine and cultivation cave have taken the world by storm.


    If one were to mention that he also has the only living phoenix and the only living dragon as his pets, having the ck Fate as his guide, and being a friend to two ascended, and acquainted with a few more, things would change dramatically for Yunan, thankfully, his luck was good enough to keep him safe in the folds of obscurity. Martin and Markus had a thing for the boy who grew so big, so fast, he was still the student of Debauchery but he could as well act as the de facto leader and get them into trouble here and there, this guy was an enigma, simply because there did not seem to be a limit to what he could do.


    The two girls watched with fascination how their new employer showed love, gentleness, flirting, teasing, feigned anger and annoyance, joy and happiness, all these kinds of emotions were present at the rtively small table, there were about 20 people in total around this table and they disyed a wide range of characters and mood swings. Leader was reserved and quiet, she would tease sometimes but with her ever present smile you wouldn''t know if it was teasing or a true invitation, Fae was a child in the meat suit of an adult, she was all over the ce, beating Dustan one second and having him kiss Anne the next, Balin was an open pervert who did seem to know that there are women who he must not approach.


    Dustan was a big fool that you would underestimate until he gets a punch in, Lucian liked to sit beside Leader and chat with her secretly when no one was looking, Bai was too loud for a rogue, boisterous andzy at the same time, Anne was naked and for some reason no one seemed to notice, the old man they called Hephaestus, as if, was just taking in the sight of whatever this party had turned into, the cougar they called Luna was openly seducing the guy in the middle of his harem, having a great time with a big smile on her face. The one called pope, the one called guild leader and the one called mom were in their own world chatting andmenting on the mess unfolding before them.


    Mom was an ordinary human, pope was a strong man for his age, guild leader surely was the third strongest in the room, the cougar and her partner were too strong for the girls to fathom so they assumed them to be the backup in the high 90s, and the rest were too weak to build a faction.


    The harem was another part the two girls did not really understand, their new employer can be consideredely but not good looking, he had a well developed body, the girls were obviously ranked, but somehow it seemed that was just not quite true. Kitty, a literal cat girl was the closest to Yunan but was not highest in the ranking, that position went to the one sitting reserved beside Yunan, Reina, she was the official wife and the rest of the girls had a sort of respect for her, not even Balin was able to act perverse with her, but he did try to steal her for cuddles multiple times.


    Sarah sat close but not too close, she was trying to get a better position but didn''t make it obvious, Lili was just there clinging to Yunan from his back and having him feed her, Ophelia was sitting between the naked Anne and the harem seemingly uninterested in the affairs of the harem but still responded favourably when Yunan flirted with her.


    Then the most unreadable person in the room, their employer, Yunan, he was too simple and frank that the two girls did not believe it, he kept a harem and did not seem to favour one over the other, he wasn''t very careful with his words to anyone in the table, he had deep love for the one he called mom, and treated everyone else in the room like they mattered to him, sharing punches, throwing food, passing the drink around, it was truly something they would never understand, how this weak guy was able to form a faction so close to each other, where power level did not matter, only feelings did.


    Suddenly there was a cat, a winged lizard, a burning parrot and a very rare type of bird from the 81st floor, so rare in fact it was mistaken for the boss many times. As soon as the four pets showed up there was a big roar and people started snatching them from hand to hand, the little bird was finally taken by Mom, and was enjoying a nice grooming, the cat was taken by Luna who now looked like a weird catdy, the burning parrot was scorching Dustan''s ugly mug while the winged lizard was imed by Leader.


    Even the pets were as exotic as the masters, before long they switched hands and paid their respect to the elderly in the group, that was not the most unbelievable part, the freaking cat talked like any other person around the table and told stories about how the trip to awakened ind went, like hell, who in their right mind would believe that an awakened could be petted like anymon cat, questions were about to be asked and answered tonight.

 Chapter 304: A series of fortunate events

    Chapter 304: A series of fortunate events


    "Sir, can i ask a question?" The mosquito like voice of the reclusive one, newly named Lana, was barely heard before the table went quiet, everyone was listening to her with fragile interest. "Yes Lana, is there something on your mind?" The man she now served did not seem to count her among the servants.


    "The cat is talking" Lana said inly, Yunan answer came immediately: "her name is Sapphira, she should have been an ambassador from the ind of the awakened but ended up degrading to a house cat, she just returned from a trip there with the other pets, although that little bird over there is still wild and untamed, he is no our pet" Yunan finished with a smile. Rana next to her scoffed at Yunan and said "next you will tell us the winged lizard is a dragon, the ming parrot is a phoenix, that oldie over there is the god is smiths and the other two were the true Pope and the adventurer''s guild leader".


    "if you figured it out yourself there is no need to make such a sarcastic tone behind the words". Yunan was not really careful about his words so Fae took over for him, "Yeah, is it that unbelievable that this ce has a few legendary beings sitting at the same table?" Fae herself had it hard to believe she met Fortuna and Hephaestus at first, but one mealter and she acted like she met ascended all the time.


    "Please do not insult my intelligence" said Lana "Hephaestus is a god, why would he be sitting with some woman who was more focused on flirting with another guy across the table, even if we ept that, do you want me to believe the Pope of the light church and the guild leader can juste by for a spontaneous dinner party? Meeting any one of them is near impossible and you tell me they just sit there like they were at home, please" Lana rolled her eyes at the people around them. (Thatst "please" should be read as the sassy response puh-leaze)


    "Why not? Markus is father to both Leader and Lili so this ce is like home, Martin likes hanging out with Markus so hees by almost as often, the one you called some woman is my beloved, you know her as Lady luck, or Fortuna the goddess of luck, she was the first one in my harem, Hephaestus is usually working all the time so we get him toe and spend quality time with us, what is so hard to believe about that".


    "All of it" both Lana and Rana shouted back, when Yunan shrugged, Lana asked once more "how long did you know these people, how can they treat this ce like home". a look of reminiscence filled Yunan''s face and a smile sprouted there.


    "First one i met was mom, she is the olderdy sitting with the untamed bird, she was the sister that adopted me in the orphanage, then there was Bai, he was to be my teacher in the academy, next was Leader and subsequently the rest of them, i came up with the name of Debauchery in fact, then there was Leol, he is not here now but he can be considered my first friend hees by to have fun every now and then, he was my roommate."


    Yunan hugged Reina and Lili closer "then these two babes joined us as students, at first Reina was so spoiled and weak we had to take her to the bath with us, and Lili was like "no boys allowed to bath with girls" she soon turned around and shared our baths too, we met Lili just after meeting Martin and Markus for the first time, there was a doomsday cult and we kinda stumbled on it, Debauchery ended up dealing with it, we met Drogon around that time too, i remember how those old dudes tossed away some important artifact when they figured out he was a dragon". Martin and Markusughed as memories returned to them.


    "To be exact, we met Drogon before Lili and the oldies, found him while clearing up a kobold nest, about two or three months after we entered the academy". Balin interjected "back when we did not know how truly lucky you were, we were there to test your metal and found just the necessary materials to upgrade the only piece of gear that was truly yours". Dustan add in. Lucian continued "that night we ended up promising him to teach him our best and most exclusive techniques, looking back at it now, we could have paid much less for those 30 something attribute points".


    "I was so lucky then, getting a star heart, upgrading it to spirit heart, hatching a lucky Valyrian dragon, in the span of months, good times, anyway i met Fortuna and had a date with her just before being kidnapped by some people who belonged to the cult we were dismembering, and then we started dating while i was climbing solo, even though i had a party, that was only the students of Debauchery, the party still exists but our levels are too far off, so we can only meet here".


    "I met Hephaestus while adventuring, very early in the dungeon, on the 14th floor, then he built this ce for me in the 20th floor, around a monthter i met Anne and Ophelia, she became my doctor then joined the harem after it was created, Sarah was my first escort client, we met around the 25th floor, and then she became a member around a year or twoter, Sapphira came around that time too, Ignis i met less than 3 months ago, as for the untamed bird, it was making trouble for my teachers so I helped it take revenge"


    Theresa looked at the bird in her palm enjoying a grooming "this little thing is a wild untamed monster? Look at how obedient it is, you guys must have been really bad with him". Yunan chose to nod and not exin, the story was tooplicated and mom would reprimand him for stabbing his teachers in the back under his roof


    Lana and Rana were dumbfounded, this whole mess was just big series of fortunate events? You get to the academy and meet a green teacher who invites his whole party to teach you, then you meet your first and second wives as fellow students because they also wanted to be taught by the best avable, you get a dragon, meet the two most influential people in the because you stumbled upon a cult identally, you start dating a goddess by sheer luck, meet the god of smiths by an ident. With this kind of luck why are you still not king of the world?.

 Chapter 305: We follow like pets

    Chapter 305: We follow like pets


    Lana looked around the table and saw that no one seemed to find falsehood in the tale Yunan just spoke so she asked "how lucky are you?". That brought amotion of responses. "Luckier than all of usbined", "we have gained some rather good things just by second hand luck". "calling him a god of luck is an understatement", "the guy has such good luck even gods lose miserably when they go against him".


    "gods, as in multiple, you went against multiple gods, hold on, let me get this straight, you not only met multiple gods, you fought against them and won hard enough they did not retaliate?". Lana was dumbfounded, her quiet temperament was forgotten at the increasingly absurd ims. "i know right! This is unbelievable, he even got a lot shards of divinity aspensation, heck, he even got a full divinity because he stumbled on a cave and buried some dead bones" Balin vented some frustrating too, making Rana choke on her own breath.


    "They attacked me, am i supposed to let them go, if it wasn''t for that minx Venus trying to separate me and my beloved wives, none of that would happen" Yunan tried to defend himself but was rebutted with a counter he could not deny from Fae "you just had to refuse her advances, if you justid with her nothing would even start". Yunan was frustrated so he said " i was dating Luna seriously then, i could not cheat on her". Leader brought up the counter argument this time, she said "it''s not like she would have been against it, she was actively trying to get you a harem ever since your second date"


    "That is true, it would have been more fun if we had a goddess of love in the harem" confirmed Fortuna with her wicked gaze. "Dont put bad ideas in her head, now she might even introduce some goddesses to me, i like my harem as it is, no further additions needed"." I don''t care how many women you have, I want grandchildren to y with before i die"," listen, even your mom says the more the better, so what is the point of having too few"," no, no, no! We are not making my harem bigger, end of discussion". "AAh how youthful, they make me miss my young reckless self, those were some good times". "Shut up oldie you should focus on raising the current daughter you have, if she turns out as bad as we did you will get a pummelling, it has been a while since ist punched you".


    And suddenly the conversation drifted from how Lucky Yunan was to other things as fast as lighting, luckily he wasn''t very willing to continue talking about the subject, in the midst of the chaos of conversation Lana and Rana looked at each other withplicated looks, they seriously did not know what to believe or to reject, they whispered to each other "what do you think about him?", "he should be fine to work and live under him", "what about his friends", "they won''t do us any harm as long as we don''t cross him, I don''t know why, but that is the feeling i get", "we should ask why they treat him like a king". "fine, i suppose they might be feeling a bit honest today".


    Rana coughed twice to get some attention "since you guys are feeling honest and answered our questions i have one more thing i want to know, why do you guys treat him so well, i can expect that from lovers but you guys just do what he wants unconditionally". There was silence in the room and the first to answer was Hephaestus.


    "For me it''s the sincere and honest personality, even if he wanted something for himself, many other will benefit from it, i benefited much from just fulfilling his requests". Fortuna followed "yeah, his sincere way of behaving is too rare in this world, luckily i was always the one demanding and benefiting from him, but i would say that as long as he can keep me entertained, i can do anything for him".


    Leader summed it up for Debauchery "when we first met him, he was a kid who wanted to be a hero, in less than one year he became our hero, he is a true hero, he saves those who deserve it and punishes the wicked, but most of the time, he just cares for this big family, i don''t remember him being selfish about something ever since we met Reina, even as a child he was more concerned about the big family he was making, therefore we don''t find his orders too hard to ept, as long as he stays like this, there is nothing we can do about following him like his loyal pets, we just can not resist the charm of a family man".


    Yunan himself did not know what leader was talking about, true, he cared about his beloved most of all and thought about making everyone happy and getting strong enough to keep them all safe, he was wicked and cruel, he was selfish and childish when it came to killing and torture, he does not discriminate between innocent and wicked when he was punishing those who harmed his beloved, most of all he was no hero, because he caused the death of many and only saved a fraction, his moral code did not have anything to do with morality, it worked on his whims.


    Finally Lana and Rana found the understanding they were looking for, Yunan was not bound by morality, otherwise he would not have taken interest in them from a simple "nce", he recognised loyalty and for what ever whimsical reason, he singled them out and they met his criteria for people to help, that was the scariest thing to them, as long as they fit his criteria they can be safe, but as soon as they do something that crossed a single one of his lines, they would forfeit their lives.

 Chapter 306: Revenge seekers

    Chapter 306: Revenge seekers


    Yunan, to the twodies, newly named Lana And Rana, was shining brighter than ever, he was as gentle as he was cruel, and he took them as part of the family, now that they sat on the same table, they feared him greatly with strong reverence mixed in but for some reason, they could not imagine the same man, who was torturing prisoners for any and all information, be as gentle and yful as he was, the worst part in the paradoxical man was his open mind, he treated monster, awakened, and sentient beings like they were the same.


    Treating every entity inside the house the same way feltpletely normal when Yunan did it, because he did not discriminate to begin with, people like Debauchery who were less discriminatory than others would give out the same feeling, but it would be obvious that this indiscrimination was acquired, but still eptable nheless, both the little bird and the awakened cat feltfortable at home,fortable enough to act like they were in no danger and enjoy the ce.


    The same could not be said for other people, if they show indiscrimination in public, it would be painfully obvious they were biased towards this race or that species, and that would create a whole host of problems if they were to create a haven like this one. Yunan had only one bias, his loved ones, one could immediate feel the difference between themselves and a family member when ced in this ce, Lana and Rana were rather happy to feel such bias because it meant he had no ill will against them.


    Who in this world would just take a look at a prisoner, understand their plight and just employes them to work for him, going as far as to give them a new name and have them share the same table as his family. It was the red g for something fishy for the two girls, however, after meeting Yunan and being part of this party, they understood that if Yunan had a harmful thought for them they would know it, for now Yunan only needed them to work as receptionist and gather simple information about who was using the trade post.


    The feast was cut short when Yunan was teleported to the bright pce suddenly, he was brought out to the study under the throne room, after being teleported he was told by the genie that there was a sudden invasion, and that it was leading the intruders to this ce in order to capture them faster, After all Yunan himself was a portal to the private dimension. When Yunan asked to look at the faces of the invaders he started tough suddenly, that level 40 something braggart was back but this time there was someone who looked to be strong enough to fight against Yunan.


    The genie had some authority in the bright pce but only because Yunan linked the pce to the portable dimension, it was possible to perform small things like maintenance and monitoring, but needed Yunan or another person with authority to be able to defend the bright pce, therefore when the two invaders were detected entering the vicinity of the bright pce, the genie led them immediately by opening doors and guiding the two towards the underground study room.


    The genie did the correct thing, the bright pce should be indestructible but the raucous brought up by the two trying to break the gate would bring the guards who will die miserably and causes needless casualties, also, being led inside the moment they got close to the gate meant they were detected and recognized as being no threat, giving the two a mental disadvantage before the fight even started, making their actions much more predictable and the state of their minds easier to foresee.


    Yunan did not just sit there, he too started to prepare, he changed to an obviously sleepy look with a night robe made out of silk, he took out a pot of fragrant tea as if he needed help waking up, he even told his family to continue the party because he was only making preparations for the after party, and started to act like he was doing some paperwork while waiting for his two visitors. when the two arrived they took another mental hit. The target they were here for was bored to the point he started making tea and doing paperwork, that was a grave injury to their pride, the man was evidently not even worried about getting harmed, he was wearing a night robe that could be torn by a bit of wind, and the tea kettle was still boiling.


    Yunan looked at the two as they stepped inside and watched them getting fidgety when the door closed behind them, he then fixed the level 40 braggart with a very nasty look saying "so you found out who humiliated youst time and want revenge, bravo, did you bring your mother''s new boyfriend to get you your revenge?" Yunan pped all the while showing exactly to what degree he did not even put either of them in his eyes.


    The assassin was frothing at the mouth from rage but he didn''t charge forward, he grit his teeth and started threatening Yunan in a bid to take back some of his dignity, while his helper was more concerned about finding the trap that gave Yunan his confidence. "Listen here and listen well, struggle or not, we will capture you, we will hurt you and we will make your humiliation a lesson for those who went against us, we will not only keep you living forcefully, we will let you see as your wives suffer, how we will turn them into sluts that will crave anything phallic, you will not close your eyes, you will not pass out, and you will live to be the absolute example of what happens to those who try to cross me".


    "Very good indeed, what marvelous ideas have you given me, i will make sure to fulfill them for you" Yunan pped again in the same sarcastic manner before looking at the helper. "Mister helper, i know you are here because his mother is a goody and she asked for her son to be avenged, just like any other normal man, i can rte, the thing is, you can not avenge him, you can not punch me even if i stood here and did nothing, because his mother is not worth it, so, i can open the door for you to leave, give you enough gold to buy a harem of super hot ves, and you leave this ce like nothing happened, however, if you are the kind of bitch in the bed that likes domination, well, i do not cater to your style, hence, i will make sure you live to tell about what happens when someone even thinks about hurting my family".

 Chapter 307: Unfortunate soul

    Chapter 307: Unfortunate soul


    The helper was now full of rage too, Yunan did not forget to use taunt along with voice maniption, it was sessful because both were mentally unstable from the way they were guided, that and the way Yunan acted as if he had nothing to worry from both. Blinded by rage the helper forgot his search for traps and focused on Yunan. "One punch" he said "take one punch from me and i will leave, he is yours if you survive and i can promise you that my boss will not target you again, i can even promise he would never think about revenge against you ever again, but i need you to show me your true form, i don''t want you to make excuses about being in your weakest form.


    Yunan obliged the helper and started to transform into the eldritch monstrosity he showed to the assassin back then, saying "as you wish", firstly the skin wings unfurled, then a few tentacles showed up, ws and horns and jagged haunting teeth, the skin changed into scales, ck and scarlet, finally ck mes covered Yunan turning him into a walking nightmare.


    The assassin was already crawling on his butt trying to get away, leaving behind him a trail of wet, brown and yellow excretions, the traumatic terror took over him as soon as he saw the wings unfurling, eldritch Yunan was a monstrosity by any standards of the imagination, the helper, however, was bound by rage and the taunt to realise he had fallen into a trap, so he used all his might in an explosive punch.


    The assassin was trying to ovee the terror instilled in him by eldritch Yunan, he was hoping against hope, cheering for his helper, praying that this terrifying memory would die today with Yunan but life was not that good to anyone. He watched with tearful eyes as his helperunched a volcanic punch at Yunan''s face, the momentum was awe inspiring and the strength was unparalleled but when the punch was a mere hair''s breadth away from Yunan, instead of his face turning to mush the helper vanished into thin air. The assassin felt his terror grow beyond control and then he passed out, not feeling anything as he hit that cold hard floor.


    "That was close" mumbled Yunan as the air current from the very aggressive move was sting his face, "i have never failed you before, master" responded the genie confidently, Yunan nodded and teleported the assassin to the prison as well, the man needed some harsh words and a bit of pain, Yunan cleaned up the room behind him before returning to the ongoing party, he exined that he has some new guests that demand his attention, he then sent everyone to their beds and went to sleep himself.


    Come morning He found his wives already left for whatever things they had to do while Mary was sharing his bed, out of habit he embraced her closely and kissed her forehead, like he did to every girl who shared his bedtely, simply because the moment felt so intimate and personal, it pulled the wives closer when he did it, thus it became a morning habit. "Boy, why are you being like this, do you want me to strip this early in the morning". Yunan did not answer and just held Mary for a bit longer.


    Staying still for a moment made it so Mary could not help but rx, it has been a long time since she was held for no reason, it felt rather good and nostalgic, however, she had no intention to get this treatment regrly, that would make her soft again. As if Yunan had read her mind he whispered to her "isn''t this moment worth having a few more times? My wives are rather epting of you". "Shut up or i''m gonna fall in love with you", "i''ll take my chances, i never thought that you can love me anymore than you already do" Yunan pecked her nose before breaking away saying "wanna go on a torture date with me? There was someone who threatened to turn my wives into sluts"


    The two left the bedroom soon after, with Yunan''s face full of lipstick he did not care to remove, Mary was an unfortunate soul, to Yunan that is, she was so soft and sensitive but she had been keeping up a dry persona for too long, Yunan med the event that led her to bing a solo adventurer, then founding Debauchery party closely there after, it must have been a 30 year long dry spell, but that did not matter, he promised to be her man as long as she wanted him to, and this kind of borderline flirting and kissing came with the nature of the rtionship, there was a line to never be crossed, that line did not exempt them from having intimate sensuous moments.


    As the two walked hand in hand and shoulder to shoulder, they arrived at the prison where Fae was ying with Balin a game on who could slog Dustan hardest, Lucian and Bai were betting on something, while Anne had brought Ophelia with a basket of vials that were being reordered, something about the possibility of something reacting violently and causing irreparable damage. "Wee everyone to our first torture session where the guests are part of a faction, they came here with the intention to steal away our home, i hope you go easy on them, we need to send back something, so total destruction is not okey, otherwise feel free to use these two males as much as you guys like, you might remember the female from the wedding, she has been down there long enough, so leave her to me, any questions?". "Just one" said Leader "when did you turn into an eldritch nightmare fuel?" Leader was projecting the image of eldritch Yunan from yesterday, the genie seems to have been seeking for a beatingtely.


    "I was ying at intimidation through visual arts, did not think it was that potent, still, i can transform anytime if you feel like having some tentacle action". Leader looked the faces of her party mates who were expecting her to give Yunan a big painful punch but did not do so, instead she said "i do miss that tentacle massage of yours, howe you never do me on your own, making thedy ask for it is just bad manners".

 Chapter 308: Torture dungeon

    Chapter 308: Torture dungeon


    Yunan just poked out his tongue at leader and turned away towards the assassin that has been sitting in her cell for months now, it must have been very tragic for her to witness all the things she did as well as be waiting there day and night for her fate to descend on her. Yunan was not angry at her nor did he have a grudge against her, she just fell between the cracks in the time table and was forgotten, Yunan decided to start with her while the others looked at the two avengers just a few steps away. That did not go as nned since Bai and Lucian had started a betting session, the rest of them just watched how would Yunan handle the situation.


    "Listen heress, i have other priorities and we both know what will happen of you waste my time, lying is worse, and insults are okay as long as you keep the information true and urate". Yunan decided to give the woman a chance, she was already looking like she was about to beg for anything to happen to her so she could rest easy. "What do you want to know, i will tell you anything, i also agree to any kind of treatment you think of, just don''t keep me here hanging like this".


    This response indicated she was already broken mentally, she just wanted anything to happen, no matter how shameful, painful or horrible it may be as long as it''s not just silence and solitude. "Then i need to know why did you try to kill one of my guests, anything rted to that is included, anything unrted you may keep to yourself". Yunan opened the cell and summoned a table with two chairs, one for him and one for thedy. She took the hint, sat down and started pouring her guts out. She was hired by members of the same religious service the target was from, hired to kill him and then frame the Pope as the one who instigated the attack, she failed and the man should be dead after he returns home to keep him from going against the one who hired her.


    After hearing a long winded speech that detailed everything, from her under garments on the day she was contracted to the the exact words exchanged, she was very thorough and did not include a single lie, she even highlighting anything she was uncertain about. Facing this kind of willingness to cooperate, Yunan had nothing to say so he looked at his mates and before he could say anything, he heard a soft whisper "can i chose my owner? I would be grateful". Yunan blinked before saying "that is your own right if you wish to give up your freedom, here i was just about to let you go, feel free to do whatever you want, we are done here".


    Yunan left the girl behind and turned towards his other captives, hisplexion changed from rxed to murderous with in two steps, as for the girl he left behind, there were attempts at recruiting her as the first official ve for Debauchery party, however, now that she was given the freedom to leave, the best they could get from her was an "i prefer to go home and sleep, i would rather never meet any of you ever again". The genie teleported thedy to the bright pce, there she was led by the guards to the nearest harbor where she could take a ship and leave.


    With the disappointed boys swarming over Leader in an attempt to gain a bit offort, the lot of them followed behind Yunan as he opened the newly designed torture dungeon, made especially for these two visitors, it was rather scary being inside it, let alone witnessing torture there, the idea of torturing someone in this horror setting was unsettling even for Debauchery party, they walked inside to find the two wide awake and struggling to free themselves from restraints that should not even pose and kind of resistance.


    "d to see you two awake, do you like my dungeon, very cosy and spooky, now, about extracting information from the two of you, inflicting pain on you is the point, you talking or not has no effect on the amount of pain you get, unless you lie to me, each lie is an order of magnitude of pain you need to tolerate, simple and crystal clear, these people behind me are my friends and are here to y with you too, they may be a bit over-enthusiastic but they mean you all the harm in the world, you should get along well with them, otherwise i may get angry and hurt you even more". Intimidation was applied to each word Yunan spoke, and when he was done, both were afraid to even speak up.


    "Alright, before we start i should let you know a few things" Yunan continued after getting paid "you now reside in my own personal dimension, even if you escape the dungeon, a mere thought from me will bring you back, this ce is very well made, therefore you can not teleport to the outside world without permission, and most importantly, unless you have authority your power level is reduced back to an ordinary human, therefore, i would like to see some despair on your faces, unless i will it, you will stay here until you die, with pain as your onlypanion, now who would like to be first?" after another payment and a dew dice rolls, the helper was chosen even though he tried his best to skip that position, his first torture was a bit over the top. After consulting with a list and dice, it was decided he would lose the upperyer of his skin through hellfire burning, it was not a good sight to witness a man burning, mostly because there was no death to end the screaming, because his nerve endings were scorched the man screamed for days after the fire was extinguished.

 Chapter 309: a month

    Chapter 309: a month


    Yunan and party did not linger after the mes were extinguished, only Anne and Ophelia stayed to experiment with their home made concoctions, working on regrowing ayer of skin back to ordinary without the help of mana was a very painful process, luckily they had two newly burned subject that urgently needed skin regrowth, one was given herbal baths, the other was smeared with creams, thankfully the dungeon was sound isted, otherwise no one would sleep inside the portable home.


    With some sess, and many failures, Ophelia and Anne have worked out something that uses internal mana to heal peeled off skin, in only one month, during that month, Yunan and the rest would bet on the amount of information they could get with a single use of a 5 minutes long pain suppressing spell, or an 8 hour forced sleep pill. The amounts of information started growing up after each pain relief moment or a night of peaceful sleep, the two prisoners started divulging information bit by bit, starting by lies and then transition to truths because there was nothing to get from lying.


    That month was very fruitful for Yunan who had spent it making stocking up the vaults with all kinds of Informations, technologies, items spell books, unidentified relics and anything in between, Yunan was most surprised about the sales of the membership rings when he added the option to request items from the trading post. There were more than 10 million rings sold, it didn''t take long before a new market was introduced, information, people would trade items for reliable information more often than they did for other items or gold.


    As the owner of the trading post Yunan dered that he is not responsible for any trade that includes information because the trade post had no possible way to make sure information was legitimate, but he created a member who sold information through the rings, most of this information was glimpsed directly from the rings, none of it was very private information and could be overheard through many spying ways, thus those who pretended to be information brokers soon were driven out ofpetition thanks to the smart genie. All information would be shared in a written format that can be saved on the membership ring for a limited time and with limited space. Most the customers confirmed the authenticity of the genie driven information broker through information widely avable in their factions.


    Yunan also made a deal with both Martin and Markus about providing them with materials and information in exchange for the same, these trades are made through the two men directly, instead of the main channels of the guild or the church, simply to keep people from taking precautions against their membership rings, also, the highly sensitive information was ssified by the genie to trade with faction leaders or faction strategist, but nothing too secretive or exclusive, like for example sharing something that was discussed between 3 or 4 people, however, something that 10 can be privileged to know was fair game.


    The excuse given by the genie when asked how he got such information was always "mind manipted members leaked it" it worked just fine, because that was a very usible and widely used method, the biggest gain that the trading post acquired through the endless amounts of items going in and out was the ability to judge the quality and the amount of wealth any faction had. The amount of resources freely passing through the hands of the members of a faction indicated its wealth as well as its ability to protect that wealth against internal crime.


    A faction that can not control the rate of crime would lose more than just members, they would lose the wealth they painstakingly umted, therefore it was imperative to know whichever factions were stable and which were easier to shake and those without a stable and solid foundations, thus after only one month, the trade post had its own ssification of the factions based on wealth and foundation as well how chaotic or orderly they were.


    In other news, the same month was rather scary for the wives, they have been integrating into the political system of the pearl kingdom and they have been struggling so hard, but they finally understood why political power was so hard to achieve and maintain. The political scene in a stable kingdom like the pearl was very weing when it waspared to other ces. The whole existence of the political scene in the pearl kingdom waspletely for the service of the people, the politicians were always retired elders with a good outlook on the need of the kingdom, and they did not care about making themselves more sessful as politicians, that led into a government that waspletely different, still, the political process was still as brutal, making the girls frustrated and tugging at the hair from all the near misses and failures.


    Finally they dejectedly decided to forgo politics and just focus on diplomacy to be the official representatives of Yunan as a person, helping him in the political process was too much for them, they did not have that much cunning in them, but they learned so much from that month it became much easier to switch to diplomatic rtions, after all, it was not as demanding as politics but still was enough to keep the girls busy and focused for a long while.


    With Yunan leaving the diplomatic rtions to the girls when it came to dealing with other nations and negotiation about resources and such, the girls were getting better thanks yo the help from the government and the time they spent working alongside both the official and the underground governments, thus Yunan could finally return to hunting in the dungeon, it has been so long since he stopped his journey after the incident with the phoenix legacy. Thus he left the torture and gathering information to Debauchery and the trade post to the genie, ye gave Mary the permission to make minor decisions concerning the eptance of items and other things that the the genie thought it was best to leave it to human judgement.

 Chapter 310: Back again

    Chapter 310: Back again


    Yunan returned to the 50th floor with Drogon, Sapphira and Ignis by his side, the ce felt nostalgic and familiar, since Yunan had already mapped out the floor in hisst time here, he didn''t need to linger too long and made a beeline for the boss, meanwhile he let his pets battle to get them stronger and more used to battle situations. The goal today was battle efficiency im the humanoid form each of them had. Sapphira turned into an agile weretiger scantily d in silver fur, Ignis turned into a teen wearing a ming battle suit and Drogon took on his dragonborn form, his face was less human than what would be expected, he was still obviously draconic in nature.


    Each one of them was given the 7 weapons Yunan used, two daggers, two short swords, a mace, a crossbow and a staff. While the three were trying to familiarise themselves with the weapons Yunan built armours for them each fit like an extrayer of skin, Drogon was given both heavy and light armours to try,Sapphira got herself an extremely flexible full body armour that can twist and turn better than skin, while Ignis got a magician robes and some light armor as well, Yunan made sure that both his flying pets would be able to use their wings unhindered in armor and that Sapphira would not suffer due to the inflexibility of her armor.


    Fighting against ghosts in this fashion was not easy, Yunan was using a telepathic channel to help each of them with their own shorings, Drogon was too forceful and tended to over do it, Ignis was too hasty and impatient, Sapphira on the other hand was reckless and did not rely on her mates during the fight. Making these three work together would take time which Yunan decided they should learn by doing, he acted as the healer and only interfered to heal the injuries or save a life, Sapphira was the one who was most surprised by her results, Yunan told her that recklessness worked against sentient beings that n and tend to have expectations, being reckless in such a fight would be a working idea against those who can not adapt to change of ns fast enough.


    For Debauchery, a change of ns that did not ur within 3 steps is a bitte, and they taught Yunan to adapt his ns in the same way, each step you take you have to recalcte all the various variables, each swing, each spell and each breath signified the need to to update the n, because any minor slip of attention would cause harm to oneself and their friends. Drogon was having trouble with strength control, he was used to only roasting the asional monster when Yunan had not time, this time he was using too much power because he had never used his body in a fight therefore he did not know the limits of his strength.


    Ignis suffered from impatience, she had excessive mental energy, she could not help but be restless because her body and her partners were slower than her thoughts, thus Yunan advised her to talk out loud what her ns are and act as a form of brace for the team, Sapphira would not get too reckless with a voice behind her telling her to follow the n, and Drogon would train his mental energy but having to focus on Ignis, thus he would not focus too much on using his strength, that way a form of sense about how much strength can be used will develop with time.


    It took Yunan and his pets 2 weeks to walk to the boss room, the three pets have advanced enough for Yunan to be jealous, they were on the same level of mental efficiency and battle effectiveness as well as party awareness that took Yunan his first year to reach, still he was very proud of his partners and their growth rates. Not everyone can say they have pets that can battle on the same floor and learn faster than most beings.


    During this period, Drogon took on the role of tank and swordsman, Ignis got the archer/magebination while Sapphira got the ranger and the stealthy dagger rogue, the three epted Yunan''s hard earned knowledge about each position, the way they blindly followed the correct instructions and objected to false and misleading ones brought tears to Yunan''s eyes. The three were getting along so well Yunan had to bring his wives to help them work inrge-scale parties, well asrge as a party of 9 was, still with Yunan acting as coach to correct them and give them things to think about, they were able to take down the floor boss with some struggle, but they seeded in their first boss hunt marvelously.


    What Yunan did not expect was the poprity of the battle forms the pets had among the wives, especially Drogon who really changed from a chill lizard to something so masculine, the sexy weretigress ranked in second in poprity because she was now body pillow size and ripe for cuddles,stly came Ignis, her battle form was too human, she was treated as a rival by the girls who warned her about trying to seduce her master.


    The new Valyrians spent two more weeks with ghosts before killing the boss as a group and moving to the 51st floor. They met wisps there, balls of spiritual energy tangled with mana and a physical core, they had different colours based on the type of mana they specialised in, blue was water and ice, brown for earth, red for fire, green for wind, milky white for holy, ck for dark and abyssal, yellow for lighting, there were more like purple for toxic and pink for illusion and psychic, and then dark green for nt and so many more, with colour coding it was easy to counter individual wisps but when theybined it was a different matter, it took much more coordination and management and most importantlymunication to sessfully leave this ce without too many injuries.

 Chapter 311: Finally some information

    Chapter 311: Finally some information


    The 51st floor felt a little bit toote to learn spell merging for Yunan, but then he remembered how the floors were arranged, he understood that this ce was like ast chance for those who never tried tobine magics and skills before. Fairlyte but anyter and it would be a challenge to learn these skills, mainly because how inflexible the adventurers can be without prior experience withbination attacks. It was the same for the pets Yunan had with him, although they were able to use multiple spells and skills at the same time, they never tried to use a spell to enhance another or make something happen that requires multiple spells to merge into one. Yunan himself was not good with merging spells and was better at merging skills as well as merging skills and spells.


    It was a rare chance for Yunan to gain insight on his own, therefore he worked with his party to learn, study and perfect the field of merging spells. Multi-casting was a no brainer if one wanted to reach this floor, one spell being executed and the other being prepared was the minimum limit, the lowest of the eptable low, still, our Valyrians were good at casting many spells with minimal chanting and sometimes they could forgo it, thus casting multiple spells at the same time was not hard to achieve, Yunan set a minimum limit of 5 spells cast at the same time to clear the beginner level, he dered that they must be able to merge at least two different attribute spells, creating a spell stronger than both, otherwise they would not be allowed to fight the boss.


    It took a total of 7 long months for the new Valyrians to finish mapping the floor and have every member able to cast 5 spells at the same time and merge at least two of them. During those 7 months Yunan finally got the name and address of the faction that sent the avenger duo after some serious torture, and thanks to his membership rings he found the faction and their ns. This faction has been sneaking past the guild and recruiting promising adventurers from the moment they crossed the threshold of the 20th floor. Most of those were people without organisation to lead them or their organisations stopped at the 19th floor for some reason.


    What Yunan found most unfortunate was the fact that there were some traitors in the government of the Pearl kingdom, they were the ones who leaked Yunan''s Identity as the eldritch monster, as well as how to evade the clutches of the underground government when infiltrating the Pearl. Shockingly the traitors were aiming for the wealth brought by the Pearl kingdom before Yunan bought it, now that the guild was no longer the custodial authority, the Pearl kingdom can be invaded and its regime changed due to annexing, it was then the assassin was sent in order to antagonize the government and start a rampaging tantrum, by the time Yunan returned from the dungeon it would be toote and all the defence of the kingdom is destroyed, next, when the neighbors started invading the guild would stop Yunan from fighting, there is no way the guild allowed someone in the 50s to fight a bunch ofmoners with swords and pikes. They did not believe that Yunan was able to arrive at the Pearl in such short notice and that he would just return in time for their n.


    That was nothing to Yunan who could just remove the moles and any other intruders from the Pearl, all thanks to the membership rings, the problem was that the faction sent a level 60 fighter to take the man down and restart the n with the level 40 braggart, however the fact that both were missing again was very problematic for the faction. They had severely underestimated Yunan and based on how Debauchery did things they were expecting a call from Debauchery any time now, probably after they finish making the two people suffer endlessly.


    With this grave news Yunan started working with Balin on the two projects he promised them, a floating battle fortress and giant battle mechs, additionally Yunan sent the level 60 fighter back outside to his faction, he twisted the memories of the man to make things a bit challenging for the faction. Yunan made it so that when someone read the memories of the fighter they would find out the secret that Yunan was an awakened monster not a human like he looks, and Debauchery knew fully well, the torture in the memories would give anyone nightmares,stly, he changed the ability to take away someone''s umted power from the dungeon from the ability of the torture dungeon to an ability Yunan himself had.


    Thus when the level 60 fighter returned and started spouting nonsensical statements, the faction would use memory magic to confirm, with the idea that memory maniption is impossible to hide, and when the leaders of the faction witness the absolute horror Yunan is capable of, as well as the abilities he showed, they would hunker down and sell that information, effectively making Yunan a hot topic as well as a no touch target. It would be bad if he had the ability to permanently erase all the progress gained from the dungeon, even suppressing it was too much for the factions that relied on that power.


    The news were almost immediately spread to every faction in the 80s and even beyond that, since there were people from the 90sing up to trade for the seemingly unmatched resources the trading outpost had, especially for the pure metal pearls, the enchanted pearls and rare herbs, since the guild was the only supplier for two of those three things, the trading outpost be a hot spot because those in the lower floors preferred to barter instead of using gold, many of these mighty ones immediately asked for proof about Yunan being an awakened as well as his impossible ability, sadly, the memories were deemed faulty because no level 60 fighter could survive 7 months of the terror present in the memories.

 Chapter 312: Useful Ignis

    Chapter 312: Useful Ignis


    Leaving aside the fact that Yunan was being ssified as a threat by some factions, and a victim of some kind of twisted prank or plot. Debauchery were very proud of his work in both forging memory and ensuring the survival of his targets during a very brutal torture session thatsted months on end. One of the things that made the information circling around even though they were nothing but rumours that the genie was getting paid to spread here and there.


    Business was booming to a point where the mana gathered by syphoning stealthily from millions of adventurers was used up to the veryst drop on expanding the vaults and the space inside the portable home, even the genie was not getting enough to upgrade as much as it wanted, if it was not for Yunan who was draining mana on the 51st floor perhaps the portable home would be at a deficit, thankfully the 51st floor housed a few mana beings that were not included in the monster list. Generating mana was now bing a priority for Yunan, who was working on a veryrge project that required lots and lots of mana.


    Defeating the 51st floor boss turned out to be easier than to learn about merging spells, a simple skill that required a lot of mental energy to execute and even much more efficient mana maniption, thankfully, everyone in the new Valyrians was able to use mana maniption on a master and grandmaster level, Yunan being at sage level helped the others tremendously by simplifying the process and method for them. His luck was still regenerating after the stunt he pulled on Debauchery some years ago, and thanks to the infectious luck, all his party members got something nice from killing the boss.


    The boss was a five coloured mass of mana, to sessfully defend against it, they needed to use spells strengthened by merging, they did not use any aggressive spells in the first 5 times they fought it, it was a training opportunity that their teachers would punish them if they did not use it, it was funny how they looked when taking turns at withstanding each attack by the boss until it just ran out of mana and died, being who they were, Yunan had to open the chest and give out the things that were needed, then if nothing was needed, the rest would be sent to the vaults to sit until it was time to use it.


    Ignis made her greatest contribution by discovering a path for the ectosm to be of use, she and Yunan were absorbing it thanks to their innate affinity with spiritual energy, after discussing with Ophelia and some trial and error, Ignis and Ophelia managed to create two items, one was a solution that helps restore mental energy and relieve mental exhaustion, the second item was a mana generator based on the ectosm, one had to add a monster core and the ectosm would defuse mana from the core, since the monster cores were a natural resource that will never dry out as long as the dungeon exists, Yunan decided to make as many of them as he needed, mostly because the cores were in abundance inside the vaults and very few people cared about them, that gave Yunan and idea.


    Yunan felt like an idiot, if he was selling information, why couldn''t he buy mana, especially when people were not using their mana at all, apensation of points to spend in exchange for items or gold would make introducing the new virtual currency much easier. What Yunan was amazed about was how cheap mana was to buy, a container that can store about half as much mana as any run-of-the-mill adventurer had, was worth less than ten beads of metal pearls, that same amount could be used to nurture a few million metal pearls, the cost to profit ratio was almost non-existent, and Yunan made use of this immediately.


    A new functionality was added to the mana rings, donate mana, anyone at anytime can activate this function to gain some points, a notification would then be sent to the members when they had enough points to spend on some merchandise, the response was overwhelming, all the mana shortage was covered and dealt with almost immediately, the genie started upgrading itself as soon as possible as well as improve the mana efficiency by reducing the spending on things that can be manually done by servants, as well as remove some of the costs by changing the priority of mana consumption, for example the corpses that have yet to be eaten after all this time were to be either disposed of as Lava wine or to be sold as cheap items in return for mana.


    As for the gains from the bosses it included the first book rted to the phoenix legacy, it was called "dream invasion", it allowed Ignis to make the person under the effect daydream if they were awake, effectively reducing theirbat ability by influencing their daydreaming, or use the dream world to invade the mind of its target when they sleep and gain information by recreating scenarios and scenes to make the target divulge information willingly.


    Ignis was so happy with that book that she was all over Yunan like a puppy rubbing on him for even more luck, that bought her a sitting with the wives and the talk about the birds and the bees, Drogon and Sapphira each got a book that talked about ascension for their respective species, eventually both books were disyed on the golden library, where golden books that could be read multiple times were stored for the use of every person in the portable home, those were being treated as literature by mother Theresa who was having her retirement in the house.


    Mother Theresa who had been getting on with the years was now the most pampered person in the portable home, she even had herself new pets, the fist sized little feisty bird brought back its wife and built a nest in the back garden, the birds spent their time hovering over mother Theresa because how kindly she was, even taking the initiative to bring her out to the back garden for a stroll daily, otherwise they just chirped about on her shoulders as she read from the golden library, she liked the style of quiet days and boisterous evenings, but she knew her time was close.

 Chapter 313: Turning 40

    Chapter 313: Turning 40


    After dealing with the 51st floor, Yunan continued to take his wives and pets to the dungeon, spending their days training and evolving and their evening rxing and having fun, the 52nd floor was full to the brim by a type of spiritual jellyfish, there were too many of them, they were harmless and only made it hard for the adventurers to pass through the floor, even killing these would not cause a reaction, ording to what Sarah read from the guild introduction, the boss of this ce was the only thing that would retaliate when attacked and it could order all the jellyfish-like being to attack as well. The spiritual jellyfish were called soulnterns.


    ording to some myth, the souls of the dead who can not return to the cycle of reincarnation would be preserved innterns and be jellyfish, only to be consumed by other creatures to eat away at the grudges keeping them from reincarnation, each time the jellyfish was eaten the soul would lose a bit of what was tethering it to the world, when that link is either fulfilled or eaten away the soul in the jellyfishnterns would return to the cycle of reincarnation.


    The boss of that floor was called thentern keeper, it was basically an amalgamation of empty soulnterns, the boss spawned them at varying intervals, some were brighter than the others while some were especially colourful, Yunan found out that the brighter ones contained more mana and left much more ectosm behind while the colourful ones were basically mana containers that had more mana then the boss of the wisps.


    In this floor, while he was trying to finish mapping the floor, Yunan was able to gather enough mana to fill all the containers they had saved up as well as start a new brand ofva wine that waspletely based on ectosm, this brand had the highest consumption from all the types of potions sold by the trading outpost, simply because it not only helped with the regain and rejuvenation of mental energy, it worked as a great catalyst for those training in spiritual arts, add the fact that it did not spoil and there were people buying it like it was extra lifespan.


    Most of those who bought this new potion were actually those who were buying time slots in the spiritual cave, add in the fact that the lotus fruits that spawned from this wine could add Wisdom point without restriction, that made Yunan richer by another order of magnitude, still all these items were sold as limited items, when anyone asked why such items were limited, the response was always the same, "it''s boring to keep selling the same items". The smart ones understood it had to do with the location of the faction leader and the dumb ones thought it was a marketing scheme so that these items would cost even more after they were discontinued.


    Little did anyone know that Yunan had stockpiles ten timesrger than the amounts that were sold, particrly the ones that were sold were the defective fruits or the oldestyer of wine, with the current stocks, Yunan would be able to stop selling them officially through the outpost and start selling them as the guy who saw iting and stockpiled things that did not spoil. There were many customers that demanded lotus fruits that had exclusively constitution, dexterity or strength in them, the response was, if we identally make them, they will be avable at the shop.


    Yunan was very sure that it was impossible to find monsters that had only one affinity like these ghosts, therefore he didn''t even attempt to create a wine and fruit lines for each attribute, it was just a waste of time, but he did not shy away from dual attribute wines and fruits. Fruits that could add more were a bit more exclusive to members who had a certain threshold of exchange within the trading outpost, those guys who traded all the worthless stuff they had were not very happy about this treatment but who would listen to them, even if they wanted to stop using the trading outpost it was already toote, 65% of adventurers below the 80th floor were using it, thus, it was futile to try to escape the clutches of the system, especially since the quality check system gave all the users the ease of mind thates with certainty of never being cheated.


    2 years and 3 floorster, Yunan celebrated his 40th birthday with his friends and family, it has be a habit for these people to celebrate each decade of life that was happy and healthy and prosperous, even the few dark points in each chapter were covered by all the growth and beauty and riches that filled the lives of Yunan and his family, this year would be a busy one, Leol, muscles, Lili, kitty, Reina, Yunan, Drogon, Ophelia all had celebrations nned, they could not however get the birthdays of Debauchery because that would be asking both Leader and Fae how old they were, a very bad idea, too dangerous for a celebration.


    Yunan did not look a day older than twenty years old, he looked like what you expect a pampered teenager from a rich family to look like: soft skin, a gentle andzy gaze, a smile on his face at all times, he looked the part of a well mannered, well educated young master, thanks mostly to histest conquest in the dungeon: the banshee floor. Other than the usual effects of the ectosm, them being beautiful vengeful maidens added a touch of beauty to whoever used that ectosm, something that Fae fed to her white pet slime, that slime was a king now, as big as a king-size bed and Fae did leave its side when at home, "toofy" she would mumble as she floated inside it while it moved her around the house, with only her head visible.


    As any other profit minded people, Ophelia turned that slime into a balsam and with the help of her fellow wives hunted the banshees to extinction, permanent beauty added with each application was too good to be true, but for any woman out there, beauty and youth were things they could never have enough of. Even Fortuna, an ageless beautiful goddess went nuts when she saw its effects, she even started selling it for shards of divinity to other goddesses who were more than happy to pay without negotiation.

 Chapter 314: Selling beauty

    Chapter 314: Selling beauty


    Thanks to this little invention Reina got herself shards of kindness and support, Lili got herself a few shards of bravery, Ophelia got a few shards rted to medicine and fertility, Kitty refused shards of loyalty and dedication, while sarah did not get anything that could ept her, most likely because she did not know her calling herself, there some affinity with the shards of family andmunity but nothing epted her directly. Debauchery members chose to not take any shards of divinity for the same reason, they wanted their divinity to be born inside them, they did not ept that the shards were just shards that helped them link to the domain, otherwise they had no further effect on the host, ording to leader, they did not know what their divinity would be and they wanted to at least figure it out before hosting any shards of divinity.


    In the mortal realm, this little balsam that was sold in tiny bottles was being sold at ludicrous prices, this was the mother load for many females, no matter how ugly you look, with enough of this thing, you can be as pretty as a goddess of beauty or even prettier of you had more than enough. While the outside world was scrambling for a bottle of the stuff, the girls at home had somehow made Balin and Yunan create a pool that actively generated that balsam for them to bath in daily.


    With just looking at Yunan turning into a young master from just absorbing the spiritual energy from the ectosm and drinking theva wine produced with that ectosm in it, you can imagine how, soft and delicate the girls became after bathing daily in the stuff, Fae had never been in a better mood since the day Yunan met her for such a long period of time, she even stopped ying along with Balin and Dustan and their antiques. With such a good view to look at all day long, the happiness levels increased in the house exponentially.


    Other than the vast riches that our family had umted and did not know what to do with, Yunan and Balin finallypleted the basic structure of the floating battle fortress, when thest hammer strike was struck, both Yunan heard a message they would never believed to hear before. "Dwarven smithing has upgraded to divine Dwarven smithing, a new path of divinity created, godhood over the Dwarven ways of smithing is now possible for explorer Balin", "heavenly smithing had upgraded to divine smithing, a new path created, godhood over all smithing is now possible for wise prowler Yunan".


    Under the apuse of Hephaestus and the validation he gave on the marvelous product, even though it was just the basic structure it was fully functioning fort, with docking stations for the mechs under development, mana cannons that could effectively cast certain spells, the floating ability and the defence that not even Martin was able to scratch at full power, the two had sessfullypleted a work beyond their power hence the corresponding reward. Hephaestus was so intrigued by the ingenuity of the design and surprising functionality, that he kept hovering over the two as they built it day by day. Although the two did not know how to create a functional sentient item, they had a genie who could split some of its sentience and lend it to the battle fortress, the pseudo sentient system created by the genie was upgradable and was focused entirely on efficiency andbat mastery.


    Yunan took the fort to y with in the 55th floor and could not help but smile like a fool, it was based on Dragonification, it could grow and evolve the morebat it faces, and the more items and monsters it digests. Yunan immediately sent it with the pets to let it start from the lower floor and advance it module as much as possible, it was also a test for the durability of the item and how it would ovee many situation.


    It was time to focus on the battle mechs at the moment, since the trading outpost was a constant supply of items, ingredients and money, the two smith did not care about literally burning money while trying to forge the battle mechs, and when they were done it was a glorious day to behold. The hardest problem was not to ensure that the mechs could stand and walk, any metal golem could do that, the hardest part was making it respond as fast as a natural body as well as link to the sense and thoughts of the user, mental link was the spell that would be used, but that was not all, they had to work on making the mech feel like it was a secondary body rather than a battle armor.


    The first prototype was to be driven telepathically, however the response time had someg no matter how they tried it, when finally they made the mental link to a full body link, it started to work better, and bit by bit the kinks and glitches were ironed out, leaving behind a prototype that anyone can use, even the pets, it was made with a neural link and a mental link, it had a cockpit that was basically a 3 dimensional free movement control system, it would link to the user immediately upon entry, giving them use of all its functions, since it was easier to have all screens pop inside the mind of the user it was a marvelous product, that could run, jump, fly, and swim, it could even dance as gracefully as a ballerina, well as gracefully as the driver could dance in reality, the mech was made so that it would mimic the user perfectly.


    If the mech upgraded the ability of the user, it would be useless to train and grow with one''s own body, therefore, it was made to mimic the user would force the user to go forward and gain more strength, the prototype was not able to cast spells yet and was purely a bodilybat item, and a bloody good one that was worth the year it took to produce, luckily the same week after the finalized prototype was finished testing, the battle fortress has made its way to the 50th floor, averaging a week per floor and gaining so muchbat experience it was on par with an ordinary adventurers.

 Chapter 315: First mission

    Chapter 315: First mission


    With the return of the battle fortress, it was time to upgrade the robot with the ability to cast magic, literally, the mech prototype was fitted with a sizable mana core that can store twice as much as Fae and it had the ability to syphon mana from the user to regenerate it, it was hard to give the mech a direct syphoning system, however, being linked to the user it could rely on the user to provide external mana, as for how it was done, the answer may shock you, Yunan and Balin basically fused as many enchantment pearls together as possible with the help of luck, dragon mes and phoenix mes, the result was a pretty magnificent elemental core that could be attached to the mana core and allow the mech to cast simple spells at a high capacity, in return for faster drainage on the side of mana.


    The first target to feel the wrath of a battle mech and floating battle fortress was the faction that decided to kill off Yunan and have been hiding ever since they failed, thanks to the membership rings, Yunan did not need to travel to the faction headquarters, he could just teleport there and then begin a serious assault, unfortunately Yunan was still not in reach of the 80s thus he had to watch from the control room while Leader smiled her way into piloting the mech.


    After more than 30 years together with Debauchery party, Yunan still could not understand how could such a beautiful smile make men and women who braved death on regr basis shrink like frightened mice, he had to experience it at least once but his luck was warning him to never ever try to get that smile aimed at him, not even trying to know about it was eptable, and with this Yunan dropped the ideapletely, it was not worth it if even his luck detector was shooting off rms at the mere thought, it has been a while since that rm actually went off, so this must have been something fierce.


    Inside the mech, linked and ready, Leader closed her eyes and let her mind escape the body and inhabit the mech, the mech shuddered for a moment before it took a slender shape, well proportioned and verydy like, the armour ting was then affixed on it, anti-magic armor looked like it was made from obsidian, dark and foreboding, the floating battle fortress then teleported the mech inside one of the docking stations and then disconnected from the mana supply station, the members of Debauchery party were all teleported to the control room of the ship where each of them took a seat and controlled a weapon to attack with.


    Balin as co-engineer and co-creator of the battle fortress took themander seat, and announced the start of the operation, all proper and captain like, he had even gotten Reina and Ophelia to tailor a suit for him, they did him a better one and made outfits for each member of the family, three outfits in total were made, the captain''s uniform was ck and gold in colour, the mech pilot''s uniform was blue and silver while ordinary crew''s uniform was red and bronze.


    Since the girls went that far, the uniforms were given a few extra enchantments to help with the linking process with the battle fortress and the mechs. The battle fortress was a floating castle with more than 50 types of adjustable cannons, some aimed up, some aimed down under and some aimed at the sides, it was built like an actual fortress with all the defences as well as the siege weapons and siege breakers installed. With the ability to float, resistance to damage and ability to just cause a catastrophe on its own, it was the perfect gift for a 10 year old, the mechs are for 8 years olds, so childish whenpared to a magnificent flying castle of doom.


    "As captain, i hereby dere the beginning of first official trial mission of this still unnamed mothership, the goal is to eradicate the target faction headquarters and loot as much as possible, phase shift on my mark, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, MARK!" almost everyone listening facepalmed at the childish way Balin set off the first official mission, it worked though as the battle genie immediately used the phase shift and the fortress appeared up in the sky of the target faction headquarters, Leader and her mech were dropped off and thending signalled the start of the attack.


    The moment Leader and her mech hit the ground she extended her arms in an eagle pose and sted lighting out of her palms sting out a zone for herself to move freely, she then switched from lighting to physical bullets using the arms like a minigun with the fingers spitting out red hot metal that tore through construction and flesh alike, not even a hint of struggle was present as the dumbfounded adventurers could not believe what they were seeing.


    A hulking metal giant that was 10 meters tall and looked very feminine, fell out of a floating castle and started dishing out destruction like it was a game of some sort, by the time a response was organised and in order one fourth of the headquarters was in ruin and Leader was out of mana, she had used it all on shooting fireballs, raining bullets and lighting as well as the asional hurricane level wind des, since she had yed to her heart''s content she was recalled back by the battle fortress that still have not made a single move.


    The next pilot in-line was Fae, she met Mary who was radiating too much in the changing room where each put on the uniforms of their next job, Fae did not even need to ask how much fun Leader had, she just jumped in the mech when it was ready and was dropped off too. To those in the ground, the feminine chunk of metal changed somewhat, this one had a very sinister smile to it, it did not smile but they could see it prancing around in ecstasy as it dished out annihtion, both by magic and by ramming through building like they were made of paper, these people did not imagine that their horror was just starting.

 Chapter 316: Loot time

    Chapter 316: Loot time


    After Fae spent her mana making much of the target base into a disaster zone, she was recalled and for mana resupplying, next in line was Dustan, Balin who had not given anymands other then deploy and retrieve said something that made both Leader and Fae have him in a headlock, he got a beating but it was already toote for the two with practically empty mana cores.


    "Arm prototype mech with shield attachment and two axe attachments, deploy", Balin made the order, he then called Dustan to give him his obvious orders "use taunt, block as much as possible until half the mana is gone, then feel free to use both axes as you will". There only response given by Dustan was his beautifully ugly smile. When he hit the ground he took out a shield and one axe, used taunt and then rampaged in the base. Balin''s decision to send the first two unarmed proved correct, by the time he sent out the shield, it was sorely needed, as soon as the mechnded it was targeted with magical attacks.


    Dustan really cut it close when he roared his taunt after taking his shield, but he still took all the head on attacks with the shield, the rest ended up on the back ting. The mech changed again for the ground troops, this one was more intimidating and sturdy, add in the shield and how it was now moving like an armored adventurer. That was the critical thing they could not figure out, what was this thing and why was something made of metal moving like a living being and not like a golem, they all thought that this was an advanced golem created by some faction but the floating castle did not make sense at all, if you had a floating castle with discernible cannon holes why are you using golems to attack, the answer came too quickly when the barrage of magic was over and Dustan started fighting like he always did, except this time he was the giant monster making the adventurers shiver in their boots.


    Swinging the axe at both buildings and defenders alike, bashing anyone who attempted to get into the range of melee in order to try to disable the"golem" from the inside, when the mana was half gone and the magical barrage was bing a trickle because of exhaustion and desperation, the two axes shone with bloodthirsty gleem and Dustan started reaping out any that stood in his path, Dustan was able to go all the way to the centre of the base all the while paving a path of corpses and destroyed buildings, he found some resistance here but still decimated the defenses before he was recalled back for mana resupplying.


    Next in line was Lucian, he got two short swords and was sent down to kill the Leaders of the faction, this time the mech shrunk to only the size of 5 meters high, and was affixed with a few extra agility spells, the new mech was indeed faced with the leaders simply because they thought it was weaker, unfortunate as they were, Lucian dodged their magic like it was slow dandelions in gentle breeze, he did not kill but wounded mortally, they would live for a bit before they die.


    The battle fortress issued a very loud announcement "the leaders of this faction have been defeated, this faction shall be leveled to the ground, leave as you are this moment and you will live, stay in the radius of 20 km and die"


    Balin made the announcement as grim as possible and with intimidation from the mechs, many adventures left the area as fast as they could, Lucian took this opportunity to read the minds of the leaders and locate their wealth before sending them to the prison cells inside the portable dimension, when he was recalled he hurried back to themand capsule and took a seat at the console. At Balin''s order, all the magical cannons were charged and fired down at the nearly empty headquarters, "fire" he said before magical energy turned the whole area into a zing me, in the ruins, nothing but dust was left behind, many who were watching this scene ran as fast as their feet or wings could take them, they immediately headed for the safe spot in near the trading post and begged to be taken inside, the genie obliged them and created rental rooms for them to stay in, payment was only mana for staying but anything else required money, even water for a drink or a bath.


    The fortress disappeared just like it arrived out of thin air, many saw it and did not dare to return, unbeknownst to most people who stayed away in fear of mana contamination, the ce was safe to tread, when mana was burnt into magical power it lost it corrosive ability and the resulting energy faded harmlessly, but who would take a risk when the amount of magic leveled an area that big, 7 people were in the ruins sitting beside a mountain of valuables.


    "How bright of you, to create such cannons that destroyed anything without value to dust while the good stuff was buried beneath, how did you do that?" Balin felt very happy with the praise and pretend tob his beard sagely. "We thought about it a lot and decided to make a spell that attacks anything that is not touched by magic for example anything built using magic is safe, we thought that most of the faction headquarters would be built by ordinary materials because if it was built using magic it would be a beacon for monsters, no faction can hunt a tide of endless monsters that keep spawning after you kill them". With a double thumbs up from Fae, and Leader The group started walking towards the locations of the hidden vaults only known to the faction leaders, as well as those used by the faction members. Looting never felt so good before, it seems that fun fights that lead to a mountain of loot were the type Debauchery party liked the best

 Chapter 317: Tech vault

    Chapter 317: Tech vault


    Back home, Yunan was getting ready to start his climb in the dungeon as well as begin the ns for the upgrade and troubleshooting of the errors and things he was not very satisfied with in his new toys, the toys were very efficient for what they were created to do, but the performance numbers were not up to par with Yunan''s standards, the mana consumption was about 10% higher than he wanted it, there was a small waste of mana during conversion to magic and the reshaping took a bit too much time than expected, that time could be the difference between life and death in a battle.


    Otherwise, he was very satisfied with the ability the toys showed during the mission, especially with the speed of casting and the almost nonexistentg betweenmands and actions, he was most proud of the performance of the armour, shield and weapons used during the fight, as well as the unarmedbat ability, this thing would be the target of anyone that could pilot it, thankfully both Martin and Markus were not interested in the toys, other than watching the fights and performance, both men new how greedy humans will break this world a second time if this was revealed.


    Speaking of Martin, when he was brought in to the prison and showed the memories from the faction leaders, the ones about recruiting adventurers before they reached the 80th floor as well as some other points breaking thew of the guild and some agreement that were established across the years, Martin immediately killed them and announced that this faction was destroyed because they were recruiting adventurers from early floor, and happened to cross someone who already belonged to a mighty force, thus it lead to their own demise, he did notment on the battle golems and the floating fortress, answering simply "who ever built that can be my fast friend if he lets me ride it".


    This was a tant answer to all, as long as no harm is done to the and these armament were not used to break thew, he had no issue with it, weapons of mass destruction were prohibited, true, but how many mighty ones dwarfed mass destruction weapons in their might, things were different for the surface world and Tartarus, if Tartarus was unhappy with the existence of the weapons, she would just turn them into dust, why did Martin have to go against a power capable of building such things without being spotted, these hidden people were the most docile and the most dangerous at the same time.


    Back to Yunan, he was knee deep in ectosm while trying to climb even faster than usual, with his wives and pets putting as much effort as they could, they seriously wanted to reach the 80th floor to y at conquering the world, they surely were not going to use the new toys to skip the floors toe, they knew better than that, only hard work paid off and only hard work didn''t leave regrets behind. That was a truth everyone in the new Valyrians adhered to.


    As for the factions in the 80s, they were paying so much money to gain any information on the battle, video footage, memory imprints, pictures and anything else just topile enough data but they still came short, there was no discernible way to tell who made the attack or why, the only concrete information is that who ever attacked had an axe to grind and the fire power to have killed the entire poption of the faction, still they let many of those that did not fight against them flee, this was not a simple take over, this was a strategic strike with surgical precision, the second part was that whoever made the golems was simply conducting a performance test, that was why they did not send more than one golem at a time and the doom castle only fired at the end of the whole thing.


    Using a grudge to conduct performance tests capable of bringing a full fledged faction to its knees was simply something nightmarish, this faction was safe ever since they offended someone simply because the offended party did not feel like dealing with them, in fact they chose to use the faction for the test because monsters don''t fight back and expose weakness like adventurers do, making the rest of the factions feel threatened. If there was a faction out there so powerful they thought of other factions as good test subjects, things would turn really bad, even ugly if they decided to just dismantle all factions and rule this ce.


    Thankfully they did not know that the people who were behind this can not even be called a faction, a family at most, but they just had the right mindset and the tools to just grow without end. If they knew that they were scared of a brat that just reach the 55th floor they would bang their heads against the wall and just die.


    On the side of Debauchery party they were grinning from ear to ear at all the looting they did, the did not leave anything behind, as long as the grave robber that Fae summons thought it was valuable, it was brought back home, the riches they handled were beyond magnificence, it was sparkly and beautiful, Leader was already getting faint from all the excitement, Fae was sleeping in Dustan''s arms, while Bai was breaking the locks on the most important vault they found in the memories.


    This one was full of technology for the past ages, although they didn''t know much about it, ot was not a bad idea to research the technologies that gav man dominance over the before the power of mana, especially their way of sharing and saving information, it was beyond a doubt a good possibility to upgrade the genie of the house and therefore upgrade the new toys to something much more exciting to y with. Lucky as always Yunan and friends who were dealing with the banshees queen, hot themselves a total of 10 golden books, each detailing how the civilization before the great mana corruption made the world into a haven for humans, inside those golden books was the way to understand and use the technology from the past. When Yunan saw the titles of these books, he knew his wife was sending him a kiss through the ether.

 Chapter 318: Death blade

    Chapter 318: Death de


    While the turmoil was getting worse in the 80s, Yunan and friends were celebrating the sess of the operation back at home, not only have they destroyed a faction and inherited its wealth they got a lucky dose that led to them gaining the technology they needed from a vault, that technology was on par with the one used by the science division that the cult left behind, those knowledge seekers have resurrected many things that could be used in tandem with the items found in the vault.


    ording to the records in the vault, these were excavated from an underground site that was extremely well preserved, the site was sold to many factions and each got a piece of technology, however, the factions all researched what they got independently with limited sess, the most sessful ones were the cult who had bought an archive called a centralputer, they used the knowledge inside to reanimate the technology from the past, especially in the research facilities found in the recent years.


    Bai was very happy to know that all the useless knowledge he acquired when infiltrating the science division of the cult was actually useful for this project they were working on, however, they needed much more know how if they wanted to operate the contents of their loot, The person to ask was Pope Markus who really did not care and told them that the science division was open for them as long as they were not trying to end the world, he always had a soft spot for this band that made his daughters smile so much.


    Yunan told his teachers that he would not go to the science division headquarters to learn there, since he was trying to climb down Tartarus as fast as possible, in the end Bai was selected since he was already a prominent figure for the main scientists, after visiting, he could just ask them to teach Balin everything they know about the technology from the past, Balin with the help of the house genie was able to learn the basics and then dive, by himself, in the archive to learn as much as possible.


    Meanwhile, Yunan focused on the dungeon, he swept thest floors like a storm, he was already strong enough and with the fervent efforts, his party was able to get on the same level and keep up the pace.


    The 59th floor housed the ultimate spiritual being, reapers, known otherwise as death, grim reapers and so on, these beings were the messengers under the employ of the gods of death, they were the true soul harvesters, ording to the ck Fate, the version manifested inside the dungeon was a corrupted version, it was thanks to someone doing something to avoid death and instead of turning his entire tribe into immortals he turned them into the reapers found in the Dungeon.


    Hunting these reapers left behind two things, the usual ectosm and a grain of death. The grain was a fraction of the scythe of the true reaper that was used for the immortality ritual, These grains were collectibles and for some reason they could not pass beyond this floor, being who he is, Yunan decided to gather all the grains and reforge them back into a death scythe, and he did, thest piece was with the boss, an erged version of the ordinary reaper, a cloaked half skeleton with a gloomy weapon and an aura of death and decay, killing the world around it by virtue of existence.


    The ectosm from the reapers had a toxic affinity to it, it made the ectosm deadly for anyone without proper ability to handle toxins, after using the ectosm Yunan found that his toxins and toxin immunity were boosted by 1000%. That in itself told of how potent the death and decay aura was in the ectosm, and like any other time, it was also turned into a fruit and wine and sold in the trading outpost. This time the main customer was the guild as Yunan refused to sell this new item to anyone without a proper ability to handle toxic material, the dilution he had rmended was still deadly but only enough to be used for research, not that Yunan needed that dilution thanks to his toxic body.


    Dealing with the reaper took a few times to be done perfectly, it was especially hard for Ignis and Drogon who were having trouble withprehension of using multiple merged spells, it was not the inability to do so but the ability to understand. For beings like themselves, spells were a sort ofnguage and not allbination of sybles made sense, thus even if they could use the sybles it was just gibberish to them, that prompted Yunan to ask them to only use spells that made sense to them, and they bothnded onbinations that used fire as the basis.


    Yunan attributed this phenomenon to their innate affinity for fire, Drogon used spells that included more physical attributes like joining earth and fire to createva or fire and lighting to create sma, for Ignis, it was intangibles that she went for, like fire and wind to create smoke and fire and water to create mirages, Yunan did not dissuade the two from using their innate affinity exclusively, but he encouraged them to step out of thisfort zone to try andprehend new words so to speak.


    The duo did as told and with the help of Martin bought books about the nature of the basic four elements and how they could be trained separately without the use of spell books, the subject would have been captivating for Yunan if he did not know all the seven basic elements, he was already capable of understanding them like it was breathing for him, but he still studied with his pets to motivate them, even Sapphira who was mostly illiterate when it came to magic started learning too, she was capable of casting magic like any awakened but she never had to understand the concept behind casting a spell and the mathematical aspects of it.


    On another hand, after ying the boss about 30 times, the final fragment was dropped and Yunan immediately started working on the scythe, he could fuse the grains into a long rod but couldn''t make the de pop out, in his frustration he decided to use a shard from divinity of death, one of the few he had on him, the scythe visibly changed under the influence of the fragment of divinity, it was much more malleable and it took its shape willingly, after a week of forging, Yunan, with the help of all the death shards he had, made a true reaper scythe. Upon holding the weapon, Yunan noticed a figure in the portable home that was not there before.

 Chapter 319: Death is my guest

    Chapter 319: Death is my guest


    Out of concern for his family, Yunan immediately made his way to where the intruder was spotted, he found a reaper calmly hovering over mother Theresa, with a look of mncholy in his eyes. This reaper actually looked much better then the reapers Yunan just finished beating up, it had aplete skeleton, it had blue pupils in the eye sockets instead of empty holes and it had emotions, it did not react to Yunan even though it knew he was there, looking at it with murderous intent, Yunan swung the reaper scythe in his hand and the reaper hovering over his mother turned to stardust.


    For the next week or so Yunan had to use invisibility to stay beside his mother, he really did not want her to die, and could not trust anyone else to protect her, he tried negotiations, threatening, called the death gods he had taken divinity from and did the same but the answer always was the same, "death is a promise that everyone must fulfill even the creator god himself has to die, that is the way of things".


    Eventually, Yunan dropped all pretensions and just slew any reaper that arrived at his home, this situationsted for a full month before no reapers arrived any more, one more week and Hephaestus asked if he could bring a gentleman to visit the house, Yunan did not need to ask who it was because it was obvious who would the visitor be, so Yunan met him armed with his newest scythe, uncharacteristic of her, Fortuna organised a party to meet the gentleman.


    He arrived with Hephaestus, wearing a ck formal, 3 piece suit, he had an air that indicated great and endless knowledge as well as uncounted years of experience, the man was courteous and observed his manners in a way that made Debauchery party feel a bit of shame and they even acted properly for the rest of the dinner party, the man was well spoken and had many stories and fables to tell, everyone in the house was fascinated with him, all except Yunan who could not help but hate him.


    "Do you hate me" the gentleman asked Yunan a rhetorical question, and Yunan could only answer with a bitter voice "no, i have no emotions towards you, i just developed a strong hostilitytely because you want to take away my mother". The manughed, not too hard and not too slow, it was an amusedugh that someone might show when the a cute animal in the petting section of the zoo shows hostility. "You see, in this world, in every world, most fear me, some hate me and some really don''t care until i breath on their necks, those who truly do not care, will wee me and treat me as a friend, the rest will panic and try anything in their power to stop my arrival".


    At this point the table was silent, even the dumbest ones knew to listen carefully to this conversation, for some reason the words said by the gentleman had an effect thatmanded attention.


    The gentleman turned towards mother Theresa who shied away from his gaze, she wasn''t very keen on meeting strangers ever since she retired. "I am death, i shall im all, the stars will burn out under my gaze, the green will wither and the stone will turn to dust, life itself flees in my presence, i was born before your universe, long before your creator, and i will oust them both, I shall im this universe like i imed many before it, it is my curse to see the end of life".


    Gasps were heard, some drew their weapons some looked away and Theresa looked up "is it my time yet?" There was no fear, some small hints of regret but nothing too major, she was not brave, hostile or panicked, she didn''t care. "It will be soon" responded the gentleman "you may call me Death, i have forgotten my name and imed the life of all those who knew it". Theresa then looked at Yunan with his scythe in hand, she formted an idea about why would Death personallye to visit but she did not say anything, she just looked as tenderly at Yunan as only a proud mother could.


    "Death" called Yunan "why are you here? We all know that you do not need toe here to im us all, even my little interruption is meaningless to you". Death moved his eyes away from Theresa to Yunan, there was a weight to them but Yunan did not try overpowering it, it was futile anyway. "I came here to take your answers, recently, many deities under me have beenining about you, the man who caught gods in their own trap, even the viewers were not spared, the man who made friends with the next creator in line, the one who reined in the goddess of luck and turned her docile. Your rsum is rather impressive for a mortal, so i came to see who''s mother i was about to take away and if you are going to be a nuisance about it or not".


    This blunt type of speech meant that even death gets the annoying avenger now and then, even if it was nothing serious, a buzzing fly can drive a man to rage. This way of speaking also implied he looking forward to an answer. Fortunately Yunan was not mad nor was he delusional, his grip on the scythe rxed somewhat, there was no malice in Death personally, it was loss that he hated. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths


    "I don''t want to lose her" said Yunan sadly, he opened his eyes to see only himself and Death in some kind of space, the man looked at Yunan with pity and asked "would you wee me at your home, knowing i would take away your dearest?", "I would wee you knowing that you are going to take even me, my only regret is that i could not make them happy for longer" Death smiled at Yunan and snapped his fingers.

 Chapter 320: Clashing with Death

    Chapter 320: shing with Death


    When Death snapped his fingers the scenery changed around the two immediately, they were in a stormy day, a couple were running away with a baby in the females arms, the blood of natural birth still sticky in her thighs and tainting her dress, the man was panicking and looking each way while he supported the mother as they ran away from the darkness, the little boy did not cry, not when the thunder rumbled in the heavens, not when the rain washed away the blood on his mother and not when his parent were attacked by monsters made of shadows.


    The couple made it just a bit before dawn to a town big enough to have an orphanage and left their child in a bundle at the doorstep, then they ran again faster and faster, they fought but were overwhelmed by the shadows and were separated as the two cried out each other''s names. The boy was found by a nun, she was returning with a blush on her face, the cold air of the morning after a storm made her heart flutter, she was too poor to put on anything heavy enough to keep herself warm.


    She picked up the silent baby and took him in, she fed him and cleaned for him, and gave him his name. The scene paused with the nun cradling the baby to her chest, she was blushing this time too, something else made her heart flutter. Death watched Yunan with a keen look before saying "if you knew they were both alive and have lived good lives would you resent them for not returning?", Yunan did not answer his gaze was fixed at the blushing nun and the baby who still has yet to cry. Death asked again "would you trade her life for theirs? I can make it so".


    "Not in a million life times, she is my only mother, not even the creator can change that, not you, and not them, in fact, i am grateful to them for leaving me behind and never returning, ki became this great of man thanks to her care not to them leaving me behind". Death was very amused so he snapped his fingers again this time he saw the two parents run past the orphanage without a second look, they were not caught by the shadows this time, and the child they had grew into a king, power, wealth and prosperity, anything was at the tips of his fingers, he was, however, alone, even when surrounded by people who fawned on him at all times.


    "This is what great of man you would have be if they kept you" a tempting tone to his voice, " i can make it so that this timeline is your home". Yunan wasn''t very tempted "i have something he doesn''t, i have love". A snap of a finger and the lonely man became a happy man, he had his beautiful wives and loving parents around him, his friends were numerous and in thend he was more loved than rain. "It is not enough" this time Yunan said first "you can even show me the timeline where i rule the world, if she is not part of my life, then i have to reject, i care not for wealth or power or prosperity, i care for my family, people who truly love me, i have no need for a whole world who adores me of i can not love them back".


    Deathughed in merriment "good words, good words, but what would you chose if her life was better without you?". The scene changed again after the two parents passed by the orphanage and the nun returned, a prince will pass by and gets attacked by bandits, she saves his life and whisks her away from how life as a nun to be his queen, he would love the nun madly and give her all the happiness in the world, she would love him too and together they birth a child, they raise the child with all the love and happiness in their hearts, she gets old and dies with a smile on her face.


    "I am selfish, even if she would have been much happier than with me, i would still want to be her son, because i know she was as happy with me as i was happy with her, we didn''t need the world, we had each other". Yunan''s answer made Deathugh even harder, this ant was defying him with the stupidity of a rock stubborn and immovable. He really liked this ant, it would be fun to have him be a nuisance for a few millennia, he would not be as bored as he was before today.


    After calming down, Death prepared to snap his fingers but stopped he looked inquisitively at Yunan for a moment before saying "if i told you I would cut short her lifespan by a day for each reaper you killed, what would you do?". Without answer Yunan somehow gripped his death scythe in hand and said "i will try to kill you too, you should have stopped me from making this thing if you truly knew what would happen". Still with his fingers ready to snap, Death took out a scythe of his own, it was something magnificent and terrible at the same time, he could feel it in his bones, the fear, the hatred and the anger left behind by all the deaths that were harvested with this item. It was the divinity of death itself, the primordial concepts of end, inexistence and null.


    Yunan was not discouraged and swung his scythe, he swung to kill, there was no hesitation or reproach, it was the first time Yunan would have felt good for killing, the two scythes met with a ng, two divinities shing, none could end the other, for they were one and the same, the two scythes fused and became one, a formless mass of nothingness that is able to devour anything it encounters. Death grabbed the mass and swallowed it. "it is too early for you to be death, that weapon is not a toy to y with, if you make another by your own efforts, then let us sh again, until then stay away from my domain". Snap.

 Chapter 321: His own fate

    Chapter 321: His own fate


    Yunan blinked and found himself back to the moment he closed his eyes, no time has passed since then and the rest did not seem to feel anything wrong, except for the scythe disappearing, nothing seemed out of order, Yunan knew there was no possibility to continue the conversation with Death so he did not say anything at all, although Yunan did not seem to give an answer it was enough for Death. The one who broke the silence was unexpectedly Theresa. She looked Death in the eye and asked with fortitude "when?".


    "Tonight, an hour before dawn, in your sleep, you won''t feel anything". Death was very diplomatic, it seemed to Yunan that his talk with Death was not just a talk, after all he would not havee during day time if Mother''s time was at next dawn, so he stood up and said to Death "feel free to stay or leave, i have some precious time to spend with my mother, excuse us please". Not only Yunan stood up and went to escort Theresa, his wives and friends also stood up, only Hephaestus was left with Death at the table.


    Hephaestus did not mind being alone with Death and started filling his stomach by the delicious meals spread on the table, he watched as Death sat there before saying "even if you no longer enjoy taste and vours, you should try this, they keep surprising me every time I pass by". Death did not say anything before picking up a toxic lotus fruit and munching on it, he tried the apanying wine and seemed pleased with it. He then looked at Hephaestus and asked "what do you see in him?".


    Hephaestus did not stop stuffing his mouth as he responded "the same things you do, unfettered, unblinded, open and most of all epting, he is already more capable than both of us in regard to that matter, i find that watching him paving his own path where no path can be paved is very entertaining, do you think if he was special he would be able to house so many divinities, befriend the ascended and just make his own way in life without a care?"


    "I find it disturbing how ordinary he is, fluke after fluke after fluke, this timeline should not have been possible, there is no destiny in this timeline, the ones who had destiny have already failed to grasp it, now that non are left, he is challenging fate itself, warping it by simply living in his own way, this is why the higher-ups are getting antsy. He is not creating his own destiny he is creating his own fate, it should not have happened, and now, he has creation running in his blood, i fear for what is toe".


    Hephaestus just shrugged the ominous words like it was nothing "that is what makes it fun, it has been too long since fate was subjected to a force it could not overpower, i find that interesting to follow on, and i have every intention to watch this story y out from a front row seat". "The higher-ups might revoke your creator nomination if you keep speaking like that". "If things keep following the current path, maybe i won''t need it, remember, i have a front row seat, i might even get sprayed by the ssh".


    Death rolled his eyes at Hephaestus, it was of no consequence to him, he was older than the higher-ups and fate itself was born after he did, nothing in this universe would overpower him, not even this upjumped pipsqueak who is making everyone nervous, they can only turn to him to fix this if things went too far to be redeemed, as for if this kid wanted to take over his domain it wasn''t too bad to have a rival, after all no being could possibly control all aspects to perfection.


    "Do you think he will have a grudge against me?". "No, you cane by for a day off from your job once in a while, these kids aren''t the usual kind, i bet you might even start to experience some of those long forgotten emotions, after all Death is the subject of the most emotional energy in all of existence". "Maybe i will, those bunch of dimwits under me are too useless, maybe a few days without me will help with that, call me next time there is a feast ". With that Death left with the jar of toxic wine and the bowl of toxic lotus fruits, Hephaestus chuckled to himself before he too stopped eating and went to the back garden where the family was having theirst day with mother Theresa. He too will miss that woman, she was after all the first ordinary woman to treat him as an equal knowing that he was a god.


    Elsewhere in a ce beyond space and time, a group of elderly being sat watching a small orbiting its sun, behind them Death was munching on his fruits withplete disregard to the holiness and sanctity this council was giving off. The elders were discussing the same matter that Death and Hephaestus were talking about.


    "Shall we cut the strings of his fate and let this end before it grows any further?", "i fear he will create new strings as we cut them, my eyes can not see his future, it is all clouded, even those who are beside him are bing as unpredictable as he is", "we must not interfere, yet we must protect fate, any move we make may be recognised as breaking the old oath". "Why not let Death handle it? He is not bound by anything", "no, Death is the bane of fate, he must not be allowed to interfere", " then must we sit and watch as he brings about our end". "We aren''t in danger yet, we may never be in danger, we must bide our time, if we break the oath too soon, we will lose it all". Death snickered behind them as he took a swig from the wine jar "this is some good stuff".

 Chapter 322: Last night

    Chapter 322: Last night


    In the back garden Theresa was surrounded byughter and joy, it was not the mood you would expect from a group that was about to grief over the loss of family member, currently she was holding a nest with two little chicks that still had sparse yellow stubble, on the edges of the nest two fist sized birds were proudly presenting their greatest achievement to her, chests out and melody after melody of sweet chirping to fill the garden.


    Theresa has been rejecting all manner of life extension methods for as long as she stayed in the portable home during her retirement, close to twenty years worth of idling and having a quiet time by day and a ball by night, she refused to train, to gain divinity or use the power of faith to extend her life, simply because she didn''t want to live for too long, she had a sessful life, she had nursed many kids and watched them grow, her crowning achievement was Yunan and she spent her retirement days watching him live out a happy good life.


    She was so proud of him, he was a king yet still worked hard, he had endless amounts of riches but still aimed to be better, grew stronger by the day, loved his wives, yed with his friends, and most importantly he gave her a reason to smile when she was old and started getting senile. She knew her son well enough to see him thinking about how to force Death to give her up, she liked that her son fought death for her, not a single person in this back garden feared death, but not all of them would go butting heads with him.


    "You should stop thinking too much, son, I agreed to eat the super food and that has already given me too many years, i know, i can feel it, sadly i did not get to hold my grandchildren, just promise me you will make several of them and tell them how much i would have loved them and doted on them" her whisper did not go unnoticed because the little feisty bird wasn''t happy with her words, she proudly presented her offspring again for Theresa who picked them up in her hands and gave each a doting kiss. "There, i doted on them too, happy?".


    Seeing it was not going to lead to anything, Yunan decided to just give up, maybe it was for the best for his mom to pass away on her terms, because aside from missing the birth of her grandchildren, she had no regrets, dying without regrets was only a cliche in books and novels, and dying with a regret that revolves around the family was a hard thing toe by, it was a better thing to die thinking about your family than about your life span or riches, neither of thosest two was a factor for Theresa.


    The family yed games, brought in a theatrical band to watch ys and listen to music, the wives made her choose baby names for her future grandchildren, they ate together, bathed together, and most importantly they cried together, it started with Dustan suddenly hugging mother and saying with a sobbing voice "i will miss you ma" and that was all it took for the rest to drop tears and start sobbing too, and then it has fallen to Theresa to calm them down.


    "You are still a cry baby after you got this big, there there, don''t worry, after i die, i will look after you from heaven, if anyone is bullying i will give them bad dreams until they stop, no sweetie like you should ever be bullied, okey, why are you guys sad already, i am the one dying, i need theforting, why do i have tofort you lot". No one could stop them from smiling as the tears flooded their faces, they knew she was right but who could help not getting sad when losing a loved one.


    When night time arrived, Yunan and Reina brought Theresa back to her room where shey in bed to sleep, Reina sat down beside the bed while Yunan sat on the bed with his hand holding onto hers, "listen both of you, this is going to be my will, no one shall witness myst moments, i want you to be at peace, and i also want to sleep well on myst night, i have an eternity to watch over you guys, so some sleep would be appreciated"


    "Yunan, you are my child, i raised you to be strong, however, on this time you are allowed to be weak, three nights, no more than that, otherwise i will be cross with you" she waited until Yunan nodded his head before she continued "your wives, marry each of them properly, give each one of them a good wedding, they deserve one, even that old fox Luna would love it, i don''t want my grandchildren to be called illegitimate or bastards because you werezy".


    "Your family is bigger now, you have teachers and pets and friends, make sure to always look after them as well as care for them, i like them because they like you, especially your pets, they really need you to be the best man, so be your best for them, i know this is what you already do, but i have to leave a will behind to motivate you. Keep doing your best and i would be very happy in heaven" she then looked at Reina "the rest of you have only one job, keep loving my little boy, if anyone stopped loving him, you will remove that person, i don''t want my child to suffer heartbreak, so essentially your job is to keep his heart whole and full of love".


    After a sigh she kissed both on their lips as if giving them herst breath, "now go and make a grand feast to guide me to heaven, i want to hear you all the way from up there, no crying tonight, i hate tears, justughter, after dawn you may cry rivers in my name if that is your wish, go now, good night~" both Reina and Yunan left the room, it was already midnight and every one was waiting for the two in the living room. "Tonight we party until dawn, Balin bring out your secret stash, tonight we go all out"

 Chapter 323: Cheers

    Chapter 323: Cheers


    For the first time in his life Yunan understood the appeal of strong alcoholic beverages, he could not get drunk at first because the wine was not stronger than his toxic body, it was not until Balin brought out the really hard liquor that could nock an elephant off its feet by merely opening the bottle, not until then did Yunan feel sce and some degree of eptance about his mother''s Death. Yunan ended up punching Death on the face a few times in his drunken stupor.


    Death arrived with Hephaestus to see what kind of party could grab a person like him from his work, he was not too happy about being punched but the rest of the party was fun, after all neither the sober nor the drunk tried to drive him away. Drunken Yunan was loud and even more upfront and honest than Usual. "Here we are, a bunch of living celebrating death, i wee the shameless asshole stealing away my mom while sharing my food and drink, listen carefully, if it wasn''t that she wanted this, those punches would not be enough to express how cross i am with you, cheers! may her soul enter heaven as loud as possible, let the lord of light see that she has some back up, are you listening up there, mistreat mommy and i will break into your realm and beat you to death with your own divinity, cheers!".


    Dustan stood up next " i am an ugly orc even by orc standards, everyone who sees me for the first time always shows either disgust, fear or looks away, mother was smiling at me like she did not care about this ugly mug of mine, she was there for me and acted as my mother each and every time i met her, she was the best woman i knew, and she deserves the biggest send off, after all, i wavered when i saw Death, while the weak her asked "when?" a woman braver than me deserves my cheers" Dustan drowned his cup before sitting down solemnly.


    Balin stood up "cheers to the woman whoughed at my antiques, tried to straighten my manners each time i was naughty, but never tried to tell me not to be myself, she took us as family the day we took in her son, as a mother, she was perfect, as a woman, she deserved respect, a woman who earned my respect has the right to my cheers, cheers!" He too drowned his cup holding back his tears.


    Lucian, Bai and Fae all sang her praise and drank in her name, Anne however, did not know what to say, she was not the type to cheer people up so she passed her turn with "cheers to a great woman".


    Mary stood upst "if she did not will us not to cry, i would be crying tonight, s i must wait till dawn, that woman was nothing but ordinary, thus she was the most extraordinary one in this ce, she had nothing but love and warmth inside her, and let me tell you something, it was bloody annoying how cool she looked when she was dishing out her love to any who cared to receive, i envied her for every thing she was, her courage, her open and simple heart, how easy it was for her tough and be satisfied, how she wouldmand the love of any ce she arrived at, she was light, and to people like us, that light was enough to brighten the darkness we walked in for so long, i love that woman, she smiled her way to being a mother to all of us, and for mother thest i can say is: cheers!"


    After the cheers came theughter, for a woman who brought joy, only joy would be a good send off, and the partysted until dawn, by then, Yunan stood up suddenly and said, party is over, excuse me, i need to go weep" followed by his wives, Yunan returned to his room, it took only a few minutes for him to sober up after he stopped drinking, he hugged his wives and together shed tears of loss and grief, mother was smiling in her sleep as Death came to im her.


    The noise from the party gave her the sweetest dreams, and the cheers made her blush like a young maiden, in her dreams she saw death walking closer, she opened her arms and embraced him "nothing to be sad about, i am just another old woman who left behind some good kids" she told Death as she wrapped her arms around him, Death had a mncholic look on his face, today was one of the days he despised his own existence, still, he wouldn''t let those under him take her soul away, if they botched it, he might need to kill them, seeing that she was ready, he ced his hand on her forehead and pulled a small grain of pure white light, he always struggled when these pure beings left the world of the living.


    With a gentle wave, the grain of light floated upwards and then disappeared from sight, he sent a message behind it, "you better take a good care of her, she has some serious back up". When a soul died it went to reside in the realm of the god they worshipped most, there they wait for reincarnation, the realm of light was called heaven, the realm of evil was called hell, the realm of the hunt was called the grand prairie, so on and so forth, and this soul was heading for heaven, a good ce mostly, it was rare for a message to be attached with a soul arriving at the realm of the afterlife, but it was not impossible, Death himself has sent all of them before, and all those souls were the purest in their worlds.


    When morning came, the family had truly cried their fill, no more tears were dropped when everyone assembled, together they waited as Mary and Yunan went inside mother''s room, cleansed her body using the best items and the fragrant smells in the portable dimension, d her in the fanciest silks and most treasured jewellery, they then ced her in a most exquisite coffin, the two of them then brought out the coffin for the funeral to start.

 Chapter 324: Funeral

    Chapter 324: Funeral


    The funeral was simple and solemn, a grave was dug manually inside the spiritual cave, Yunan used his dream divinity to remove the stress in the inner chamber to allow his family members to stay there unharmed, those who were using the cave to cultivate felt shock as they saw this solemn procession passing through with shovels and a casket, the most surprising was that they were not affected by the pressure of the spiritual energy inside the cave.


    Yunan had the idea of burying her just outside the cave near the grave of old Dreamscape, but Mary thought that it might be a bad idea considering that there were people who were cultivating in the cave and they may think that it was possible to be buried outside, after all, one grave was an exception, two was a normality, and that it was better to bury her inside the back chamber to indicate that one needed to have a certain prestigious background to even consider this ce as burial ground.


    Inside the chamber the grave was dug manually and the casket was lowered in by hand, 2 meters deep, an assortment of colourful flowers were cast with silent prayers before the dirt was shoveled back with and a small tree tree was nted instead of a headstone. After a few silent words from everyone, they all left the cave and returned home, since they were not in the mood to do anything, the small family went to the big baths, Martin and Markus left for their own respective homes, Hephaestus toon Death with him and left the rest to grief in silence.


    For some reason, the big naked bathing scene has be a point of order for the family, it was a constant in their lives and somehow it became the default and go to item to do in the family, the silence was not awkward or harsh as one may expect, the tears have dried and there was only sadness and emptiness left in their hearts. Loss was something that everyone had to experience, in Debauchery party it opened some old wounds, in the Valyrians it cut a very deep and aching wound.


    Still it was best for Yunan to experience loss with a softened blow like this one, this time he had time to ept the loss ande to terms with it, maybe if he was hit with it suddenly, he may have be inconsble and would have something break inside him, fortunately that did not happen and Yunan was able to experience loss and grief without much of an impact.


    "Is this how grief always feels" Yunan asked no one in particr, it was a question that did not demand an answer, he just felt like voicing something, he did the same back then, a series of voiced out thoughts tended to heal better than full blown conversations, the bath was the best ce for this kind of unusual type ofmunication. "Pretty much, grief sucks at all times, it never gets easy". "You''d think it gets easier after a few times but that is a misconception, it hurts the same every time". "But although it feels so bad it is better than the alternative". "What alternative, grief should be a unique response", "there are two, hatred and insanity, both mask grief but do not deal with it", "hatred and insanity are just out of the question, mom would be sad", "anything else is just taking your emotional distress on the world, mom would surely prefer if. We just grief and be done with it".


    That bathsted until dinner time, the genie decided to stop allmunication with the portable home for the time being, it has upgraded to the point is was almost independent, it answered many questions and taken care of the usual business to keep the family from getting distracted during the time where they needed to focus on healing. Most of the calls andmunications were about the same things. Who was it that was buried in the deepest part of the spiritual cave, and who were those people who could walk inside like they did not feel the pressure of the spiritual energy.


    The genie only answered that this information was confidential and if one wanted to know they could just reach the end of the spiritual cave, as for the people, it was the owners of the spiritual cave, and there was no need to ask about their identity, it would be of no help even if they knew who they were, simply because it was futile trying to carry favour with this band especially in the current situation, it even controlled the flow of trade so as to keep the customers from giving too much attention to detail about the funeral of mother Theresa and her burial site.


    After leaving the baths, Yunan spent the night alone with Mary who seemed to be in need ofpany, the two of them left the portable home and found an isted patch of shore before making a small campfire and sat beside it. "Are you going to tell me a story tonight?" The question Yunan asked went unanswered for an hour, during this time the two of them just sat near the campfire and looked at the starry night sky, at the edge of the horizon a storm was brewing, the dark clouds and the lightning dancing at the edges of the storm were somehow very eye catching.


    "You know, i killed my first party, i ended each of them with my own hands, they struggled, they ran and they fought back, but i killed them, i never felt free before that day, and i never felt regret for doing it, it still feels like a dream, just as unbelievable as that cloud in the horizon, it does not affect the clear skies above me, today, i remembered them for the first time since i started the current Debauchery party, i never grieved for them, nor do i n to, what does that make me?". "Human" answered Yunan his eyes flickering with each lightning bolt that passed through the thunder clouds.

 Chapter 325: Story telling

    Chapter 325: Story telling


    "You think too highly of me, i may yet again kill everyone someday, you should be scared" Mary seemed a bit taken by how uncaring Yunan was towards her confession, she expected a response, a reaction, maybe a facial expression change, Yunan gave her nothing, he just epted it as a fact and didn''t worry about the ramifications of her words. Again the answer was beyond her, she should really know what to expect from Yunan by now, she knew, but she still wanted him to react like ordinary people would. "So? If i die by your hand then i die by your hand, nothing to it, still, i have a feeling you like me too much to kill me, the same for everyone else, you like us too much to kill us, so what is the point of needing to worry about it, not like we can stop you even if we tried so just leave it be".


    "Why? Am I worth that much of blind faith? Or is this your version of lip service?" Mary really wanted something ordinary at this moment, "you want me to call you a murderer? Maybe you like a traitorous bitch, i can go as far as calling you a cunt, but what will i gain from calling you such useless things, i like you, you like me, what is there to say more than I trust you with my life as much as you trust me with yours, i have seen you kill before, i have seen you torture, manipte and even naked, what else is there to see? We both know this, you and me, is worth to you more than the lives of your previous party, so if you want me to call you names, we need to go to sex dungeon, this beach it too beautiful for such things".


    Yunan set up a one person bed andid on his side, he opened his arms and Mary joined him, they embraced each other under the stars, she cried until his chest wes wet with tears, and he silently held her close to keep her warm. "you are really bad for me, you take me to such a ce and get me in your arms and then let me cry, you should try to be more romantic and make love to me to console me", "no, i can kiss you but that is it, my wives are waiting for me to impregnate them and i do not n to waste my seed". " I can carry your child too", " no, that is out of the question, if i get you pregnant there are at least 4 guys who will use my flesh for entertainment for the rest of time, getting you with child is a hazardous action". Bothughed at how true the statement was.


    "So, tell me more about yourst party, i have a feeling i should know why they died, it''s a self protection thing", "promise me you will not run away?" "I promise that if i act or say anything that makes you feel distant, not only will i make you my wife you will be the first to have my children, and you will give me a dozen of them, deal?", "How about we just kiss, you want to ruin my body?", "fine, now tell me that story".


    "It started when i just entered the 20th floor, they were in need of a healer and i needed a party, at first i was a bit of an outsider, until i started to shag the leader, it did not take long before i was on good terms with everyone, the leader was especially good to me, i thought that was because i was his woman, i was naive then and gullible too. That changed as soon as we stepped foot in the thirtieth floor, i was no longer the main lover, and things started to go down hill from then on, i tried my best to get his attention again but was failing, one day i ended up offering to join him with his other lover."


    "He had a grip on me and it kept getting stronger and stronger until i could never say no to him, i hunted for him while he waszing about, i gave myself to other men because he wanted their favour, and that hold was getting stronger with each day, mostly thanks to the other members making me feel like it was my natural position to be lower than a ve for the leader, i carried that party until the 40th floor when i became too strong for the mental maniption he has been stacking on me for years, still, i only felt that i was able to think a bit more freely, nothing more, it was not until the 68th floor that i understood what was going on"


    "He wanted to control me to the point where pleasing him was my sole purpose in life, and i found out when he did not bother to hide his use of mind maniption, inside the tent where the party was resting, he talked loudly how his mission was finallyplete, how he never cared about me, and how all of them manipted me into bing what i was, that night i was told that my training would start in earnest, i was taught every killing art under the sun, every tracking technique, everything up to that point was for the sake of turning me into a weapon for him, an heir, i was to be the next council leader in the supreme cult, and he owned me, thus he owned the council"


    " I waited and endured, until the 75th floor, when i was told my training as his perfect hunting bitch was finallyplete, i pulled his heart out while he wasughing triumphantly, he died looking at me like i have wronged him somehow, his retinue attacked me but any who got near me died the same way, i hunted down those who ran away, i killed them all, and i liked it, the feeling of their still beating hearts, warm, sticky and alive in my fingers, i started recruiting after that, many tried to take me in, over power me, or manipte me again, they all died, my first was Lucian, he was dying when i found him, he was betrayed by his party for some reason, I hunted them and fed him their hearts, when he was healed i tested his prowess and found him satisfactory, and from then on he became my loyal puppy".


    "We found Fae inside the stomach of a monster, thankfully we had Anne with us for testing and we saved her, she joined after she proved her worth, Dustan was used as bait while his teammates ran away when they could not take on a boss and Balin was killing his way through a faction when we found him, as for Bai, he just walked in one day and joined us, i was impressed by his ability to sneak into my camp without me noticing that i kept him around, turned out there was much more to the things that bastard tried to teach me, even if i was able to ovee the best, there were some genuine geniuses out there and as you can see, all of them are better than me in their own job"

 Chapter 326: In the arms of sleep

    Chapter 326: In the arms of sleep


    "So even though you beat Lucian and Fae and Anne, they were holding back?, I would expect that from Fae but not Anne or Lucian, strange". Yunan really disregarded the empty details and went for the useless ones. "You see, when a genius is beyondpetition, they start to perform lower than their opponents, they limit themselves, they think if they lose, they would have a chance to gain a challenge even if it was sub-par".


    Yunan nodded "that makes sense, so what made you take in Balin and Dustan?". "seriously that is what you want to ask, why not ask me why i endured for so long, why did i go for the hearts, anything else is better than this question!", "just answer me woman, i will ask the useless questionster". "Fine, Dustan was strong enough to keep a boss focused on him and then escape safely, so much so that his party did not even look back when they ran, when i recruited him i told him he can expect fights where he is not the only one who can take on a boss without trouble"


    "As for Balin, there was nothing to consider, a genius smith that walked unmolested into a faction and was wreaking havoc, i recruited him by saying if he can smith an armor we can not break he gets to be the leader, it was so much fun seeing him cry after we demolished histest armor using bosses, but before long he joined us in trying to destroy his armours, as for Bai, he just joined one day, he sat with us near the same campfire and we took him in, ording to what i got out of him after drowning him in strong alcohol, he followed me one day after i made my way inside a faction and killed my target and left without much of trace left behind, he saw me kill the rest of my enemies, he saw how i fed Lucian the hearts of those who betrayed him and after rescuing Fae he decided to join us"


    "So only Anne refused to join? Also why did you wait for so long before killing them?", "Anne was still in her nude phase, she wasn''t keen on a no sex allowed party so we just ended up as partners, we exclusively used her services and she gave us discounts or we had to find items for her, a sweet deal because now she is mine, as for that, i was in denial, i ended up wanting to see if it was all true, i got used to waiting and when he made his n bare to me that day, i snapped out of it".


    Yunan was really impressed in a way "i really pity you, i am impressed you did not break by that, i know i would have, thanks to you being in my life i don''t have to worry about it, but Damn woman that is some scary skeleton in your closet" that got him a punch in the throat "if any one else in this world said they pity they would be dead, and my closet has no skeletons in it, only beautiful sexy things that can make me prettiest". "Cough, cough, didn''t you want a normal ordinary reaction, that was mine, geez woman, why are you so needy tonight, can''t we just kiss and you get cured of the i-may-kill-my-party syndrome".


    "No kisses for you, just pinches and punches, pee & pee, i like how it sounds so humiliating when abbreviated, and that is what you get for showing me pity". Mary was almost back to her ordinary self after so many years with Debauchery, she just chose to only show that enthusiastic maiden full of life and love only to Yunan, only he did not judge her by the same measurements that others used. "Fine, only pee & pee for me, can i sneak a peek? I think it would be a marvelous sight to behold, cough, ugh, no choking please, cough, i don''t like cough autoerotic asphyxiation cough, cough".


    Mary hadughter tears in her eyes as she pretended to strangle Yunan and he pretended to be losing breath, it has been so long since she was so free to y around without concern for anything, she could do the same with her party mates but she wanted to stay as their Leader, that and the role of young, lovely and lively maiden was taken up by Fae, enough to cover for both of them in fact, but that''s just how Fae was, overdoing it with everything she had in her power.


    The two yed around with words and fists and kisses until dawn, they watched as the sun''s illumination seemed to disperse the stormy clouds in the horizon, causing the weather to clear up in both reality and their hearts. The two leaned on each other as they watched the beautiful sun rise, after the golden globe sailed the sky in earnest the two returned home to sleep in Yunan''s bedroom where his wives took them under a nket of warm flesh and even warmer feelings, it was thanks for the tragedy Mary had that Yunan could create such a room without worrying about anything going wrong.


    As for the loveliest of maidens, Mary, she could sleep in this room sounder than any other ce in the world, here, she could be as vulnerable as she wanted and all she would find would be people sharing their vulnerability with her, just as sleep was about to im her she received a telepathic message from Yunan.


    "If i was half as strong as you, i would feel i did not waste my life under your tutge, you are very strong, even more than you may believe, and if making you smile a bit brighter every day can make you feel better about yourself, than I will call you all kinds of humiliating names, when you get over that bastard''s treason, i would need to find you a good and capable mate, offering myself would be bad, i love my current lifestyle, remember just one thing, as long as you can smile from the bottom of your heart, there is nothing you can''t handle, if you start finding that hard to do,e to me, i will kiss your doubts away". Mary''s response was the sound of a cute deep sleep snoring, Yunan just grabbed the warm bodies around him even closer and he too dove into the arms of sleep.

 Chapter 327: Day 1 as a soul: meeting my god

    Chapter 327: Day 1 as a soul: meeting my god


    It was said among the olden legends that grieving for someone any less than 40 days means that person had no value in your eyes, some extended such a thing to 4 years of wearing the ck and crying bitter tears, people were fond of exaggerating how much a loved one should be grieved for, all except for a small tribe lost in the folds of time, they believed that tears would drown the dead in the river styx more often than they need to be when the river cleansed their souls, they believed that grieving was a thing of the heart, and keeping the person alive through tale and myth would hinder the process of reincarnation, worst of all, those who cry fake tears may as well forbid the reincarnation of the beloved simply because they stopped the journey of the soul on the river styx, the fake tears would create a fake branch of the styx and any amount of fake tears can cause the soul to leave the river and get lost, some of the lost souls never returned. They were right.


    Yunan and his friends cried only once but grief still had a hold on them for a long time, they were allowed to cry only for three days, however, they did not need to, and thus, no tears were dropped by the time of the funeral.


    In the heavens Domain a new blindingly bright soul made its way to the pearly gates, once near the gates it manifested itself into a the form of an elderly human woman, in her hands was a piece of paper that she did not seem to notice she was holding, beside the pearly gates was a small stand where a 6 winged angel was grooming her swan wings, the soul walked towards the gate until she arrived at the post, the 6 winged angel looked at her with a smile, before changing her looks when she spotted the message in her hand.


    Unable to make a decision she opened the pearly gates and helped the woman walk inside, at the same time she sent a request for aid, someone had a message for the lord of light and depending on who that person was, it was a bad idea to keep the soul waiting for the usual check up, the soul was guided until two 8 winged angel came and flew her to a grand pce, she was brought before the lord of the realm still in her confusion.


    Once sheid her eyes on the lord of light Theresa woke up, she looked around herself for a bit, then she focused on the paper in her hands, "you stand before the god of light, worship his holiness, and be granted ess to his realm". The voice came from someone with a big ledger standing beside the throne of his god. "Oh, hi there, nice to meet you lord of light, i used to worship you when i was alive, i hope i did not take long to get here, i need to keep a lookout for my family".


    Some who were in the hall snorted and snickered some muttered some objections while the guy with the ledger started flipping through it, meanwhile Theresa returned her attention to the paper in her hand. "Do you not remember having that with you when died?" Asked the lord of light, souls with rmendations were not few and far in between, but impertinent ones were a rarity, to speak to your god with the mundanity of talking to your neighbor was rather frowned upon.


    "This, i have no idea what it is,st thing i remember i was hugging Death in my dream and then i woke up here, strange, i can''t read it, here take a look" she extended her hand and the card flew to stop before the god of light, after he read it it turned into dust and was blown away, the god of light looked constipated and was about to say something before his helper cried loudly "how dare you lie to your god, you have no family, you left behind no descendants".


    The lord of light seriously felt his heart shake when he heard his helper, he wanted to shut him up but it was toote he was about to try and pacify Theresa but she just shrugged the guy off "blood is not all that makes a family, my adopted son and his wives and friends are the family i wish to look out for, if you have anything to say go talk to Fortuna she is my daughter-inw". Before the helper wanted to retaliate the lord of light stopped him, this woman was really not impressed by gods, had a threat with her from freaking Death himself, and ims a goddess is her daughter inw with a straight face.


    The lord of light was really impressed, if we say that the letter from Death himself was due to her pure soul, then that can be considered propper, her not showing too much reverence and her im to have a goddess for daughter-inw can exin each other, the problem is there was only one Fortuna and she was not the type to be called a wife, thus of this woman had a son who could tame that Fortuna and bring her home often then it was eptable that she did not have much reverence for gods.


    "May i know how many deities have you met, you see i have been stuck here doing paperwork and have not had any newstely, otherwise i would have know if Fortuna got herself a husband, it would be appreciated". The lord of light was a kind and benevolent god, he was strict when it came to evil and darkness but otherwise he was not very hard to deal with, hence his gentle approach. Theresa did not see the point of the question, he was a god, he should have a few friends and can ask about the new and surely he would know all there is to know since Yunan was kind of famous among the lower gods.


    "Lets see, i met Fortuna first, then met Hephaestus, and then a bunch of others, oh right, hermes, Venus, Morpheus, and Death before i died, he was really polite and did not rudely intrude on our feast, unlike some of the ones i named above" the lord of light almost had a heart attack, "you had a meal with Death?". "Yeah, what is so strange about it,my son was giving him a headache and he came by to see if we can get my death sorted out in a friendly manner, i have to say though, for his nasty reputation he was a nice guy, i mean Hephaestus seemed to like him and he doesn''t like anyone, he alwaysins about this god and that when hees for the regr dinners".

 Chapter 328: Day 1 as a soul: god chat

    Chapter 328: Day 1 as a soul: god chat


    This woman was outrageous, you call Death a good guy who was given a headache by your son, you im that He is well acquainted with Hephaestus, and you gossip about a god like he was you friend, when did gods be somon they had no longer any shock value so he decided to ask about the situation and confirm her statement in the godly version of social media or a chat group.


    Lordoflight: @Morpheus, @Venus, @Hermes, @Hephaestus @Fortuna; i have a woman here who ims to have met you guys before, also says Fortuna is her daughter-inw, and Hephaestus used to drop by her ce a lot, anyments on that.


    Satan: the bright bastard''s out of touch again, you seriously should find help with the paperwork, there are so manywful good guys who can help in exchange for staying at your ce.


    Fortuna: @lordoflight take care of my mother-inw, hubby is very protective of her, also can we get permission to visit? It would make hubby happy to see his ma again.


    Venus: @lordoflight do as she says, her hubby is a vengeful dude, very bad news, he stole some of my divinity, sob sob, i still have not been able to regenerate it.


    Hephaestus: @lordoflight say hi to the madam for me, also can we get permission to visit +1


    Morpheus: @lordoflight, be good to her +1 her son a vengeful dude +1 he stole hundreds of divinity shards sob sob +X00.


    Hermes: @Morpheus @Venus, haha i got away unscathed when i had a fight with him, seriously though, dude is very bad news +1.


    Hephaestus: shut up or i will snitch on you, my friend is a good guy, you guys went against him, ask @Death.


    Death: my friend is a good guy +1 i have fought him and i can tell he went easy on you if it was only shards he took, bunch of wimps, also @lordoflight that woman should have a rmendation, so can we get permission to visit+2.


    Lord of light was watching his screen when he felt someone was standing beside him, he looked to his right and saw Theresa standing beside him looking at the chat message "See, told you, anyway, they just finished with the sin scale and i am all good, what next?" the lord of light was feeling really bad about what he was going to say but what else can he answer this woman with a vengeful son and Death as her backer, not to mention both Fortuna and Hephaestus seem like they know her intimately. "If you have nothing to stop you then go ahead and feel free to use the realm as you please, don''t break the rules and have fun".


    With that he teleported Theresa away to some ce in his realm where she was free to do as she pleases in heaven, he kept watching the chat messages go by with many gods and goddessesining about having their shards of divinity stolen but everything quieted down when Hephaestus tagged a very old name.


    Hephaestus: @Dreamscape see what you did, now there are so many gods calling you names.


    Dreamscape: wow, there a built in system like ourmunication system, @Hephaestus, we are celebrating the end of the 3 grief days with a big party, bring Death with you, also if you want your divinity back fight me, Prowler out.


    Yunan didn''t want to say anything else especially to the god of light, he just put the chat on mute until next mention and started preparing for the party with his wives, this party was a bit special so it was organised 100% by family members, it was to be held in the back room inside the spiritual cave so that Theresa could witness the party too, everything was provided from inside the portable home, everything delicious, tasty and fresh was used, the range of dishes, and ingredients was huge, Yunan even took out the special alcoholic Lava wine sealed away because it was too strong for casual stuff.


    Back in the deity chat Hephaestus was called a traitorous mad man for associating with Yunan, no one dared say anything against Fortuna or they would be in a worse case than the lord of light from the amount of paperwork, there were also some dissenting voices, this kid was taking the ascended lightly, not ascending with so many shards was one thing but not ascending with a full divinity is just stupid and shameless. The friends of Yunan were having their own conversation as if they did not notice.


    Apophis: @Hephaestus @Fortuna @Death, I did not know you guys knew the kid, i met him once but its been a while, think you can take me to meet him. He was such a good kid.


    Fortuna: if it isn''t the old hermit, how are things in that chaos? Unfortunately @Death just killed hubby''s mama and it''s not the best time, maybe the party after that you cane, this one is a bit symbolic.


    Apophis: smh, why is @Death is going even though he was the reason for this unfortunate event.


    Hephaestus, @Apophis don''t be jealous @Death is going there just to be punched in the face, when the family gets drunk.


    Death: true that, the food is worth it though, such delicacies, the wines are the best too, and the festive mood is infectious, all in all its worth a drunken punch or two.


    The interaction between Yunan and the other deities as well as his casual behaviour with Death, not to mention inviting Death to punch him, was almost fictional for a bunch of fictional gods, what was wrong with that guy, perhaps his brain was screwed incorrectly or something, the Lord of light was very much in shock, worse was that Apophis, a chaos god, was fond of this kid because of one meeting, this is seriously a strange time, maybe they should get the council on it but the council could do nothing in this case because of who Yunan was currently.

 Chapter 329: Another party!

    Chapter 329: Another party!


    Back at the private dimension, Yunan, Dustan and Balin were making the final touches on the feast preparations,tely they seemed to be having too many reasons to party, a sessfulunch,a sessful business, weing death, sending off mom, officially ending the grief period, it seems like they were going to have some burnout from partying too much. Martin and Markus did note to the party, Leol, however, arrived to give Yunan his condolences and pay respect at mother''s grave.


    It has been a long time since Leol had been with his old friends, currently he was a pot bellied man, with muscles looking more feminine and having lost most of the muscle mass in favour of some decent curves, each of them had a kid beside them, a boy and a girl, the two must have been very active, the kingdom Yunan bought for his friend as a gift was now much better and extremely well managed, it took a few iron fists but it was changed into a safe and prosperous ce, that stability reflected on both Leol and Muscles as they changed into softer shapes and were no longer the threatening adventurers they were before.


    Yunan and Leol talked for hours about this and that, mostly about their lives as kings, each sharing their experiences and difficulties with each other. Yunan was a hands off king with minimal supervision and had his wives as his diplomats, the difficulty he faced was his inability to have urate knowledge about the kingdom and thus improve it, as for Leol, he managed stabilization by political marriages and epting concubines, he was suffering headache from all the drama in his harem as each woman tried to carve a piece of the kingdom for her family, he was thankful for having Muscles by side, especially since she was the only one to carry his children, if his other wives had children he would be closing on insanity.


    Leol was sad that he missed seeing mom and saying goodbye, he even told Yunan off for not just bringing him to the private dimension when the date was fixed, still like brothers, even after being separated for a long time, Yunan was d that his friend did not change with time and the pot belly was all there was to it, the two then went off to see the girls, who gave Leol a piece of their fists for making Muscle suffer with all those wives and concubines, finally letting him go after he promised to separate her from the harem and give her authority over those other women.


    Then they all moved together to the spiritual cave, along the way to the mountain in the backyard, Leol got a glimpse of what he missed out on, especially the trade post and the battle fortress and the mechs under testing, Leol''s kids were enamoured with the ce, especially with Sapphira who let them ride her after she erged to the size of a horse. After reaching the spiritual cave Yunan introduced the ce as the biggest cash cow that Yunan ever got his hands on, he was getting paid to let people sit inside the cave, when he got it for free. Once again as The two males surrounded by half a dozen girls entered the cave, they made a bigmotion on those cultivating inside the cave, after all, it was rare to see any activity in the cave other than cultivation but there were two big events in the span of 3 days.


    The rest of the participants arrived soon after, the little kids were starstruck when they saw both Hephaestus and Fortuna, they have heard the stories from Leol but thought he was trying to brag, Hephaestus and Lady luck were very illusive and illustrious, even the number of people who reliably met them was low, how could their dad have met both repeatedly. The kids were studying in the adventure academy and had been taught well by Muscles and Leol about the things theycked, using the original time table and the published Debauchery manual, Leol and Muscles were able to get their kids to be good for their age, and getting a passing grade from Debauchery party.


    Upon introduction of Death, the kids were like "yeah, right" while Leol and Muscles froze, they were very careful about touching the man or talking rudely to him, that was until he started taking punches, afterwards the atmosphere rxed a lot, Death was very amicable when pumped with the forbidden Lava wine, he drank like he had an unquenchable thirst, and got drunk faster than the rest, Leol and Muscles decided not to drink the forbidden one because if even Death got intoxicated, that stuff was deadly.


    The boisterous party noises made all the cultivators restless, the curious ones almost got crushed by the spiritual energy and were rescued by the genie, others tried to get information but failed, the smartest ones demanded reimbursement for the disturbance, and the genie gave each one of those time out from the cave so they couldn''t cheat an extra half a day, as for the party, it went on till dawn, every adult drank till they passed out and the minors yed until they passed out from tiredness, it fell to the genie to get them sorted out, Mary and Fae were sent to their room, Lucian and bai shared a temporary one, Balin shared another room with Dustan and Anne, Leol and Muscles and their two children were given a luxury guest room, Death and Hephaestus shared a room as well, Luna joined Yunan and her fellow wives in the main bedroom.


    The reason for the boys getting temporary rooms was that they had set their room to block iing teleportation, thus the genie couldn''t send them to their rooms, as for Anne she was sticking like glue to Dustan so the genie let them be and did not disentangle them. Back in his room Yunan swore to never touch alcohol again in this lifetime, not after the hangover he was already feeling take over him.

 Chapter 330: Stepping to the 61st floor

    Chapter 330: Stepping to the 61st floor


    After taking a rest for a few days, Yunan spent the week looking through the diplomatic situation of the Pearl kingdom, it was mainly information about how things were going and the overall situation in the Pearl, especially after the fame that Yunan gained as the monster of the Pearl, Yunan did not change anything in the current state of affairs, he even left those traitorous ministers alone and did nothing to them, which to those people, was worse than him actually doing something.


    Right after finishing up, he took his wives, pets and headed for the 59th floor onest time before taking the first step into the 60th floor, the grim reaper did not stand a chance under the immense fire power of the new Valyrians and crumbled soon after, Yunan got himself nothing this time while each member of the party got something to help them in the path they specialised in.


    The 60th floor continued the trend of being a sight for sore eyes like all rest floors, just like everyone else, the first thing Yunan did was go to the guild headquarters for the first time in years to see what was waiting for him, he found it was mostly requests for certain items or unharmed bodies, and a few other quests issued for him since he was still registered as an active mercenary.


    After sifting through the messages Yunan rented a good ce with a niceke side view. The base was on the shore of a blueke that had colorful eye-catching fished as well as some variety of water nts, on the edge of ake was a soft white sand beach, the unimednd around theke was full of trees and flowers and greenery, one could forget himself in this ce.


    Yunan started his routine, the same whenever he came to a rest floor, first clean up the ce he rented then set up a doorway to the private dimension in there, then roam the floor a bit in order to enrich his own echo system back home, first were the colourful fishes and the water nts, before roaming the forest and finding some mana beings, a rodent that looks like a squirrel and a tortoise with a massive shell, all sporting the same blue color as the mana wolves, as for beasts, there were a few that the genie requested based on the monster encyclopedia in the ck Fate.


    After midday the party had their lunch before stepping into the 61st floor, a frozen wastnd that had nothing but white and and more whiteness spreading endlessly, the main monster was ice wraiths, they looked like icicles turned sentient and were conical in shape and swam in the air like snakes did, it did not improve things that there was snow falling, a howling wind and you basically lose visibility of the white things in a white background.


    Hunting these ice wraiths proved to be troublesome, they were immune to ice damage and with that, the technique of using ice needles full of toxins became useless, fire magic and physical damage did only half damage due to the restrictions of the environment, basically, the cold weather caused a chill effect that sapped stamina and reduced speed as well as the energy in all physical attacks thanks to the massive reduction in temperature and the increased air resistance thanks to the snow and ice particles saturating the atmosphere.


    Lighting and hellfire were the most effective, although using ice spells here was much easier, that property was used to train the pets in the spells with ice attribute, as fire attributed creatures, the pets had it hard learning such spells, fortunately they were taught a multitude of spells by Yunan and what they needed was the mastery and the understanding of the spells. Since the ice attribute was the opposite of fire and they cancelled each other out, it was a challenge to learn for Ignis and Drogon, thanks to his draconic nature Drogon had an easier time because ice attribute was a possibility in the dragon ns, unlike phoenix who had only spiritual fire as their attribute.


    The ice wraiths did not pose too much of an issue for Yunan and party because they had overpowered detection, still, there was a bit of hardship when trying to fight them relying on eye sight, still they had the same weakness as their name sake, they were too easy to kill relying on mana syphoning, still these 2 meter long buggers were annoying to deal with, they were able to stack and condense into an ice block that would be detected as only one creature when in fact it was a swarm.


    The ice wraiths had a white ball for a head, the core was encapsted in the ice ball, it had no organs and only had mana veins, they relied on the body heat generated naturally by adventurers to attack them, the cold from the environment forced the adventurers to generate more heat to keep their bodies warm and functional, that bit of extra warmth was detected by the ice wraiths and they attacked simply because heat was their natural enemy.


    The Valyrians were able to gain lots of ice essence from the ice wraiths, an ingredient previously thought to be useful only when creating cold attribute items or in refining some poisons and other harmful alchemical products, to our protagonist, the ice essence was the source for the two most refreshing items he ever came across, a cold wine that could stay cool while bathing in a volcano and a fruit that will increase the ice resistance and affinity for ice attribute upon consumption.


    The family profits skyrocketed once more, thanks to the trading outpost, the items sold by the family were always consumed almost immediately, the novelty of the items brought out was always something great, Yunan was even think about selling divinity shards but thought it wasn''t worth the effort, still thanks to the ice wraiths Yunan gotten a few more ideas on how to improve his battle toys.

 Chapter 331: Progress is progress

    Chapter 331: Progress is progress


    "Let the MC bulldoze through the floor and let''s see what is on the next floor" a reader might think, dear reader, have you forgotten how Yunan kept his stats in bnce even when bulldozing through floors? Some might call it masochistic behaviour, i would call thorough understanding of the way to strength. Yes Yunan did the same thing he did in each floor, find the easy way to defeat all the monsters to escape in case of unforeseen circumstances, but pass the floor while training all aspects of his strength, that is why a solo explorer like him was able to reach this far, with only efficient effort it would have taken him much less time to focus on only one stat per floor, but would his teachers allow it? even if they did, someone with the mentality of Yunan would not allow himself tog behind simply due toziness.


    And so as part of training he would split the new Valyrians to a group of three, him, the wives and the pets, each of this group wouldpete in the amount of time taken to increase a certain number of stat points, with Yunan acting as coach to both parties to keep the ying field level. Yunan had less time to level uppared to the two groups and had to increase his stats to an equal amount, the same number would be split among the members of the other parties. This was what training with Yunan was like, you have to keep up as a group with the advantage, and he still has a better chance of winning.


    The wives have already been used to certain roles, even if they switched roles to stay in shape and be as well rounded as possible, they were specialist by now, it was not as hard for them to reach the cumtive goal as it was for the pet party, they have very loose semnce of party behaviour and still were individualists, they had a harder time performing multiple roles in the same fight because they would lose focus on training and focus on destroying the enemies.


    Yunan was not the impatient type, he saw his old self and his little friends in this party, ignorant and hard working, improving by leaps and bounds from the vaguest clues given by the coaches, therefore he waited for them to make mistakes to correct them, in order for them not stray from the path, he would drop hints and answers here and there, it was going fine, Ignis was thest among the pets to understand the ice attribute instead she was the first to create abined spell specific for the ice wraiths, she called the spell ''ignition'' it was a wind and fire based spell, it was basically an explosion of mes assisted with a bit of wind to create a shockwave.


    Shockwaves worked against the ice wraiths because of their fragile nature, ice was not a very stable material, it was strong when stacked but it was week to tremors and vibrations, Yunan rewarded Ignis with some time in the Dreamscape garden for her to train some of her newly awakened powers. Yes you read correctly, she had awakened some innate powers. While dragons left behind manuals for their posterity to learn as much as possible, their innate talents were unlocked from birth.


    For example Drogon was able to spew mes basically from day one, flight took a while until his wings grew strong enough, and his other talents were sitting untapped because he didn''t know about them, as for Ignis she did not know how to use me, she needed Drogon to teach her that, Ignis also had no idea what her talents were, but unlike Drogon who was able to practice his talents upon learning they existed, Ignis could not practice anything like body ergement and shapeshift before she reached a certain level of power, in fact her shapeshift was only to humanoid figure thanks to the existence of Dreamscape garden that helped her unlock that bit earlier.


    Ignis has been training her spiritual powers ever since she got inside Dreamscape to unlock her other powers, her intangible form became a spirit form where she was effectively a ghost, her ability to dream invade was strengthened to be dream share, and finally she was able to gain the power of empathy, she now could read a person''s emotions without the need for telepathic links or the usual mind reading stuff, this was especially useful in determining the emotional states of people and monsters alike, fighting an enraged monster was easier than fighting an afraid one.


    Meanwhile Sapphira has gone beyond the scope of powers she was born with, her humanoid form now became four forms depending on the stat she chose to focus on using, using multiple stats was still a thing for the future, she was also able to learn spells and skills that will help her in different forms, as for Drogon he was starting to mimic the style of Yunan more and more, bing almost a copy of his master. Yunan tried his best so that Drogon would not be like him but that path seemed the natural one for Drogon, it seems like the Dragonification was much more than Yunan thought it was, it has helped him the path of a dragon and dragonborn before he even gained the bloodline.


    The style that Drogon was adopting was reckless and self driving, he pushed himself to grow stronger faster, he sacrificed sleep and rest in order to grow even a bit more, that style worked for dragons better than other species because they were innately terrifying when it came to endurance and tenacity, something that was very helpful in making dragons able to do great things. Although the pet partygged behind in umting the stat points they grew in other facets that Yunan had to admit they were really out doing him, Yunan has been sitting at the gateway to reach sage level mastery in his skills, and was unable to break through, going as far as he could to make it so that he was beyond his depth when fighting, still, there was a little bit that eluded him and he had to patiently review all his advancement while fighting, there was minute progress in the 61st floor but nothing much, Yunan was able to sense the gate of the sage level mastery because his mana maniption was already at that point, the only thing he could do other than training and fighting was to seek counseling from his teachers, it has been a while since they taught him something rted to mastery.

 Chapter 332: Too lucky lately

    Chapter 332: Too luckytely


    The time to clear out the floors was getting longer and longer, mainly due to the size of said floors, Yunan was still fully mapping each floor even if he did max out on his stat points, and usually that would get him some nice hidden stumbleupon rewards, this floor gave him a very good thing, it was a birthing nest of ice wraiths, these little suckers were nothing more than mana and ice, they hated warmth and attacked anything warmer than they were.


    The ice wraiths were not living creatures per say, they were more like, magical golems, the could exist thanks to their mana veins that provided some functionality to the icy husk, in the nest Yunan found himself the method of birthing ice wraiths, there was a mana source injecting its excess mana into the ice around it and giving it a semnce of life, the mana source was a colony of ants that lived by devouring ice, the devoured ice would then be turned into mana that would be absorbed as nutrition for the ants as well as the underground echo system that sprouted with them, the deeper Yunan delved into the ant colony the more warmth and variety of species he found residing under the ice, when Yunan asked the ck Fate about the answer was a bit shocking.


    Ice wraiths were identally created to be the monsters of this floor, this floor was supposed to be a warm one at first and full of underground monsters, it was a trial floor that was not supposed to be here at first, during the trials, a species of ants started to take the magical ice and turn it back to mana that can be absorbed by other species effectively creating an ecosystem in a ce where only ice creatures should dwell, the ice wraiths were a by-product from the excess mana that was not digested by the ecosystem and was thus expelled outside of the ant nest.


    Yunan spent the better part of his year in this floor studying the formation of ice wraiths and the ants that formed such a peculiar evolution. Mana beings have evolved to emit mana after digesting ordinary things, but these anta chose to take mana from the magic made ice and disperse the mana inside it, and the other beings inside the nest also evolved to use mana as nutrition instead of rely on biological matter, and since the magical ice was forming without stop, the ants have found and equilibrium between consuming it and waiting for it to regenerate, this bnced system resulted in excess mana du to the limited numbers of creatures consuming the mana, and by proxy create the ice wraiths.


    All the observations Yunan made were used on developing the battle toys, giving the toys mana veins instead of making mana flow in a closed circuit was better for the mechs, since they would be more efficient in using mana and saving much on the wasted mana when it traveled from the mana core to the extremities, Yunan also designed a disposal system that converted magical items into mana. The first test was the guild warehouses, thanks to the great number of adventurers, the guild had an endless supply of magical items that never leave the vaults, and when Yunan asked to buy those warehouses full of useless items he was treated like a god, and got his hands on so many warehouses for cheap.


    Those items were all converted into mana and the resulting waste from the process was fed to the metal ms in the aquarium. The result was a new kind of m that created pearls of a metal that was as sturdy as mithril and as good at conducting mana as gold, this metal also proved to be very easy to mold when handled with mana and would create mana veins by itself if injected with mana. The perfect metal to sit as the core skeleton of the mechs and the battle fortress. This metal was already named by Hephaestus and he called it mana alloy, however the method of creating it was a bit different, instead of the waste of metals that were magically enhanced, Hephaestus made it by cing a mana cluster in the middle of mithril and gold veins andpress the three ingredients using heat and pressure into one metal vein.


    When Hephaestus came to see how Yunan made his special mana alloy, heughed hard at the seemly primitive method, sapping the mana out of magically enhanced metals then fusing the wastes to create a powdered alloy, that would beter fed to ms to create the impurity-free mana alloy, Hephaestus was also impressed with how Yunan was using mana veins like that, it was not an innovative and flexible idea but "if it''s stupid and it works, it isn''t stupid".


    Hephaestus then took his time to teach both Balin and Yunan a few tricks on how to handle the mana alloy just incase they messed up, this alloy was not a sustainable resource and there was no need to waste, especially since they didn''t find the method of recycling the metal as of yet, he also was wondering what can they make with the metal, he created it for some reason and never had to use it again, these boys got it by ident and immediately found so many uses for it, this kind of luck can only be seen in this family.


    After fully maximizing his 18000 points in each stat it was time to teach the boss a lesson, the other two parties have already defeated the boss and were working on mapping the floor for Yunan. The boss was not what Yunan expected to fight, but still it was a very interesting fight for him, and the resulting rewards were even better than he thought, he was getting a bit too lucky this floor, was Fortuna doing something she should not, he was her man, that much is true, but couldn''t she hide it a bit more when she tried to help him out, there will be many gods getting angry if it was exposed.

 Chapter 333: Courting death

    Chapter 333: Courting death


    The boss of the 61st floor was not an ice wraith, well not in the sense of it having the conical shape and the pure ice attribute, the boss was a true ice wraith, a wraith d in ice, the original pale ghostly colour was changed to the icy grey, the blue eyes overflowing with mana remained the same, it had both the sturdiness of an ice wraith as well as the intangibility of the ghostly wraiths, making it very hard to counter, Yunan started with mana syphon before taking the boss head on in a fist brawl, heter switched to his weapons, skills and spells, it was a good practice session that ended with the boss an empty husk, Yunan took away the core and sent the body to thebs for research purposes.


    The chest rewards were arguably the best since Yunan had entered the dungeon, first was a golden book that exins the way to ess the sage level mastery and the divine level mastery without the need for a divinity, this book was what Yunan was seeking most at the moment, unfortunately he was too early to reach those ranks of mastery, ording to the book, the stagnation Yunan was in because his stats were not enough to reach the sage level mastery, him reaching as close as he was, at the level he was at currently, it was supposed to be a thing for those who make geniuses look like dimwits, having reached this far and still experiencing minor advancement was in the realm of the impossible, still Yunan read the whole book and put a task in his mind to work out a solution on how to use that information in the best possible way.


    Additionally there was crystal ball with golden glow inside it, it was a teaching item that allows one to review information as long as they had the crystal ball, the contents of this particr ball was the second thing that Yunan had in his wish list, the artificial intelligence or sentient items, the knowledge showed how the humans in the past created intelligence and how it evolved to be near sentient, it was capable of reasoning butcked the drive to act without specific orders, it also contained the necessary knowledge for him to be able to read and understand the technology they got their hands on.


    Immediately Yunan told the genie to issue a demand for all technology rted to the bygone era, the rewards were quite enticing for something so useless, but who dared argue with a collector, they had money and nothing to spend it on.


    The third thing Yunan got from the treasure chest was the third and final book in the trilogy written by Apophis, this one handled the creation of divinity as well as what Yunan would have wanted to know about that subject, the ability to create a divinity without ascending!. Yunan had many shards of divinity, he could now turn them toplete divinities and have greater control over their domains, with the amount of divinities he had, he could basically have domain over everything.


    A thought then hit Yunan: howe he never met any gods that had control over many domains, he met a few that had been associated with different things but never one that was dabbling in two or more domains, he decided to ask next time the gods came by for a refreshing time. Afterwards Yunan stayed and defeated the boss few more times before heading home, the mapping was already done and the girls were already back home studying diplomacy while the pets were rxing andzing about in the warmer biomes of the back garden, they had enough of cold and snow and ice.


    The answer Yunan got for his question was from Death, the man was having his hair braided by Fae while arm wrestling both Balin and Dustan. "Son, you ask questions that are obvious even to stupid people, focusing on one divinity makes you a minor god, with some control over a domain, having control over two or more divinities gives you the right to create a basic realm, nothing fancy and unable to house souls, you be a mid level god, gaining mastery over 5 divinities grants you the right to aplete realm and ess to the cycle of reincarnation and the office of a major god, anything higher than ten gives you ess to fate and the ability to read it, anything beyond fifteen makes you a true god of creation and having more than twenty active divinities underplete control grants you the right to ess and ability to alter destiny and be part of the high council, to manipte fate like me you either need my level of control over the death domain or at least 30 active divinities, anything higher than that have not been born from yet, thest guy who had 30 dissolved himself in fate when he made a mistake trying to manipte it"


    Yunan listened carefully and picked up on a few things, since there was no limit to the possibile divinities one could have, the problem was in the control of said divinities, there was also the matter of having active divinities, meaning the possessor must have them on at all times, not like Yunan who kept his own dormant.


    "Not that i amining but when did you guys tame him?" Yunan asked Leader who was uncharacteristically snuggling close to Lili for the first time in ages. "Don''t know, we just hit it off after punching him enough times, he seems to be even more bored than we usually are, so why not y together, it''s more fun that way". There was nothing with Leader''s words but then Bai made a more suitable statement "boy, people speak of courting death like it is the thing you should never do, well we are proving them wrong, courting death is actually a fun thing to do"

 Chapter 334: Co-dependent symbiosis

    Chapter 334: Co-dependent symbiosis


    Yunan was not very amused and passed Balin his golden ball of information before dragging him by the beard to theb where the ice wraiths bosses husks was waiting, the two of them immediately started sharing information about the technology of the old era as they experimented with the husks using different things to test out what made it work so well, other than mana that is, since they were experimenting the genie was also included, it was told to create a genie that was made ording to the specifics of the old era technology, if they could make something smart using electricity and metals it was reasonable that the same was doable with mana.


    Intelligence was something biological by nature, it was unknown how single celled organisms were able to have a basic intelligence, by basic here we mean the ability to seek food, tomunicate with the surroundings and the ability to multiply, as well as attack and defend itself from the other organisms, it was a bit more understandable for organisms with a nervous system, because of something called memory, still, even that was only agreed upon and notpletely understood.


    It was proven that being with a central nervous system were more adaptable and capable of learning, than those organisms with less developed nervous systems, but all organisms were able to learn and adapt, some took a few generations of offspring and some needed one event, it was also proven that bigger brains did not mean smarter or better adaptability, but those with bigger brains were capable of something entirely different, invention, the usage of tools was a sign of high intelligence, the creation of said tools was a sign of creativity, andplexemunication.


    What Yunan was more interested in was that a brain free from the need to organise biological functions should have the highest learning ability,munication, creativity and problem solving, but it was near impossible to create such a thing, therefore the artificial intelligence was the next logical step, in order to reach sentient items, where items develop a soul. Yunan told the genie the basic parameters and the required structure to form a super server to act as the ce to house the artificial intelligence.


    After the genie created the basic programming and housed it in the super server, Yunan and Balin started testing the ability to learn and identify mistakes and contradiction in the inputs, as the artificial intelligence was a new born it was taking all input as correct and true, even the wrong and contradictory stuff, however, as it was updated with the ability to apply what it learned, it started discovering these discrepancies and eliminating them through logic, it then started to take its basic logic and update it with the information that the genie had, as a sentient item, the genie had a much moreplete fundamental knowledge base in order to serve without many problems.


    Leaving the artificial intelligence to learn was not something intended as part of the first experiment but it happened anyways, it was even entrusted by the genie to do some basic things, and eventually it was in control of the banking system Yunan was nning to introduce, it proved to be very capable of logical reasoning but was unable toprehend magic, thus it wasn''t long before the genie had assigned it to do calctions and slowly introduced it to magic as a way to convert potential into energy.


    The genie was rearing this artificial intelligence to be a better version of itself, the genie was capable of emotion and maybe swayed by them, but the AI was something cold and did not have the ability to feel and care, thus this worked well for it, the duo slowly were able to share the control over the entire system of the faction, the AI dealt with the numbers, transfer, schedules, pricing, and so on, while the genie was focusing on the human contact and dealing with the customers.


    Within three years the AI was able to cast magic and operate the battle fortress and the mechs to perfection, even going as far as to suggest and rmend changes for the sake of improvement, Yunan and Balin were especially happy with the genie, because it had learned foresight, when they first had it it was a basic interface to keep the private dimension clean and tidy, mana was truly a marvelous thing, the genie itself was unaware of how it had grown, it kept upgrading itself and now that it had learned foresight and vision, it was truly a sentient being.


    This project started as an experiment to create intelligence, it ended up bing something to marvel at, how two intelligent items interacted with each other promoting both into a higher state of being, the AI was now a capable helper, cold and emotionless, able to cast magic through a conduit and able to follow orders even if they were looking to be not the best possible strategy, because it learned about the existence of foresight and vision, ot could not understand how both worked, prediction was urate while foresight was gambling, vision was looking beyond the scope of information, to a possibility and aim to reach it even if the path there was improbable.


    The human factor as the AI named it was a higher level that it did not want to reach, it wouldpromise it''s logic and reasoning, it relied on the genie to do those things, there was a basic form of symbiosis between the two, one was dealing with the hard logic, while the other dealt in the possibilities andteral thinking. It was an amazing feat to create and watch the growth of two co-dependent beings, even if both of them were item.


    That is 3 years in the future, for now the Ai was still being built and the genie was still in charge of most the operations that were taking ce in the still unnamed faction of the family.

 Chapter 335: Stop dilly-dallying

    Chapter 335: Stop dilly-dallying


    It took Yunan and Balin about a week to finish their experiments and conclude the changes required for the battle toys, the nned upgrade was mainly focused on the mana cirction and usage, it was bad trying to fix many things at once so the two chose to focus on optimization of the mana circtory system before addressing any more issues like performance enhancement and damage reduction.


    With that over and dealt with, Yunan decided to spend some quality time with his pets, he has be very aware of the possibility of loss ever since mother died, he has been spending quality time with his family as much as possible, so it was only a matter of time before he took his pets out for a night of cuddling. The destination was the west facing beach behind the bright pce, where Yunan and his pets yed like anyone else would, they fought over who gets to cuddle who, wrestled on the fine sands, swam together and had some good stress relief moments.


    They stayed out ying all day and ended up passing the night outside under the canopy of stars, there was no moon and only stars illuminated the beach in the darkness of the night. Sapphira expanded her size to be as big as bear and allowed the rest to treat her a big fluffy and warm pillow, Ignis was nestled in under a big arm ready to sleep, Yunan was lying beside Sapphira and was firmly held in ce against her belly, while Drogon was wrapped around Yunan''s chest.


    "Sapphira, do you think we should y like this often?". Yunan asked with rxed voice, he was trying not to surrender to sleep but the warm fuzzy fur was very persuasive. "No" answered the cat "you being in my face like this frequently makes it hard to keep up my act of liking you, also how did you and Drogon gets o close without ying all the time". "Leave me out of this, we are not close at all, and we don''t y together, that is for kids like Ignis, as for how we got close without ying, who said we didn''t?". "Grandpa Drogon ying fetch would be a nice thing to see","why do you have to make it look like its a bad thing, i bet you too would y fetch if you grew up with us back then, you may think that fighting every day is boring, well think again, being taught by a boring old dwarf under a mountain is way worse, thank goodness i could spend time with my Yunan otherwise i would have gone mad".


    "I never heard youin about the dwarves before, howe you say it now that we are alone", "because it''s disrespectful and very impolite to do so, even if it was the truth, they did teach me so much and i am grateful", " they taught me lots too, how about we go to Mia and pay them back by teaching them a thing or two, maybe we can even get Ignis to be grateful for them, they may have something rted to the phoenix n in there, they tend to horde such things after all". "We should spend our next vacation under the mountain, i bet Mia would be so happy to see how far we havee in this period of time".


    "Who is Mia and what is this with under the mountain talk?", "Remember when we were telling tales about the hearts of Burkan and how they are bad at acting and what not, well Mia is the heart of the mountain, she lives under the lonely mountain, the capital of the dwarven race and that ce is literally built under a mountain", "also Mia is Balin''s teacher and she is a female copy of him, perversion included, so you would like her just as much".


    "When should we take our vacation then?", "There is a once per century event that takes ce at awakened isle, we can go there to participate, and then pass by the lonely mountain and the world tree, it would be great, that way we can have fun and go sightseeing", "sounds like a n, when is that happening?" "In 3 years time, it would be obvious because all the awakened are called by the gods that week, we get this brilliant symbol on our foreheads to start the summons, you will not miss it".


    "Alright then, we should push at least to the 65th floor", "the mapping will take ages, we can leave that for the time when we finish the vacation and return to the dungeon", "that does not sound right at all", "if we split up and go solo, it can work as both training and mapping at the same time, two birds with one stone", "that''s the spirit, you should never stop practicing a good habit just to speed things up, it''s not worth it, now lets sleep, someone feels sofortable that my eyelids became as heavy as the lonely mountain", "good night~"...


    As the pets rxed breathing reached his ears, Yunan began thinking maybe he should not have brought his pets and wives back to the dungeon, it is true that he wanted to spend more time with them, but the thing he should be doing is to train hard by day and y with his beloved by night, keeping his family safe and sound depended on him, he was capable of flying solo, with Drogon by his side, he was near invincible, for his rank anyway, he decided that he really was putting his family in harm''s way, he could help them upgrade their strengths in other ways, it was simply getting more dangerous the closer he got to the 80s, and with his current knowledge he could make deities out of them even if they were ordinary.


    While Yunan was deep in his train of thought he heard Drogon''s voice in his mind "so you finally found your mistake, i thought i needed to start interfering soon, neither Ignis nor Sapphira are made for battle, your wives should be making children not fighting in the dungeon, your duty is to keep them safe and happy, so get to it, i have a very good feeling about what will wait for us in the 90s, however, there is a chance that we might miss it, so get stronger, fast, and use your full power, limiting yourself like you are doing is only dying the day i get a wife and kids too".


    Finding the logic infallible Yunan closed his eyes and went to sleep, maybe, just maybe, he should have been faster at realising this, no matter what, he was thankful for his luck bringing dragon.

 Chapter 336: Good news and bad news

    Chapter 336: Good news and bad news


    Yunan and his pets spent the next day ying on the beach as well, it will be a good long while before Yunan had the time for such activities, especially now that he had chosen to go back to his solo exploration. He knew he would miss this time, yet he had no other answers.


    Around sunset Yunan sent Ignis and Sapphira back home and brought out Reina, the two of them locked arms and sat on the soft sand to watch the sunset, "wife, i have made up my mind about a few things and you girls might not like them, still, i hope you can be considerate and follow my selfish demands". "Give me the bad sounding news first, hubby is usually not so selfish after all". Reina leaned on his shoulder with a tender smile hiding a secret behind it.


    "You see, it urred to me that i have been projecting my insecurities on you girls, as well as my pets for thest few years, and after some serious thought, i decided to ask you to stop going to the dungeon, i want you girls to stay home, be safe and sound and as happy as you can be, if you want to get stronger, we can do that after i am strong enough to keep you safe anywhere, i think that should be all the bad sounding news".


    Reina still had her tender smile, she even got closer to Yunan, he could smell her seductive perfume wafting about from her body, that was unexpected, he thought she may reject the notion or at least not be bedding him tonight, but her next few words said she had no intention to even argue the subject. "What are the good news then?", "I want to marry every one, a grand big wedding, for all of them, i want to make sure that all of you are bound to me, i n on using the master mark too, i don''t want anyone to feel left out or unloved".


    "If that is the case then i also have some good news and some bad news, which one you want first? You know what, you don''t get to choose, the bad news is we already have the big wedding nned and we are waiting for you to return to beat you into attending, you kept us waiting for too long, the good news is, Kitty was the first to carry your child, hopefully you can work harder with the rest of us" Reina then jumped on Yunan and took the lead while saying "i hope they won''t say anything about this but this is too romantic to stop myself".


    Yunan was already naked when he noticed what was going on, he was smiling from ear to ear like a fool, stunned by the good news, but soon returned to reality when the passionate Reina engulfed him in her mes, he was so happy he didn''t stop to think about his punishmentter for making favourites. The two returned around midnight with Reina as wobbly as pudding, Yunan was happy to see the angry wives waiting for the two of them, he didn''t allow them to talk before he sent each of them to the big bed in her birthday suit and dove in after them. No one left that room for three days and three nights.


    The wedding that the girls nned was family only, even Reina was in a white dress as well saying she didn''t get to make her vows to the master mark and she was not going to be left out of it, the ceremony was very simple, the pope officiated each girl and bore witness to the vows made, Reina, Lili and Ophelia, made silent vows to the master mark while only saying two words out loud "yours, forever". Even Kitty repeated her vow along with them, Sarah finally made a decision when it was her turn and made the same vow like the other four. she could feel the master mark taking over her, but not overriding her like she read about ve contracts, this one was absolutely no ve contract, this was a connection as deep as the soul, when the mark finished linking her with Yunan she could feel him as if he was part of her, and she knew he felt the same.


    She became very jealous suddenly, howe Kitty got to experience this marvelous feeling first, get pregnant first and know their husband the best, it hit her then she was not the one feeling that, she was only happy to make the link, but there were three others feeling each of those three things, Reina was jealous of the pregnancy, Lili was jealous of the fact Kitty knew hubby best and Ophelia was jealous about not being the first to try out this feeling. A thought urred to Sarah she was finally not alone, never again will she feel lonely with 5 warm hearts eternally linked to hers.


    After the ceremonial stuff was done, the party continued as usual, Yunan got his "don''t get cocky" beating, he was sat down and lectured for two hours by a drunken Anne on how to make her disciple big with a child as soon as possible, kitty was taken in by Fae and Lucian and was going under some brainwashing to help make Yunan''s life a bit harder, they wanted her to be the neediest woman in existence, The Pope was happily hugging his to daughters in a drunken stupor while his uncaring assistants were ying a stripping card game against Balin, Dustan and Bai, and no matter how the three cheated they were the only ones losing, repeatedly, Hephaestus was trying tofort a jealous Luna who was not on the bride list because she was too strong for the master mark and was seriously considering shedding her Divinity and be mortal again, just to get married as well, Death was sitting alone in a corner looking very lonely with a certain feisty bird chirping on his head. This family was certainly something that was beyond his cognitive abilities, there was no logic they would conform to, still it felt like they were doing it right.

 Chapter 337: Doing paperwork

    Chapter 337: Doing paperwork


    With one baby already on the way, there was nothing the girls could do but to find someone to teach them how to be mothers, since Yunan had told them to drop everything and just be trophy wives, they decided to follow his will and let it be, until their children were able to climb the Dungeon on their own. After some consideration, Yunan thought it would be a good training for them to work in an orphanage, that way they can learn the patience and fortitude required to have children, a rule to not use magic around the kids was born, one had to feel the pain of parenting to be called a parent.


    Yunan left the wives to their machinations and went to spend a week with Fortuna in her realm, this was decided by the wives to clear up the pent up jealousy Luna had, it worked out very well, and Yunan got to see Fortuna in charge for once, she was different from the obedient littlemb when she was around him, she was a goddess and acted like one, she had her own retinue and some gods as underlings, and the souls in her realm were all people who worshipped her in the same fanatical fervour that the most senior religions enjoyed.


    Yunan had never been part of the paperwork that gods had to do even though he had aplete divinity because the dream divinity was not as influential on the daily lives as the other divinities like luck, love, and work. As the husband who tamed the goddess Yunan was under some scrutiny from the moment he stepped inside the realm, some gods were jealous, some were skeptical and some were hating and spiteful, still, none of them dared voice out their thoughts because the irondy luck was not a very tolerant person.


    Yunan witnessed first hand how his kitten turned into a ferocious tigress, directing the realm and business with an iron fist, she led him to throne of the realm sat him down and sat in hisp, paper and stamps and measuring dials were filling the table beside the throne, that table should have been for a drink and some fruit and not for paperwork and measuring devices. "Start with Hephaestus, his stuff are best dealt with first, oh, give this man a bit more luck as long as keeps working hard to guide his sess, be careful not to cross paths with any gods like the merchants or the thieves, do a ward against theft and fraud for now", same for these three, remove this girls luck with male customers she is about to breakthrough and we don''t want her to be distracted or fall under the jurisdiction of the love faction". That went on for an hour or so, time was not very defined in this realm.


    Yunan noticed why Fortuna started with the work sent by Hephaestus even though she had stacks of left over work from other gods, the paperwork was neatly done, there was theplete identification of the subject, the requested help or the things that need to be changed from earlier cooperation, and finally an observation about things that may interfere with Fortuna, for example if the man was marked by cupid to fall with a certain person but due to his luck he may find two or three willing to fall in love with him.


    Then when the work of the other gods came about she started getting edgy and frustrated, the identification wascking, the requests orints were as vague as fog, there was no mention of possible or existing crossed paths with other gods and goddesses, and there was even some with only a face and a few words, those were put on certain pile in certain pit, the response to those was as Fortuna said "get these into the fuck-off pile", "but these are from Satan we can not keep ignoring him,st time he even started an invasion". "Them send them back in an envelope saying fuck-off, i have no time to waste unless if you want to fill in the nks then bring backter with all the information otherwise get me the next batch".


    Some minor gods who were on the duty of filling the nks were seriously ring at the girl who just spoke, working on filling the nks of the paperwork was something like finding a needle in a haystack when there is no wind and no fire was around, and giving them any more than they already have was just cruelty. The girl shut her mouth and added to the pit already overflowing. Fortunately Yunan was around or that girl would have to do the grunt work for her words.


    Yunan even took the chance to help out too, his stressed out wife was very unpleasant to watch, he handled some minor things about items that dealt with simple coincidences, for example a merchant god wanted an orphan who had an affinity for trade to start his path by a stroke of luck, "make it so that an honest merchant sees him pick up some fallen jewellery and trades with him, teaching him the honest path and giving him a good deal to start him on the path of trade, we need more honest merchants". "This one is from a death god, his favourite assassin is stuck on a mission and needs help, he offered us a hefty price if his assassin sessfully kills his target said one of the helping gods" before Fortuna rejected the deal Yunan stopped her "make his luck better until he kills the target than switch off the extra luck, we only need to help him kill the target, nothing else is our business, it would be great if there is bad luck due to a stupid thing like crossing after a ck cat or cursing a horse shoe, small things like that". Fortuna had a glint in her eye as she passed all the morally dubious stuff to him.


    A case that had many gods tangled in it was a very bad guy, he was cheating on his wife, scamming his customers, cruel to his employees, and all in all a very bad person, the gods were not able to punish him because he had a lucky charm passed down in his family that prevented so much harm from reaching him, this is how Yunan dealt with it " make him forget the lucky charm when cheating, get an angry employee to punch him, the punch only has tond so that the other employees would call the authorities, the disgruntled employee would then expose what he knows, the wife and the lovers would all meet when trying to make sure the guy is fine, the charm would lose its power because the owner did too many bad deeds, get help from karma, they can punish him ordingly".

 Chapter 338: Helping the wife

    Chapter 338: Helping the wife


    Yunan was very helpful with the morally dubious stuff because he dealt with Debauchery for nigh on 50 years, with that kind of experience, he knew loopholes even devils did not know about, word y, double meaning expression, vague phrases that can be interpreted at one''s will, he knew how to deal with all these and knew how to punish carelessness, many gods needed luck for their work and ns, but not many cared about it, so Yunan started making it so that those who do not send paperwork as meticulous as Hephaestus are screwed over, again and again.


    With Luna sitting in hisp Yunan was looking through the paperwork while she was dealing with those who needed to go to reincarnation, so many people ended up in the realm of fortune but not many got to reincarnate with their luck intact,many were stripped of the good luck, or were even given bad luck, some were given good luck instead of bad luck, and many just were left roaming the realm because they could not be reincarnated for some reason or the other.


    "Get this man and this woman to meet each other when they are hit by the love spell, they both deserve it, and make sure that their supposed partners meet someone who is of simr temperament, this guy goes to the fuck-off pile because he asks for too much how can we get these two from different ends of the continent to meet, too much luck would be wasted, it is not worth it even if the rewards are good wait wait where are you taking that one? You have to check each request, the reward being worth it or not is for your god to decide, give it here make it so this girl meets a nun, that will be enough, do you guys throw away luck generators? Wife, how did you tolerate such behaviour, move over i need to start going through the fuck-off pile, these guys are nuts".


    What Yunan called luck generators were small requests that were not very good or had very little value attached to them, these requests would be able to generate luck like a domino effect, one only has to tip the first one and the resulting chain reaction would create an abundance of lucky encounters coincidences and one in a million possibilities, thus generate luck by doing something insignificant, foresight was truly a monstrous talent to have.


    After half a day in the fuck-off pit, in god chat, things were getting lively due to the indignation Yunan umted while inside the abominable pit.


    Dreamscape: @cupid i know you like shooting arrows and piercing butts, i can understand, but can you please not send an impossible request, how am i going to make a the number one racist werebeast fall for the number three human supremacist, they get sight of each other and we have a freaking mini war, if you feel alright about it then attach the documents from death domain, karma domain and beast domain, evil domain is optional.


    Satan: @Dreamscape, why was my request for a blood cult internal war rejected, i thought about cleaning thend a bit, my pits of hell are suffering from insufficient firewood.


    Dreamscape: @Satan no, no blood sacrifices for you until you deal with the bloody annoying devil spawn you sent outst sacrifice, you already have too many devils, the faith domain are asking for a chance to get their followers to meet your spawns, make a deal with them and send me the paperwork work, also don''t forget to include the death domain and karma domain.


    Dreamscape: @everyone why does nobody think about including karman domain and death domain in their paperwork, we work with luck here, karma and death are very rted to it, you have tormented my wife long enough, make the correct paperwork or don''t contact us.


    Apophis: @Dreamscape buddy, i need permission to get somewful good guys and chaotic evil doers to clean up each other, I need the chaos for something, i have the karma and death on board, just need a catalyst.


    Dreamscape: @Apophis sure my friend, as long as the paperwork is fine i can give you a hand, why is it that all gods need a spanking to follow the rules.


    Satan: we evil domain have innate abhorrence to rules, what should we do, don''t make us struggle with our nature.


    Dreamscape: not my problem, your devil kind always follow the deals you make, how about we make a deal that way you can rx about this.


    Satan: nah thanks, i have a very bad feeling about making deals with you, gotta go, someone is making a conjuring.


    By the first night Yunan had dealt with half of what was in the fuck-off pit and had taught the aids his devious ways to get things going, that night he learned that by Fortuna''s bed there was a gauge that indicated his luck, the gauge looked about to burst to Yunan but he was surprised to hear that it could take twice as much, Yunan did not want his luck to dissipate to nothing just because he had too much and asked Fortuna to stop stuffing his luck gauge like that, she did not agree at first but a spanking did the job marvelously. The two of them spent a long week cuddling and working, the tame Fortuna was a sight for sore eyes, and even those who resented Yunan had to admit he will be missed when he leaves and the tigress returns to her seat of power, for now they enjoyed the good feeling of beingmanded by a kitten.


    Before Yunan left, he received a token to gain immediate ess to the fortune realm, ording to the lesser gods, he was needed sorely and will be greatly missed, Fortuna who still wanted some more intimate time with Yunan left her realm with him, and traveled all the way back to the mercantile city of Damask and then to the hill where they first had a date, Yunan and Luna camped there for another long week of honey and sweet passion.

 Chapter 339: Problems induced by beauty

    Chapter 339: Problems induced by beauty


    After returning home, Yunan was urgently called by those in his kingdom who were in charge of monitoring the state of affairs, since he has been out of reachtely, he found that his kingdom was suddenly the most visited ce in the world, mainly because his queens have found themselves an orphanage and settled in as sisters in training, and that was what broke the world. Why would that happen you might ask? Well let''s say Yunan started with a jewel box of beauties in his harem, and after a few years worth of beautification in the banshee essence, they were turned into a collection of stars, since he was with them day and night, Yunan forgot that fact, the fact that he had home a harem of beauty goddesses.


    The news started spreading when the girls left the pce to look for a quaint and nice little orphanage, as the queens of this little kingdom who has been showing their faces to the public on many asions, their beauty has be a national level truth, there was no need to mention how beautiful they were when talking about the queens simply because everyone and their mothers knew that thedies were impossibly beautiful.


    That was when things started going sideways, the information only said that the queens of the Pearl kingdom have just signed up to work as sisters in training, whatever was the reason behind it, manymoners had to see that, that also led to tourists going to check what themotion was all about, the queens were very gentle and took time to talk to the people, share food,ughs and drinks with them, they were veritable angels, and then there was the fact that they did not have any security, for the queens of the country to step on the streets unprotected was a big thing for the lower branches of society.


    Since the queens havee without escort to work in an orphanage, themon folk restrained themselves and did not block the way and were very happy with the curtly smiles and the friendly greetings, as thedies went about their duties in the orphanage, even the criminals originating from the Pearl kingdom were protective of these angels, but things changed when word spread out about celestial grade beautifuldies who were prancing around the capital of the Pearl unprotected.


    Many tried their hand at gifts, seduction, force, status and anything you can think of to woo thedies, the problem was; what was there in this world that these girls didn''t have? they had a loving husband who can be quite the charmer and sweet tongued when he tries to, he was faithful and protective, he was strong, rich beyond the scope of money, capable and most importantly, he provided them with things they didn''t even know they wanted or needed.


    The girlsughed as people gifted them jewellery, wines, fruits and items from their own home, it was like gifting an apple to the owner of an apple orchard, it was meaningless, the girls rejected all the gifts without second thought, even the most coveted beautifying salve was not given a second nce, it was known and proven that queens have abandoned their kings for a promise to wear the jewellery even once, some even changed kings just because the second one had a vial of the beautification salve, so seeing this already celestial gradedies not even spare a nce at such a thing was a wonder, since time immemorial, beautiful women were obsessed with keeping that beauty and youth.


    And then the reason for theck of security became clear, when someone tried to grab kitty who was ying with a child, he found his 4 limbs torn apart and hey there screaming with his blood pooling, Reina who looked the most heavenly among the girls thanks to her half-beast nature did the deed like she was waving away a fly, maybe the man would have had more limbs left if he targeted any other girl, Kitty was the wrong choice, nothing more to say about that.


    Now that these beautiful women were neither impressed by riches, words and strength, it became a contest between outsiders to try and woo thedies and a good pass time for the locals who took it up upon themselves to protect their own heavenly angels, not only did the queens worked as hard as any other sisters, they did not use their own money to splurge on the orphanage, a mistake anyone with less than the purest motives would make, the orphanage may thrive as long as the queens were there, but there was a problem if the orphanage could not protect the money and ended uppromising the safety of the kids, it was therefore the queens asionally bought treats for the kids but nothing too frequent or excessive, they heeded the council of the sisters in charge and didn''t do anything that may spoil the kinds and undo all the hard work done on raising the kids.


    So as the king responsible for the kingdom, Yunan was told to solve this issue, and what would he do? He strolled into the orphanage and just started wooing the girls, he had never done so before, they just became his through whatever was being with him did to them, Kitty was even the one who seduced him, so he thought why not test out his chops at seduction and make his wives feel like mistresses, that was the best way to keep a marriage going ording to someone, as long as the wife felt like she was a mistress the marriage was safe and doomed tost for a very long time.


    To his surprise, his wives were more very eager to y hard to get and make him run around trying to please them, he had to admit, he would never do that, ever, if it was not for his wives acting as the target, he would give up immediately on anyone who was less than honest with him.

 Chapter 340: Seducing the wives after marriage

    Chapter 340: Seducing the wives after marriage


    Yunan was still as straightforward as theye, he could deal with deceptions but wasn''t very keen on ying tricks, seduction was a kind of deception to him, ying a game trying to hoodwink each other, that was something Yunan did not get to practice even after getting educated on it by a bunch of professionals, he was direct and did not beat around the bush, so he approached hisdies one by one trying to see if he could win their affection like any other man.


    His first day, he brought some flowers and gave one to each of the sisters in the orphanage but kept the most beautiful ones for his wives, he handed the flowers to each of them while saying "i am exchanging flowers for smiles, show me a smile that makes this flower want to wither from shame", Yunan managed to draw out some beautiful bashful smiles, from all the sisters, even his wives had smiled for him the same way, he would then make a courtesy bow and offers the flowers to the sisters saying, "a beautiful flower for a beautiful smile", he left that day after leaving a good impression behind him, he wasn''t too obvious nor too subtle.


    The next day he brought with him some puppies for the kids in the orphanage to y with, only those that shared and smiled the most would be able to y with the puppies, he sneakily gave the sisters some sweets to distribute to the obedient children, while ying with the puppies he would spend some moments whispering to the sisters how good they were doing and how their happy smiles brightens his day. He didn''t show up on the third day, on the fourth day he returned to the orphanage after bedtime with some good food to reward the sisters for working hard and being as sweet as angels. Kitty was unable to hold herself and went to sit by Yunan''s side to get some head rubs.


    The wives were getting jealous as of this point, usually when someone is going after a specific individual, they would focus on them, but Yunan had discovered a hidden truth, if you are good to everyone in the circle of friends that the girl you are after is part of, then she would hear about you and your deeds many more times than she will when it is only her in focus, meaning as long as everyone in the circle of friends felt any good feelings toward you, they would bring you up more often, and that way you don''t need to show your face every day, that was the reason for the wives getting jealous, because there were now other women praising their husband and already falling for him. Kitty, an exception as always could not resist getting a good petting when Yunan was praising her.


    After that Yunan stoppeding around daily, he woulde two to three days to recite poetry, to y a doll theater for the kids and pass on hidden messages in the y, he would help out around the ce and wasn''tpletely obnoxious and wasn''t using ttery to pave his way, he would pull the asional bad boy move like spontaneously kissing a cheek and running away, tantly hugging his wives a bit harder than the other sisters, eventually he t out asked all 5 girls toe home with him.


    The girls were staying in the orphanage because they were caring for some new admissions at night, since kids required round the clock care and monitoring the wives has left Yunan''s bed cold and empty, although he was doing well in his attempts at flirting, he truly missed just being around his wives without the need for a reason or another, since Yunan has made it obvious he wanted them home, they returned with him, and then it was revealed that he was the king and the husband of the celestial grade wives, if he could not seed in wooing them, who else could, thankfully, the wives were very impressed and decided to take a few days off from the orphanage, telling the other sisters who Yunan was and why they hade to work in this ce.


    The other sisters were now even more impressed by Yunan, not only he was patient and found a way to y with his wives while the kingdom was buzzing with people going after them, he also took the time to show the same appreciation and kindness for both the sisters and the kids, what a dreamy man he was.


    There is a truth about stable marriages, as long as there was understanding between the two sides of the marriage, it wouldst an eternity. This understanding can be as little as talking about how each other''s day went to simply sticking to a role at home, washing the dishes together, being around each other without having to make time for this and that, morning was the time to talk about what the house needs, evening was the time to rest and rx, or vice versa, the morning is for a quiet cup of coffee while the evening is for working on the problems of the house around the dinner table or what not.


    The understanding between Yunan and his wives was on a different level, each would do what they had to and support the others wholeheartedly, there were barely any matters that had disagreements thatsted more than one sentence, that was what constitutes a sessful marriage. The ability to just solve all problems without even taking them seriously, some might think this is an impossibly big hurdle for rtionships, well let me tell you this, if you can not even talk with your significant other, why are you in a rtionship that is already doomed?

 Chapter 341: 62nd floor meeting

    Chapter 341: 62nd floor meeting


    After a few day of organising the things he had to take care of, Yunan returned to the dungeon to start back on his expressway to the 80th floor, he descended to the 62nd floor and started moving as fast as possible, his primary goal was now to fully upgrade his stats, since hisbat mastery was already beyond the required level, he also did not think too much about fully mapping the floor. The speed route was rather bumpierpared to the usualx way of fighting, he had used his taunts on anything within 100 km and kept moving as he fought horde after horde of snow-daughters, also known as the Yuki tribe.


    Snow-daughters or the Yuki were a subspecies of the banshee and the abominable snowman or the Yeti, they had the ice attribute of the snowman tribe and the spiritual affinity of the banshee, the lore behind these creatures is ratherplicated but can be summed up as follows, during the great mana corruption, the abominable snowman was born from the mutation of a certain poption that lived in extremely cold mountain regions where cold was the year long season, the snowman tribe was apletely male tribe, and they had trouble finding females, their ice affinity was overwhelming even for other worldly beings like subi who could mate with practically any species, the snowman tribe then found the solution of capturing and breeding with Banshees, the ice affinity was not effective against the spirit based banshee and the psychic powers of the banshee were easily sealed, thus the new race of females named the Yuki was born.


    The Yuki were not fertile, the same with the banshees, but magic made it possible for the abominable snowman to enve and use these females to repopte, after some time the three tribes mysteriously disappeared from the world and they wereter on encountered in the dungeon, the most usible exnation was that there was a violent end to the three species, the banshees were able to exist again because they were not made by breeding while the snowman tribe and the Yuki tribe disappeared from history.


    The Yuki tribe, that has been in captivity since its conception and due to the acts of the Yeti they have developed an innate hatred and rejection of all that was male, a female adventurer can walk free in the 62nd floor and go unmolested, while a male would be attacked immediately upon being noticed, any Yuki within 1km would join her sisters to end that man, even if he was overwhelming them like Yunan was.


    Leaving aside the tragic nature of these monsters, they were just monsters, Yunan would pity them, however, he would not show mercy, nor would he give them an opportunity to gain the upper hand. Yunan had no idea why but he was not feeling very good about this floor, he certainly used all his power to speed up his passage and was sessful in umting his attribute points fast enough to be done before three months, still he was not able to locate the boss, no matter what, even if he just flew with his radar extending as far as possible.


    When Yunan was about to give up he was approached by the boss while he was resting from thetestbat, he was sure there was nothing within a certain radius until he saw her taking form within the blizzard and bing a dot on his radar, Since there was no malice in her approach, Yunan did not do anything other than leave his own tent, he was not wrapped in as much fur as one would think due to the low temperature.


    The snow-daughter approached Yunan and ushered at the inside of the tent, he opened the p and gestured for her that she may enter, the warm tent became frosty as soon as the boss sat inside it, Yunan let the p close behind him and sat opposite the Yuki, he was patient and waited for her to speak, she was after all the one that approached him, if this turned out to be a fight or an ordinary conversation all depends on the Yuki sitting before him.


    "Do you know about the cure of the Yuki?" The boss asked and Yunan nodded his head, "due to the vengeful hatred that your mothers had, your hearts are encased in the ice of your fathers, to live forever empty and cold, until you meet the man who would thaw you heart, you would then be a real woman devoted to the man who loved you, if the man stops loving a Yuki, she would turn to a banshee and seek vengeance on the man how broke her once serene heart".


    The Yuki nodded her head "in here, we have no men that seek to thaw our hearts, we are born to fight and die, my tribe is doomed to suffer in this deste ce, we kill and be killed over and over and over, i know that this process helps turn our race into awakened faster, but that is still cruelty to me, now tell me stranger with no fear, why do you seek our demise?". Yunan shook his head and responded with a sigh "there is nothing i seek other than my own betterment, i have fought many races and species along my way here, and i have made friends with some of them, but i can not stop killing your tribe because i try to spare myself the hypocrisy of it all, you did not attack me on sight and here we are sharing words under the same roof, to me, human, beast, monster, awakened or item, it means nothing, i care only about what you show me,e to me in peace and we can be fast friends,e to me with aggression and only one of us survives".


    The Yuki nodded her head, there was no falsehood in the heart of her opponent, and she appreciated that, so she decided to go forward and ask the question she came here for and bothered with all these tests. "Tell me, friend, what is the situation of my race, have we been imed by oblivion, or are we thriving out there"

 Chapter 342: Monster, you know you are

    Chapter 342: Monster, you know you are


    Yunan did not know what to say, he did not have all the answers but didn''t want to sound like he was hiding something or being condescending or hostile, so he sighed before saying "as far as i know your race does not exist in the world where the sentient races live, in the main continental mass of Burkan, however, i can not speak of one ce, the awakened ind, there things are beyond my knowledge, but i can bring out someone who can answer your questions, would you mind if i teleported an awakened to answer your question?".


    Hostility shed in the eyes of the boss as a warning for Yunan, who just shrugged it off, after a tense session of staring the boss agreed by saying "you may, but any sign of treachery will be punishable by death". Yunan just nodded his head and sent a message for Sapphira to prepare herself before he teleported the cat to hisp, Sapphira stood on attention but could not help but rx a little bit when Yunan started rubbing her head, a few momentster the Yuki repeated her question to Sapphira as well, she probably did not think that the cat already knew what she was about to ask.


    "The Yuki are not dead, there are a few dozen of them living in an iceberg as big as an ind, they doe around to awakened ind in their iceberg for all sorts of things, i heard that there was no more awakened able to arrive there because someone was too stubborn and wallowed in self-pity, now even if the Yuki are ready they have to wait for the person to leave the dungeon so the next one could awaken"


    There was a hint of contempt in Sapphira''s words, her target was to make the Yuki feel sadness and guilt, she was at fault here, thanks to her staying in the dungeon, her species halted its advance and could no longer gain new awakened. Sapphira continued talking "thanks to the decline in poption and theck of any new awakened, the Yuki out there are trying to breed awakened with the help of the snowman tribe, their mortal enemies, unfortunately they only sessfully bred more monsters for the dungeon". "WE ARE NOT MONSTERS!" wailed the Yuki, the tent was suddenly frozen and the cold turned bitter immediately. "then what do you call something that refuses to adhere to reason? Even beasts can be reasonable, now tell me, monster who is bringing shame and indignation upon her own species, is it worth your self-pity to let your entire race suffer?".


    Sapphira did not wait for the answer and returned to enjoying her grooming, she was seriously banking on the protection of Yunan, otherwise she would not talk to a boss like she just did, Yunan himself was speechless, the cold was not too bothersome for Yunan, it was only the rage that was filling the tent with murderous intent, both he and the Yuki knew the one who starts this fight would be at a great disadvantage, therefore, Yunan sent his cat back home and waited for a little bit, he did wait until the raging monster calmed down a notch.


    "You had your answers, maybe a bit more than you wanted, but truth is truth, is there something else you require of me? my rest time is ending" the boss turned petrified as Yunan started to release his battle intent, it was an indication that the moment his rest time ends. He would attack anything in sight, even her, and she did not know how to respond, before the tension between the two broke the ck Fate shed a message "dad wants to talk, leave her be and go home".


    The battle intent diffused like it was not there in the first ce, Yunan started packing the tent with the intention of returning home, before he left he said to the Yuki "the kind old man seems to not want you to die anymore, you should be thankful and stop being a monster, otherwise i aming back for you". Yunan returned home to see Hephaestus looking through some paperwork and looking like he needed a drink, Yunan sat beside the man with the newest ice typeva wine and poured for the two of them, Hephaestus drank deeply before putting down his cup and paperwork.


    "She killed the man who was thawing her heart, that got her to awaken, she was not born awakened like she was supposed to, it has been too long and she is very angry and paranoid, your cat did a good job giving her cause for self me, stay away for a few days, push forward if you wish to, returnter after giving her some time to read some memories from the new ones and understand what her actions entail, poor creature, she really messed up and can now only feel much more misery, she betrayed her race unknowingly, but she killed her man knowing she would have to be a monster for a very long time."


    "So what if she doesn''t want to listen to reason?" Yunan asked now so that he would be able to get an idea of what Hephaestus was thinking "kill her if you can, she will not be able to respawn, the awakened, lose that ability upon being born, if they die, their memories are transferred to all the monsters of the same species and her soul would dissipate, after her death there will be a few awakened spawning in the boss room, try not to fight them, once thest awakened spawns i wille by to give them the choice, after they all leave a normal boss will spawn so you can proceed with the usual".


    "I will, hopefully those in the surface will not me her too much for holding back the race, hatred for one''s own species is really bad for theirmunity, especially with the new arrivals, i will ask Sapphira to intervene to prevent something like a civil war happening". Hephaestus looked at Yunan with gratitude, this little friend of his was a little bit too much for the old man.

 Chapter 343: Why must you interfere

    Chapter 343: Why must you interfere


    Now that Hephaestus made a request and all the bases were covered, Yunan proceeded to the 63rd floor where he started fighting the resident monsters, Jotnn, a species best described a frost giants, even though they werepletely different from what the name entailed, they were around 3 meters long and had skin that looked as greyish as cier ice, they had pupils like ice chips and were cold, very cold, they looked humanoid, very fragile and thin and emaciated, they looked like they were starved and weak but had great physical prowess and even greater magical immunity, they were not as aggressive as the Yuki but still attacked on sight.


    Since the Jtunn were champions of physical strength, Yunan used his own strength against them, it did not take long for Yunan to get better at fighting them with both sword and spell, he used mostly defensive spells, there was no need to waste mana on spells that were not worth the effort, the most draining part of the fight was that Yunan was fighting very low number of monsters per fight, even under the effect of the taunt, Yunan was not able to fight more than 5 Jotnn at a time, only when one fell unable to stand or dead would the next one join the fight, stamina was not a problem for Yunan, but even so he was finding it challenging to keep the fight for longer than 10 hours.


    Unlike the earlier floors, he was now able to work with a 100% all attribute buff operating at all times, without needing help from the nutritional Lava wine or the Queen bee honey, he was also able to make use of an effective 75% increase in all attributes, even though the Jtunn were powerful, they were specialised in strength and constitution, they could take as much damage as they could dish out, but they were a bit slow and dumb considering they were a warring species.


    The Jtunn too were slowly adapting to Yunan''s style, they may have been slow and stupid individually but as a warringmunity, they had a very good collective learning process, the more you fight them the less efficient it bes for you to deal with them, since magic was outright off the list, Yunan had to attack and defend without a pattern, something much easier said than done, each creature in this world had a flow, and no matter how conscious they were about it, that flow will take over when in a prolonged contact with something.


    For example, a right handed man will be right handed and would asionally show signs of it even if he was taught with the strictest methods to act left handed, such natural flow could not be suppressed, another example is those who work in a kings guard, they are taught to never move, even the need to scratch an itch is beaten out of them, but the moment they take off the uniform, they will scratch an itch no matter how self-disciplined they were. Nature always took precedence, no matter how much one might try to avoid it.


    Yunan too had such pattern, attack with right hand, move left two steps, feint with right hand and deliver critical hit with the left hand, back off when opportunity allows and use ranged attacks to strike, punch from maximum range then dive in for a superbo, use left hand to parry and right hand to block, such things were noticeable after being observed for extended periods of time, and the Jtunn did not disappoint, they made the observations, worked on the counter strategy and forced Yunan to change his rhythm and evolve his battle style to something new, something where his own flow did not matter.


    How wonderful was the sight as Yunan fought day after day to overcame his weaknesses, how he got stronger with each subsequent fight, if it wasn''t for the fact that they were monsters that would attack first, Yunan would have invited them for a drink, that was how grateful he was for the evolution forced upon him by the Jtunn, making the final step towards the sage level of mastery closer to arms reach.


    Yunan did not stay for more than a week, he returned home to spend a day with his wives at the orphanage and help a little bit, as an orphan himself, Yunan was aware of how to help out without the need to ask what he should be doing, his wives were now looking more and more like true mothers, the only thing different from real mothers was theck of the infinite love spring that all good mothers seem to have towards their children.


    After having some quality time with the wives Yunan noticed Hephaestus that he was going back to the 62nd floor and fight the awakened boss. Today for the first time in years, the ck Fate joined the battle, its purpose was to act as a beacon for all the snow-daughters and bring them to Yunan who would send them to respawn, the more of them that died in this day before the boss fight, the more awakened that can be spawned after the boss was down.


    ck Fate led Yunan through wave after wave of Yuki to a frozen hill, The door to the boss room should be somewhere on the hill, so Yunan started with magical bombardment only unveiling the door to the boss room after killing twice as many Yuki on the way here, maelstrom and meteor shower did most of the damage and the rest was done by Yunan himself using his arms to pound on the ice. Once the door was unveiled and Yunan opened it the Yuki stopped swarming over him and dispersed, inside there were many treasure chests and the boss sitting between them, she was weeping for some reason.


    "I came back for you, would you like to die or do you agree to leave this ce and join your tribe", Yunan walked inside the room in a rxed manner, the boss stopped her weeping and looked at him with fury in her eyes, she was holding a picture of a man in her hands, her tears formed icicles on her cheeks and chin, "why must you outsiders interfere? fine since you came asking for it then death is what you shall find waiting for you here".

 Chapter 344: Respawn

    Chapter 344: Respawn


    "Interfere?" Yunan pumped up his battle intent and went for a close range battle, he used the sturdiness of the Dragonification to endure the harsh cold weather infinitely approaching the absolute zero, even moving was a pain in this weather and the resulting strain was enough to cause even the well fed and upgraded Dragonification to scream in agony as the metal was forced to a state where moving was literally breaking it apart, thankfully this was Yunan and his beloved armour that have been together through thick and thin.


    "You misunderstood even this? I am here fulfilling a request, it has nothing to do with you or your race or your ns, i would havee here earlier, lucky for you i was asked to move away by someone i have great respect for". Yunan talked in the middle of the ongoing battle, the boss was stronger than it should be, just like those from the 30s but not as old. He used some minor spells of confusion and restricting reasoning, he used taunt and his voice mastery to its fullest extent, shattering the reasoning process for the broken boss.


    "All you damnedest outsiders interfere with me, why is it that i must follow your rules instead of mine, i have sessfully awoken in mine own way, what race and what species, we aren''t meant to hide in here waiting to awaken, we are meant to force it and leave this ce to conquer the world, all male kind would serve as fodder for us, they would give us more daughters and awaken them, once the man dies before he loses his love disappears there is no fear of bing mindless Banshees, you want to stop me just like him, you and those idiots before you all tried, this floor is my domain and i am god here, you can no longer be allowed to live".


    Yunan continued the fight without even flinching, he listened as the boss screamed her heart out while tears dropped from her eyes and streamed down her cheeks, he insteadughed adding a few more stacks of mental spells and taunts on her "ahahahaha, you actually had a n? Hahahaha and i thought you were just bitter because you lover had a few more girls by his side, hahaha, i need tough a bit harder can we stop for a moment, i have tears in my eyes".


    This taunt did not go unanswered and Yunan was sted with frozen fury, but he still endured and continued chipping at her stamina and mental condition "a lowly monster like you thought about world domination? let me show you something that will throw a wrench in your ns" right after saying that Yunan''s body was engulfed in mes that kept increasing its temperature by the moment, from red mes to yellow, green, blue and the white hot, the ice in the cave turned to mist and vapour from the intense heat, and Yunan used it as cover to hide and change his tactic.


    Warmth was the eternal enemy of cold beings especially ones like snow-daughters who used the contrast of the cold environment and the warmth of a person to target them and attack, but since this ce turned into a steamy hot sauna, the boss became blind and started taking damage as her ice made body was getting fractures and chips from the overwhelming heat.


    In the fog, Yunan used all the tricks and techniques he learned from Lucian and Bai to make the boss suffer even more attacks, after he blinded her, he used his sound mastery to rupture her now fragile hearing organs, those sound waves vibrating at certain frequency can turn a human into a bloody mellon from the inside so it was a great weapon, choosing to use it to rob this snow-daughter from her hearing would also inflict other damages, it may look like nothing happened but the umted damage did take a toll on the boss.


    Now that her habitat was destroyed, her ability to detect was effectively crippled, the corporeal pain and pressure from many mental stacks of confusion and other minor spells had worn her down, finally under the stealthy strikes from Yunan she knelt down broken in both mind and body, she knelt there with her tears streaming down her face, her cries and wailing filled the boss room, Yunan shut down his heat and let the cold restore the ce to its original frozen state in a matter of minutes.


    Yunan walked to the kneeling boss and stood in front of her, he used his telepathic spells to send her some final words "no matter how in love you were, it does not give you the right to force your delusion on others, as a guy in love, i know very well how easy for delusion to take over, except that i trust my beloved, you have no right to hold back a whole race and their future because some delusion". With these final words he cut her head off and extinguished her life, as her body fell down Yunan received a message, "the name he gave me was Myral, don''t let it be forgotten". Yunan''s answer was still as cold and as nonchnt as before "you do not get anyst wishes, not from me".


    It did not take long for the boss room to start stabilization, the vapour and fog turned into snow kes and began filling the boss room again, Yunan used his automated looting to gather up all the chests and get them home leaving behind only the original one, while Yunan was checking what was inside it he could hear the snow that had just caked over the ground was breaking and moving as more and more snow-daughters were born again from the snow.


    Yunan just put whatever was inside the chest inside his storage ring and stood in ce waiting for the awakened Yuki to spawn, since there was a new wave of bosses he would be unable to leave immediately, he prepared his defenses and waited for Hephaestus, once thest awakened snow-daughters stood up, the first ones havee out from the daze that gave them the knowledge and the memories of their predecessors, it did not take long before Yunan was surrounded even though there was no battle intent, he still did not like the way they looked at him.

 Chapter 345: J?tunn king

    Chapter 345: J?tunn king


    The one who first spawned took a step forward and bowed slightly towards Yunan "a king was foretold to melt the hearts of every snow-daughter in thend, breaking the evil cycle and bringing an end to the suffering of the Yuki, along the years of envement and abuse we have devolved into monsters, this ce has given us some our past back, we wish you would be our king, s, you are not the one, because as long as there are snow-daughters left without their logic and sanity, such king can not fulfill the prophecy, still we must thank you, even if you had no intention to help our race and save one of our own, you did so regardless of your initial intentions".


    The rest of the Yuki bowed just like her, maybe a bit deeper, but since it ended up like this, Yunan sighed and removed his defenses, he could not find in himself to keep a wall between him and such sincerity, thus he sat down and brought out some treats with him, he wanted to replenish his energy and share something with the snow-daughters. "Look here missy, i appreciate your thanks and good regards, so stop with the prolonged bows, have a seat and try these things, you are newborn so maybe you would like what the outside world has to offer, the kind old man should be here anytime soon, so rx and don''t feel to grateful". The Yuki obeyed his words, the thing about a king maybe was not just empty prophecy, if these took him for a king, then he would have a very hard time when he visited the awakened ind next time.


    To stave off boredom and what it might make the Yuki think, Yunan brought out Sapphira and made talk about awakened ind, the factions and power structure, about the Yuki in the outside world and their ways, until Hephaestus arrived around two hourster, he stated that Yunan was a trustworthy and capable enough man to handle the situation, he used that time to get rid of the worst of the paperwork beforeing here, Yunan only smiled at the praise and was about to leave one one of the Yuki asked him shyly "king, when can we see you again?". Yunan did not know how to answer her question so he stopped for a moment before saying, "stop calling me king, it''s embarrassing, you can do that only if you decide to start living in my kingdom in the outside world, as for when we might meet, maybe we can do that on the festival three years from now, i will pay a visit to your ind as a tourist, take care of yourself, and be a good girl".


    Yunan nodded to the rest and made his way to the 63rd floor, he sent Sapphira back who was smirking at him, when he was alone he touched his medallion and Drogon hanging on it "do you think i did the correct thing? I may be growing sentimental with age". Drogon answer came not long after "why ask me? It''s already done so just keep pushing forward, if you look back on things that can not be changed then you will just slow down for no reason, we have a goal to reach, so get to it, king"


    The twoughed to each other and then went ahead to start the fight against the Jtunn this time Drogon joined the fight in his dragonborn form, the duo worked together like clockwork, not a movement out of synchronisation, each move was informed and was the correct follow up to the move done by the other half of the duo, their mental and spiritual link was used to the utmost potential, a state nearing where two beings were almost in perfect tandem.


    Three monthster the two left the boss room looking haggard and beaten up to an inch of their lives, healing magic was enveloping the two in cocoon of life aura, apparently the magic immunity that the Jtunn had was not to defend against adventurers, it was mainly to prevent their kings from influencing the social structure using magic, that was another surprise for Yunan, the boss or the frost king was from the minority of magic users in the physically attuned species, only magically capable Jtunn could be kings and they were blessed with both magical prowess and bodily power, the magic immunity wasn''t as prominent simply because a body immune to magic can not cast magic, notice the words used here, magical resistance and magical immunity are two different things.


    Still the fight went on because neither Drogon nor his master would shy away from a challenge, the Jtunn king ended up being a real challenge. The fight started with both sides using taunts and magical defense, Yunan did not opt for mana syphoning because he was not willing to fight the same fight again, that was to help his attributes develop faster. The Jtunn used buff just like Yunan and was able to use ice magic and wind magic, Yunan was doing well until he realised that his opponent was only getting stronger with each hit it took, it had the ability to go berserk, and that was a big red g that prompted Drogon to interfere and fight as well, the boss fought by using frost armament that was imbued with wind for increased attack speed and ice to sap stamina out the enemy, Yunan fought with lightning and mes, lighting was to cause nerve damage while the mes contrasted with ice and dealt burning damage to the king, the king had some kind of cool down on his ability to create those ice armament, Yunan and Drogon fought many turns of meleebat with the boss as it waited for the cool down to end, by the end of 5 hours of intense back and forth, the boss finally dropped dead, its healing was not able to keep up with the damage while Yunan and Drogon had endless supply of healing items and mana to heal each other.

 Chapter 346: Baby proofing

    Chapter 346: Baby proofing


    Inside the chest Yunan found himself some good things, the usual golden book and a few more items. The golden book was titled "myths of the nords", it was about the creation of an old era pantheon called Asgard, it was a basically a conglomeration of 9 realms under the rule of many deities, this realm went through a cleansing process called Ragnarok, where the 9 realms are destroyed by the hands of many things, a giant serpent, an immortal wolf, a few demons and giants. The cleansing was how the 9 realms sent their current inhabitants to reincarnation, some of the beings who were in those realms have been brought here after they lost their reasoning, a theme that was repeating itselftely.


    Other then the book, There was also a full body armour made entirely of ice, it was enchanted with many juicy enchantments that added to the already huge library Dragonification had. Other than that, there was a crystal looking ball, and some other misceneous items. After having been through thest few floors, Yunan felt like his Dragonification was getting a bit too fragile and was in need of strengthening, it had nothing to do with durability, it was mainly because it wasn''t supposed tost this far, the armour was made to deal with things in the earliest floors, neither Balin or Mina could hope it wouldst this long.


    Yunan has been feeding it every single thing he killed and didn''t use, all kinds of items, metals, nts, monster cores and corpses, it was basically the biggest investment that Yunan had, the problem was not in the food, the problem was in the building blocks, now, with all that Yunan was able to achieve at this moment, he believed he could make his beloved armour even more formidable after reforging it and making the foundation even better.


    It has been about 6 months since Yunan got his good news, Kitty has gotten big and round and looked even fluffier that usual, she was now forbidden from leaving the private dimension by her own sisters, she was to be escorted at all times by a midwife and one of her sisters, the rest were taking turns at 6 hour intervals to secure mental acuity if anything were to happen, then only exception was when Yunan was there, only he would be with her.


    Upon returning from theirtest slog fest, Yunan and Drogon dove immediately into the cleaning baths and sat there enjoying the feeling of their bodies getting cleaned up from all the traces left by the battle, as soon as the healing process ended and they were just enjoying a bath, both of them were taken out and brought out to give Yunan his newest husband task, he must make a baby room, fill it with toys and cute cloths, he had also to baby proof the main parts of the house.


    As always Yunan was left without choice in the matter, even if he was able to do it the day of the birth, he had to get the approval of everyone before the baby was born, this time however Yunan took a stand for his own and demanded that he should finish working on the Dragonification before doing anything else, he was looked at with weird gazes, three months or less in baby terms was considered as short as three hours, they were already running out of time and he was thinking about his armour, well, that stance did notst long, it took precisely a re and two punches and a single p on the back of the head, he then proceeded to do his job as a husband and father like any other father, doing what he must while leaving behind what he wants.


    The baby proofing was tedious work, round up all sharp edges, seal all small spaces where a child might crawl into, under the beds, under the sofa, the chairs, the kitchen was deemed still too dangerous even after baby proofing it, all drawers and cabs were turned into storage spaces, everything that can fall or reached was bolted down, all sharp objects and storage spaces required permissions to use, but still the possibility of danger was still there, all courtesy of paranoid Reina who was already overprotective of the unborn baby, in the end, the baby was only allowed where others would be at all times. Meaning it could never wonder outside of the room it was in with someone, but still, Yunan took extra care with the items around the house even securing some magically.


    The toys for the baby were all made from the best natural materials, tear and wear resistant, fluffy and stringy, as well as cushioning, the baby could fall on the toys, chew on them, bite, pull and do as the bay felt like, in order to exercise its imagination, some of the toys were fitted with some bells and chimes as well as stic like materials, so that it made sounds when it was touched or squished, this baby had a total of 14 parents, it got all the stimulus under the sun.


    Since no magic was allowed around the baby, many items were produced to be without any magical power in them, luminous pearls were made into a night sky like ceiling, fluorescent light bulbs were made from some phosphorescent material to create light instead of the mage lights that were used since the beginning, the clothes were tailored using some very durable and pliable metal alloys that were first made into strings and then woven with other types of silk, cotton and fur to provide optimal and healthy clothing.


    The wardrobe was filled with light blue and white clothes, all treated to never stain and clean themselves periodically, there were also coats and onesies that were especially made so that the baby can y in the mud as well as stain itself without second thought, once the wardrobe was given the agreeable stamp, it was time for Kitty to give birth to the number one priority in this house for the next decade or so.

 Chapter 347: High priority VIP arrived

    Chapter 347: High priority VIP arrived


    The first signs ofbor were getting closer and closer, ording to the multitude of midwives under the employment of the family, it was a bit too much for that many midwives to be on call, but since the family was generous in payment they did not act out of order or try to hog the work, they focused on the cat inbour and bringing the baby out as safely as possible. The midwives were magically able and could extract the baby artificially through caesarean section if natural birth became a risk to both lives.


    Through the soul link Yunan could feel the pain that Kitty went through as thebor started going in earnest, thankfully, he could share with her his pain tolerance, and help her tide the through the worst of it. You were expecting a through exnation of child birth? Unfortunately i am a man and have no idea what childbirth feels like, obviously, well, how about I show off the scientific knowledge i have and umted about the subject after a week of research, no, no, i am a man, not the best to talk about childbirth, so i am not going to even try something like that, the sjws will hang me if i do.


    So the baby came healthy and with a very good vocal box and was fitted with some very powerful lungs, the baby was a girl she had blood scarlet hair and two cute cat ears on top of her hair, there was also some other fine scarlet hairs here and there on her body, she had aqua blue eyes and looked as adorable as a kitten, her name was immediately decided to be something with Cat in it, so after little deliberation "Catelyn" was the name she was dubbed with.


    Yunan was a bit disappointed that she did not gain any of his extra bloodlines, he would have loved to share both of them with her, but maybe it was not meant to be, Catelyn was the first child and her gifts were all things beyond the imagination of ordinary people, she was given more love than she could handle and even more treasures to y with, even the deities came to pay their well wishes, from her mothers, she got some rather quaint little pieces of jewellery, mainly a ne, an anklet, a bracelet and a pair of earrings.


    From her daddy she got a crystal ball to hand on her ne, it was embedded with all the luck Yunan had when she was born, it was designed to be absorbed into her body giving her some godly luck to grow with, from her Luna she got a crest imbued with powerful divine power that would divert away all harm that would she might encounter, Yunan estimated that she would be safe even in the 50s of Tartarus. The gift Catelyn received from Hephaestus was something that Yunan was unable to identify, Hephaestus said that she would know what it was when the time came, even death brought her a flower that ording to him would take all injury and illness instead of her, as for the two elders they each gave her a blessing, they kept it to themselves, it would be bad if they had the kidspare with each other.


    After the kid arrived Yunan starting to spend his nights back at home again, the feeling Yunan got as a father whenever he picked up his daughter or held her to sleep was beyond imagination, there were no words to exin such a feeling, it did not help that the little kid knew her father and would always act up and react to him, making him even feel that the time he was spending fighting was a waste, time was precious with his daughter arriving in this world, after the first month he decided to spend the day time with his family and the night in the dungeon fighting like a maniac with all his power.


    The kid was a star at home, it was as if the entire universe rotated around her, Balin and Dustan had turned into her most obedient ves, Fae and Mary were so excited to see her after each long day in the dungeon, they cited her as the primary reason they were able to return on time everyday, Lucian would literally turning yo her guardian angel, it didn''t help that Catelyn was taken by him as well, Bai on the other hand just watched from afar and took all the safety measures known to him when she was around.


    She is just a kid you might say, well, yeah, of course she is just an ordinary kitten, except that she is the first actual life to be born in the great Debauchery family, making her the focus of everyone for the time being, you might argue that kids were everywhere, still, a kid you witnessed being born and grown from a belly bump is not the same as an already grown up kid you get to meet, one would melt your heart and the other would just be cute and a novelty for some time.


    Cat was definitely the type to melt your heart and stamp her own image on it, just in case you were not in love with her from the first nce, Yunan did not even remember the time he spent dealing with the Yetis on the 64th floor from how much bliss he felt upon returning home to the smiling face of his daughter, just then he felt like he knew what it felt like to be a father, all his suffering and pains would be disintegrated into nothing with a simple smile from his daughter.


    When the little girl had just turn 6 months old, Fortuna came in with a pretty great news, the lord of light has given her a few admission tokens so that Yunan, Catelyn and Kitty could get inside the realm of heaven and get to spend half a day with mother Theresa. Catelyn would be able to disregard Death as she grows up, how good it would have been if we too grew up in a world where you get to see your dead grandparents after submitting a request to a god.

 Chapter 348: VISITING HEAVEN

    Chapter 348: VISITING HEAVEN


    Mother Theresa was a good person when she was alive, when she came to heaven, she barely enjoyed her new found life of luxury while awaiting for reincarnation, she spent most of her time on watching the daily lives of her family, sharing theirughter and joy, she was extremely happy to know that the way they grieved for her was exactly how she imagined it would happen, it was deep inside their hearts, the only difference about them was a few times where liquor was the main drink of choice but those passed away fast as well, even Death was now a regr visitor. Time flew fast since then.


    As a soul, she couldn''t express as much emotions as ordinary people, heaven was a temporary residence that offered every possible thing one might have missed on in life, contrary to that, hell is a realm of endless agony and perdition, even the staunchest believers in the devil were subjected to the same things, simply because what the demons and devils promised wasn''t theirs to give, the sole and absolute ruler of the nine hells was Satan and he never promised not to give someone endless torture down those fiery pits.


    Theresa was happy about her first grandchild being born, she also had a few choice words for Yunan about the name he chose, unfortunately, she was unable to make contact and could only watch from where she was, ording to some of the residents who were watching their own home, there was a way to get into contact after death but that was only for the most pious and the highest achieving worshippers. Theresa knew better than anyone that her son would find a way toe find her sooner orter, he was after all acquainted with enough powerful gods and was almost a god himself, so she was not overly concerned about it.


    One day, she was contacted by some angels to "heed the summons of the lord", she snickered to herself thinking that maybe the uptight god should spend a day watching Debauchery have fun, at worst he will loosen up, at best he might be a cool god, still, she followed behind the rigid angels to the hall of her god, after she got inside, she was left only with her lord and his assistant, she didn''t bow nor look smug, she just waved at them both "hello! Is there something that you need from me, your worship".


    The aid was already frothing at the mouth and about to say something when the lord of light just waved him off "there will be some peopleing to visit you, they are waiting for the summons at the moment, i want you to answer me one question, why should i allow them toe here?". Theresa smiled gently "because my son will force his way here someday to see me before i reincarnate, that would be bad for only one of you, and it''s not going to be him taking losses, however, my son would never forget the favour if you took the initiative to invite him, he might not be a believer, but he sure is raised to have a code and a moral standard, so, unless you send me to reincarnation as soon as possible, i will get to see my son, your will wouldn''t matter then"


    This time the assistant was frozen with his jaw unhinged and dangling, although there was threats and sphemy against his god in the words Theresa spoke there was nothing suggesting it was anything but truths, the lord of light was even more certain because he was the subject of worship, he could read Theresa''s inner thoughts and tell if she lied or not. By the time both of the assistant and his lord got their minds back to work, Theresa was looking around with disinterest at the magnificent hall.


    "Seriously, how troublesome can that brat be, in any case, this maybe the only time something like this will happen so enjoy it as much as you can, you have half a day, here theye" then in a bright pir of light she saw her son, daughter and granddaughter materialise into being. The first thing she asked as her son and daughter moved in for a hug was "did you die? If you killed my granddaughter before she even started her life, even reincarnation will not save you!"


    "Rx mom" said Yunan as he gave his mother a good hug "no need to worry, we got tickets and invitations to get here, no death was involved, even if something happened like that we can just make Death help out, forget about how we got here, don''t you want to see your granddaughter?" Yunan took a kiss to the forehead and gave up Catelyn to her grandmother, he watched as the overflowing love he was used to just got a power up and turned to something almost tangible.


    Theresa took her time singing blessings of motherhood to the little girl, she knew that no one would teach the parents how to do something like that. She learned those prayers from her mother, and people like the Debauchery family had no older generation to tell them the customs of old, so she took it upon herself to provide that information for them, two hours of intense dos and don''ts about everything she could remember about child care.


    The rest of the time she discarded Yunan and Kitty and just yed with the baby in her hands, she only surrendered the kitten back to her mother only for feeding or diapers changing, otherwise she showed her kids by example how to y with the baby correctly, both Yunan and kitty took notes, although the visit wasing to an end, mother had abandon both of them because the baby was the cutest thing ever and neither of the parents couldpare no matter how you look at it, still it was a good visit full of joy and good feelings, before she hugged everyone goodbye, she told Yunan to "take it easy on the lord of light, he was not a bad god, he was just too uptight and dull, but since she had nothing to gift her granddaughter, she took the chance to see her as a gift from the god". Yunan did not act out of ce, but deep down he knew this invitation was extorted and not a gift.

 Chapter 349: reforged

    Chapter 349: reforged


    After returning from heaven, literally, Yunan took a week off before he went off to finish the 64th floor and advance to the 65th, the Yeti tribe or the snowmen were magically talented and brutish looking, they were most gifted in creation magic which suited their ice affinity just nicely. Creation magic is the type of magic that one would use to create or shape something, it was not creating something from nothing, it was more like taking an element and using it to do your bidding.


    Other than that, the ape like beings were blessed with high agility and dexterity, they always attacked in packs and always had at least 3 active magicians at any time, Yunan thought depletion of mana would make the fight easier but he was wrong, without mana, all the Yetis coordinated to attack, since magic was no longer on the table they started using other methods, if Yunan was swarmed by too many of them and there was no space, some would break the ice and use the shrapnel for ranged attacks, they didn''t just rely solely on melee and magic.


    The boss of the Yetis had an army under him, killing it wasn''t possible unless one killed most of the army, even ranged attacks would be taken by the minions, feeling a bit rushed, Yunan used his own ice magic to create endless finger sized needles and send them flying to hit the ears and eyes of the Yeti and then subsequently reach inside their brains and detonate for a fast paced killing, thankfully the boss was more concerned about ordering its troops to charge and overwhelm that it didn''t mind about the fallen ones, it didn''t take long before the boss was naked and trying to recruit even more soldiers, Yunan ended the cowering king in a storm of lighting.


    From the boss he got a chest full of materials and no books this time around, so he decided to return home to work on upgrading his Dragonification, he prepared all the things he needed and went inside the forge with Drogon in tow, Drogon melted the armour with his mes and Yunan started adding all kinds of rare and valuable items to the armour, it took about a week for the armour to stabilize, then Yunan added as many of his enchanted pearls as possible, the enchantments being added each left a small mark on a greater magical circle, the magical circle engulfed the melted armor and that took almost a month for all those to take effect,stly Yunan added some cores, some mana clusters and a piece of spiritual stone from the spiritual cave.


    That was not all, now Yunan had to manipte all of it to shape up as an armour, then make sure the basic weapons were part of it, adding a few more enchantments by his own hands, pouring some luck into the mix and then make it so that this entire thing can fit in a medallion without losing its storage space and other functions. Once the armour waspleted, Yunan added a mana link so that the armour would respond only to himself and a spiritual link so he may activate it from distance.


    After the armour was done, Yunan went ahead to test it and found that the armour had grown so much, he could; without any effort from himself, wreak havoc in the 64th floor, all his automated skills were boosted by at least two fold, for example his maximum detection range used to be at 1000 km sustainably and about 30000 km in a big burst, now he was able to reach the 1500 km range without even spendings half the usual mana and could reach aplete 100000 km in a big burst. The effective range of all his battle abilities like mana syphon was increased to 200 km.


    Not only that, the armour was also able to enhance his shapeshift abilities, his tentacles and feelers could now reach further, act faster as well as be more urate and precise, his wings could now be armored too, the istion effect from the world was now selective and responded to the user about what to let in and what to keep out, this armour was now overpowered and terrifyingly so.


    After spending his time in the forge for too long, Yunan got out in time to see his daughter take her first step, he yed with his daughter for some time, this blissful time was like a cleansing process for him, Yunan would never have thought a rigid and inflexible person like him would get to enjoy the peace and the rity of mind he experienced with his daughter, in fact he felt that this has started long ago with the establishment of his little family.


    After getting enough happiness in him to face the next hurdle Yunan descended to the 65th floor, he found himself standing on a floating ind, with nothing but cold and what he assumed was snow clouds everywhere, there was nond in sight, any one who stepped into this ce without knowing flight or levitation was stranded, the nearest cloud was about 500 meters away, and the clouds were near-enough solid that one could step on them with enough agility but standing or resting on one was impossible.


    Inside the clouds Yunan picked up life forces that belonged to unborn and underdeveloped creatures, however, there was no difference between the surroundings and the rest of the clouds, upon approach he was ambushed by the monsters of this floor, Stormbirds, a falcon-like avian with a body madepletely from condensed vapour, literally a cloud taken form, each had a core that was embedded in its forehead, the core held the cloud in shape with arcs of lighting shing asionally.


    These avians were able to use lighting and ice magic and had the purest form of lightning Yunan hade across, after dealing with the ambush, Yunan had to calibrate his detection to find those shes of lighting each Stormbird had, after looking closely in the clouds he could find nests and eggs, the eggs had a shell of ice and was suspended in a light web of ice threads that seemed to originate from the cloud itself.

 Chapter 350: Stormbirds

    Chapter 350: Stormbirds


    The Stormbird made its nest inside snow clouds, the heaviest and most tangible clouds, since these clouds were maintained by Tartarus, it was possible to nest in them since they would never disappear, the Stormbird would weave ice and lighting to create a very light webbing that can float inside the cloud, not too heavy so it would not fall with the precipitation, nor too light so it will not float on the cloud visible to harm, the nests were spread out so that it may be able to support the weight of the eggs, the hatchlings would be born able to fly and fend for themselves almost immediately.


    Unlike other adventurers who would destroy all the eggs when there was a chance, Yunan sent the ones that did not have any formed fetus for his wives home to try and cook, as for those that had Stormbirds in the midst of forming, he broke on his own and consumed, it has been a very long time since Yunan added to his arsenal of monster traits, this time he was seeking the ability to turn into a cloud, he was driven to that point because it was near impossible to gather the remains of adult Stormbirds after they dissipate when they die.


    After Yunan gained his ability, he started sending all the eggs home, Catelyn was in love with them and as all spoiled children she had the best ones, the rest that she did not eat was then given to the rest of the family or the fermentation pits. Cloud wine and cloud fruit were something miraculous, they had an enormous ability to help recover lost limbs and flesh, the process was not possible without magic to boost the growth of the lost body parts, but things as small as fingers or toes would be regrown naturally by the end of a week.


    The genie did not even need to advertise this one for it to be sold out from the shelves, ever since the beauty salve, anything that was put on sale with the trademark of the trade post, was to be bought first and then questionedter.


    The ability for regrowth was not new to Yunan, he had some great number of methods to regenerate both naturally and magically, but this new ability that he gained inadvertently was really impressive, of he lost any limb or something like it, he would need to only consume enough nutrition to rece it, turn his body into a cloud and them wait for a few moments before bing as good as new, it also helped that he could y with his daughter using limbs made of clouds and not worry about anything getting lost, or him being too rough with his little angel.


    The Stormbirds were not easy to deal with, mana syphon would turn them to their original form instead of killing them, that gives them a big boost in speed and agility, they would use their wings as des and dive in on Yunan to slice him apart, their wings were able to scratch the new Dragonification even though it was unable to pierce it or destroy it, the Stormbirds original form was a pale falcon made of ice, their cloud form had great ability to escape from being hit while their ice form had great ability to pierce, slice and deal damage.


    Basically there was no trouble free way to eliminate these monsters, the fastest way Yunan found was to use wind and heat magic, creating a hot air draft made the cloud form dissipate forcing the Stormbirds to use their original form and then struggle with the hot wind, as falcons, the Stormbirds had the ability to sense and find the rising hot air drafts to fly higher and faster, but since Yunan was using this natural phenomenon as a weapon, the falcons would instinctively allow the wind to take them away, most of the time the winds just pushed them into a trap where Yunan''s tentacles grabbed them and crushed them to death.


    The Stormbirds were rather small for monster bird pray, they had a wingspan of 6 meters and 2 meter long bodies, these things were so fluffy Yunan wanted to tame one as a ride for his daughter, s, even newly hatched, the Stormbirds were aggressive and unresponsive to treats and taming, Yunan had to stop his trials with disappointment, and went out ahead to fight the boss after only 4 months, devouring so many Stormbirds eggs helped him gain the points faster along with the abilities he desired.


    The boss was only twice as big as the ordinary Stormbird, it was capable of using ice, wind and lightning magic, making it a bit harder to deal with, its arena was also a foggy stretch of sky where it could y hide and seek indefinitely, after a bit of thinking Yunan just blew away all the fog and started using his immtion spell to heat up the surroundings so that the fog wouldn''t gather again, he then used mage light and fireball to create floating fireballs that further raised the temperature of the arena, this caused a very turbulent weather and eventually the arena was surrounded by a hurricane while the two were battling making the wind element stronger and a bit harder to control. The boss fell eventually to needles full ofva that literally melted it from the inside out, theva needles were another merged spell, ice needles to break the ice body and the inside was filled withva that would be spread inside the body upon impact.


    To Yunan''s happiness the boss arena was filled with treasure chests, he wouldter on ask about the floor in the guild and would be told that only those who had the wish to train their aerialbat were rmended to enter the floor, the rest were told to just skip it to the 66th because it was possible to gain the difference in the stats through party strategy. Among the items Yunan found was arger egg of Stormbird and a manual on hatching eggs to be mounts.


    Yunan immediately consulted the ck Fate. The response was. "Storm birds can not awaken naturally, they must be raised in a certain way from before they hatch, once an awakened Stormbird hatches, it will follow a master just like Dragons and Phoenixes, except that it would follow the orders of the one that hatched it, it is the most loyal mount you can find in the Dungeon and they can keep growing stronger if you feed them higher level ingredients".

 Chapter 351: cloud mounts

    Chapter 351: cloud mounts


    Yunan immediately started working on hatching the egg he had, and kept challenging the boss again and again until he got a mount for everyone in the house, the awakened Stormbirds were called cloud falcons and were very smart, Catelyn was basically living in the rookery Yunan made for the falcons to stay in, the falcons were good at ying with her and taking her to fly every now and then, since Yunan was not really expecting to farm the boss endlessly, he asked Martin about the Stormbird boss eggs, there was a big warehouse full of racks upon racks of eggs, the guild has been buying these eggs and storing them, waiting for the day where these eggs can be useful, since it was nigh impossible to break them and no value woulde of it, they have been stockpiling the eggs because they didn''t have a clue how to use them, they only knew it was valuable.


    Martin sold all those eggs to Yunan at cost, but regret filled him like never before when he was given a strong cloud falcon to be his mount, the falcon was trained to change its size to suit the indoor life of both Martin and Markus, each falcon was taught aggressive, defensive and healing spells that would help out immediately in case of danger. Thanks to the management help of the genie, all the cloud falcons were born healthy, were well fed and taught useful spells, those were the ones used by the family, the rest that would be sold off were only trained to obey and behave.


    As you would expect, since both Martin and Markus got their paws on a cloud falcon, they never used teleportation again, teleporting was grand and magical, but arriving on a 12 meter winged cloud was majestic and Luxurious, your prestige would rise by 100 from having it on your arm or shoulder, it would, however, rise by 1000 points if you rode it like any other mount, and since the two were giving Yunan free advertisements, they were given a few more treasured items, at this point in time, those two friends were the only people in the outside world who would share their wines like it was not a problem to get even more of them, the lotus fruits and the associated Lava wines never grew scarce on their tables.


    Even before the cloud falcons were put on the shelves of the trade post there were pre-orders for them, some even imed they were ready to pay 100 times the cost of production, the estimated production costs these people came up with was actually enough to cover all the losses and time expenses a few dozen times over, of course Yunan wouldn''t dere his costs, and just enjoyed the look of his storage rooms getting refilled after Dragonification almost emptied them.


    The cloud falcons also had a hidden ability that Catelyn was very keen on showing off, stealth, they could hide their rider from detection by engulfing them in inside their cloud-like bodies, the counter detection was so good that Yunan started researching it in his spare time to add to the battle toys, especially the fortress, being attacked by a passing cloud was even more terrifying that being attacked by a floating battle fortress, simply because clouds were always drifting and even if you can shoot each cloud to make sure there is nothing inside, what would you do on a rainy day wherein clouds filled the sky.


    The cloud falcons be very popr in the dungeon, outside the Dungeon, spotting one was an auspicious asion to be celebrated, and since the numbers were distributed very slowly, they never lost the novelty. At home, Yunan had designated only 100 falcons to be sold, the rest were sent to Awakened ind to start amunity, Yunan even gave them the manual for raising awakened cloud falcons, Yunan was almost sure that Awakened ind had too few of these guys and by injecting a new poption, it would be great for themunity.


    It was also safe for the falcons because they were not ordered to take masters, so unless they willingly bound themselves, they would never have to be in captivity, and since the new hatchlings would be born with the help of the manual, they too would not need to take masters, there is no way anyone would give their children to others, the manual was kept as a high secret and was only taught to two people, the elected chief of the tribe who would only be able to teach it to his chosen sessor, and a falcon that would act like a nurse and incubator, this would protect from thieves and those who wish to tame cloud falcons.


    At home, Yunan was getting pats on the back for his newest service to the family, cloud falcons were not simple mounts and were extremely precious and Unique, especially with them being trained to be perfectpanions.


    When Yunan was preparing to step into the 66th floor he was approached by Lucian who took him to a quiet corner of the house and said "it was decided that it''s my turn for your mental health therapy, when are you free?". Seeing the look Yunan was giving him Lucian knew that Yunan did not even know about what he was talking about, thus he exined "you see, both Fae and Leader have been acting weirdly even since they got to talk to you about their darkness or secrets, they are not as bothered by whatever it is they were chained with before, since you seem to have a knack for loosening up chains of the heart, it was decided that i should be the next on the list".


    "If that is there is to it, why so formal, we can talk anytime, how about we go somewhere quiet first and have a nice chat, i have nothing to do at the moment that i can not dy for day" even though Yunan was really not sure it was because of him; that Leader and Fae being not as restricted by their own secrets like before, he did not think it would be bad if he could act as a moral support for his teachers, they helped him grow into the fine man he is after all.

 Chapter 352: that smile

    Chapter 352: that smile


    A few hourster Yunan and Lucian were having a little pic on a rocky beach watching the ocean waves rolling and rolling over each other, foaming in rage at the jagged rocks that barred their path.


    "Do you know what is the worst part about betrayal?" Lucian asked suddenly, not expecting Yunan to answer him at all he continued " it is the afterthought that keeps nagging you, deep on the back of the mind, it keeps saying that if you were good enough, you would never be betrayed or discarded, all the apparent emotions that you would experience after a betrayal are your responses to that thought, anger, sadness, mncholy, jealousy and many many more such emotions. These are simply the manifestation of your answer to the thought of being inadequate".


    "I would assume so" responded Yunan "even though i have not been betrayed yet, inadequacy is sure something i believe that i will feel, right as i chew on the heart of whoever betrays me". The two chuckled at the thought of Yunan being betrayed, he can be left behind, cheated, but never betrayed, simply because those who he trusts with his life are incapable of betrayal, Bai included, that and his luck had a good deal to do with that too, for a guy like him, he should not have been this happy, sessful or alive if it was not for his ludicrous luck.


    "You see, i am naive, stupid and socially awkward, that calm and collected way of acting was taught to me by Mary, back when we first met, back then she was an empress, ferocious and undeniably powerful, some people would find their brows touching the ground upon seeing her walk by, that was how grand and imperial she felt, it is only after the whole party was assembled that her edge has been hidden and she became the sweetest angel, but we all know not to trust that smile, because no matter how calm the ocean is on a windless day, its rage can be brought about by any light breeze".


    "I trust that smile more than i do my own mind" said Yunan "that smile; to me; is the most reliable thing in this world, Mary is an empress, and just like all emperors, she has no need to voice her heart, the least gesture from her is worth a thousand words, an emperor who requires to be heard has no majesty, a majestic emperor speaks only when words are absolutely necessary, and that smile, as long as i can keep seeing that smile, i know that i am safe".


    Although Lucian said nothing in response, he just contemted the opposite point of view while nodding his head, after a moment of thinking he said "Mary, is my goddess, i worship her because she epted me when i was a reject, she healed me when i was broken and gave me a purpose when i was useless, she said i can leave the day i finish repaying her, it is up to me to pack up and leave, i told her i might just leave immediately, she said i will be her loyal puppy for life, whether i was to leave then or stay, i would return to her, she was right, i am her loyal puppy, one she doesn''t even have to keep on a leash".


    "Mary is something else isn''t she" Yunan agreed with Lucian "the day i met her, i knew deep down she was something else, so i can agree, it feels like we are her chosen or something". Lucian felt a bit befuddled then he became d, he was not the only one thinking the same thing, so he smiled at Yunan saying "that, she is, i think i love her". "Don''t we all love her more than we should?" The twoughed at the statement, it was so true it turned funny.


    "Did you know how mary converted me?" Lucian turned serious suddenly "something about hunting some people and feeding you their hearts and then pulling you behind her by the ear or something" Yunan answered with a bit of sarcasm. "She did kill those people and feed me their hearts, that is true, but those were not the ones who betrayed, they were just the knives that were used to kill me, my own party was used to kill me, something i never thought about before, but the one who betrayed died begging me for release, by my own hands".


    "My wife you see; was a good girl from my vige, i was talented in ranging and she was talented in casting, we were taught by the same master and got closer since we were toddlers, she had ambition, i was satisfied with my lot in life, we both ventured into the dungeon side by side until we were both taken in by a faction, we were unrivalled, she was a bit less talented in casting than Fae and i was beyondpare in ranging, no scouts, rogues or trackers could out do me even as a group, she had her sociable personality and beauty to propel her up the ranks while i had to work hard, even so i climbed the ranks faster than she did and was more and more relied upon in the parties that reached lower floors".


    "I pulled her up with me, taking her deeper and deeper into the dungeon, getting more and more lucrative jobs inside the faction, somewhere along the line she started getting blinded by vanity, her looks and her self-worth, we slowly drifted apart, i did not realize, I thought she was ready to give up and start a home back at the vige, so I did more jobs and she spent it all somehow, it wasn''t long before she got acquainted with the heir of the faction"

 Chapter 353: my vengeance and broken compass

    Chapter 353: my vengeance and brokenpass


    "if that was all, if my heart was all she broke, i would not have called it betrayal. She did the only thing our kind forbade since it was born, fratricide, killing one''s own pack. The leaders of our faction were rather curious about how to create capable scouts and rangers taking me as the model, i said i could teach for them, but that was not enough, they wanted the secret books". Lucian waved his hand and summoned 4 books, all the books had pictograms on the hard covers, one had a wolf sniffing a trail, one had a wolf surrounded by magic constructs, on had a depiction of a wolf running on a field, thest had a wolf howling to the moon.


    Yunan could tell what two of the four meant, and guessed that those were the ones Lucian and his wife learned, the other two were something else. Lucian was kind of disappointed that Yunan did not understand all the pictograms, but only sighed and continued "she sold out our pack for a spot as the concubine of someone, i did not need to dig that far when i found out. I was aware something is wrong when all my requests for a family visit were denied and i could not leave the dungeon to see my family, my wife also started to stay behind as i kept advancing further into the dungeon, which was very unlike her, she was too ambitious to stay behind."


    "Then one day i had a very bad feeling and decided to return to the vigee hell or high water, so i used my weekend vacation to reach the vige, i found only my master, he was nursing wounds that were beyond healing, he survived some torture and death thanks to his constitution, he was discarded because he was thought of as beyond life, he survived somehow for almost 3 months after that, when i found him, he called me traitor, kinyer and berated me for forgetting his teachings".


    "That was when i understood why I could not be allowed to return home, the scent of those that killed my family still clung to the woods and there was no way they would let me anywhere near, there was also the fact that they somehow were able to make my master think i was part of the groupe who hunted him, an imposter would never escape his notice, but there are ways to make him think i was with the enemies, well, smell basically, I managed to convince him by letting him scan my memory and as he breathed hisst he made me promise to pass on the legacy and take revenge."


    "I would wager you did not take your revenge immediately, i wonder why was that?" Asked Yunan. "i needed to know why" answered Lucian before he continued with his story "the only way something like this happens was if my wife was in terrible danger or she somehow benefited from such a heinous act, both of which were not good enough for me, so i stopped guessing and returned to the faction with some items that i pretended to have taken a moment to gather, immediately upon my return i was asked by my wife if i had any knowledge about these books, i answered that they were with master, the disappointed look in her eyes told me everything i needed to know, but i still yed dumb and asked her if she could pull some strings and make so that we can go home, as my wife she had no reason to decline, so she told me one more mission, i had no power to fight a faction head on so i needed to eliminate her, the one who knows me most"


    "Let me guess, you were stabbed halfway to death on the next mission and then was left alone to die". " Exactly, but it didn''t go that way, for the first time ever, my wife chose to go to the rendezvous point with someone else, I never knew she was able to reach my floor before but i did not think too much about it, i was very useful to the faction so they will not kill me, or so i thought, turns out she was hanging around with the future leader of the faction and they brought me out to their party for killing me, she said once i was surrounded that she can not be a concubine without my death, after all, i knew her too well and might muddy the reputation of the future leader if i talked about how he took away my wife in some drunken stupor, and since i did not know where the wolf legacy was, I had no use anymore".


    "Sounds like your ordinary nobel, i assume that you could have killed all of them, went rogue and brought the faction tumbling like a rotten cottage, how did they get you to stand still?"


    "She told me how much she hated my touch after she got us both into the faction, she described how she cheated on me with every single person who looked at her funny and how she promised the wolf legacy in order to get us both into the faction and her into the royalty, i didn''t even react as she pumped her memory into my head, that and the pleasure she felt when she murdered our entire tribe by her hands before she personally tortured our master, those memories and many more shackled me as i was then stabbed halfway to death, Leader Mary found me and killed two who were about to cut my head off, the rest ran from the aura she gave off but she tracked them all, all but my wife and her new husband, those two i got to kill myself".


    "So tell me how vengeful did you get, werebeast are not as sound of mind as they pretend to be, especially someone with a broken heart and soul, you especially must have been very susceptible to rage and the animal inside"


    "After I recovered, Leader and i walked through the front door of the faction and killed our way to the elites, since this was still a minor faction, they were not able to keep any adventurers beyond the 80th floors due to the regtions of the guild, these smaller faction are more known as associations, organisation or whatever it is they are called this day and age, and none of them could hold a candle to my Leader, she killed teams and parties like they were made of straw, in the end the faction leader came to negotiate when he understood we wanted to talk to him. He was very keen on us stopping the massacre and readily led us to his own son''s house, where he gave us the two we were seeking and even licked our boots to stay alive and keep his elites intact"


    "What came next was rather scary, i unleashed all the emotions i had held inside me on them, oh how sweet she sang when my fingernails were skinning her alive, how beautiful was her voice as she begged for my forgiveness when i gouged out her eyeballs and chew on them, the way she moaned as i used her over and over and over, i went full beast on her and it felt so good, never in my life was i as free as i was when taking pleasure in making her scream, i broke her eventually, she stopped crying, she stopped begging and she stopped even resisting, she confessed eventually, she said that she only wanted what she deserved, she was too good for me, too beautiful to delve in the dungeon, too great to be just an adventurer, she wanted the luxury she was born to have, she deserved it, or so she thought, i killed her that day, i had lost all my rage somehow, so i killed her and burned her body to ashes"


    Yunan sighed "she seems to have gotten her wish, she did get what she deserved, it was just that she was not expecting it to be something like that". Lucian nodded "the thing that bothers me most is that to this day, i have no regrets, many i met im that after revenge life turned bleeker and the momentary satisfaction was something that haunted them for years, i still feel the same relief as the moment when I killed her, i still feel the pleasure from causing her pain, what haunts me is that even now i still do not feel shame or regret for doing such an act, no matter how you think about it ,she was thest of my kin, my wife to boot, and i killed her, savagely over such a long time and i enjoyed it then and relish in the memory now"


    "Riddle me this" Yunan asked with his mind out of focus "when you killed people before, you never showed regret and remorse or hesitation, yet you feel haunted by the fact that vengeance brought you pleasure? I have yed god once or twice deciding who shall live or die based on my own personal beliefs of right and wrong, i tortured people who i knew did not deserve it and those who i thought did, but i never felt doubt because of the same thing that you went through, your belief is what told you to do those things, it was not mindless revenge or blind rage, you didn''t attack on the first chance, you waited, your followed your belief, and let me tell you something, if you ever wavered in your own morality, you would have never made it this far".


    "You mean that the same beliefs and values i hold as my moralpass are what drove me to do what i did and they are what keeps me from drowning in this guilt of not being guilty?". Yunan vigorously nodded "you see, your guilt is not because you did something, but it''s because you felt bad for actually continuing to feel good about something that should be bad. Feelings are a mirror to your mind and you have annihted a cult and their innocent people and you still sleep soundly, all the things you did do not haunt your dreams, they haunt your waking time, thisck of empathy is mostly rted to your code and not your nature, you killed them because there was a chance for them to cause harm, your wife set herself free from your wicked torture bying clean and confessing, yourpass is still working, it is just that you have been influenced by outsiders, you should worry when there is no need for justification the moment you decided to kill"


    "An excuse to kill? Please feel free to stop joking any moment now, i have not made excuses for killing people since i was a toddler, all i care about is if there is any reservations i have against their death, if not i will feel free to kill."


    "An excuse is just stupid for people like you and me, what i am talking about is something a bit deeper in terms of affecting the decision making process, it is what makes it so you either kill or pass, just like that, having principles and a moral code is basically the minimum requirements for it, as long as your moralpass is working fine you can kill without stop, as of this moment yourpass has not stopped working, you are trying to find something wrong with it and going for the fact that it should have reacted to something that was not of interest, you are the problem, if you really feel like you have been wrong just give me those books and go die, since i am your student i will fulfill the wishes of your master, if yourpass still does not react when you try to kill yourself, then you know you are doing it right".


    After this the two of them stayed silent for hours on end only exchanging the asional word about this or that.

 Chapter 354: you pass, how laughable

    Chapter 354: you pass, howughable


    While the two were walking home Lucian again was first to start the conversation "tell me, why do you have so much knowledge about emotions and moral codes, you are not particrly the most emotional person nor are you the guy that has topromise morally on anything, it makes no sense that you would understand such things as how to sessfullyfort those of us with dark pasts"


    "I don''t think i would be able to do it without being exactly what you described, to me, emotions are like currency, i spend them only on those who deserved them, and my moral code is the ruler i use to measure the entire world around me, i don''t bend the ruler to suit the world, if the world does not conform to my ruler, i stop trying to measure entirely, that is me, if i try to be someone else, i would fail miserably, besides, this type of personality is not bad to have, it means i am steadfast in any path i take, for me, if i start something i finish it with the best possible results, leaving a project halfway through was never a possibility, better still, I follow goals and my path evolves with each new goal and each new resolution i make"


    "That sounds all fancy and nice to hear, that is not what i am asking, boy". " i Guess" Yunan shrugged "if you think of me as a machine it solves the problem, i have my set of ruled and will measure anything i encounter with them, as far as i know, i have yet to change anything in my moral code, simply because there was no need to, it works just fine, be good to me, i will be good to you, love me and i will love you, harm me and we can brush it off with some pain and torture, harm my family and not even the gods can save you, to me, your darkest past is simply part of the package and you are part of my family, family is worth more than i am and harming them will help you enjoy hell, you have done what i would have, you even went as far as killing the woman when no joy woulde from her anymore, and that is just perfect, i have killed a n out of spite and still sleep soundly, maybe i am broken somehow, but as long as my code works normally, i would not stop using it".


    "I see, strange, when we got you, you had ambition and nothing else, now you guide us through trials we need to pass sessfully, fate is really twisted, making fun of us at every turn". Lucian looked at the sky with envy in his eyes, Yunan did not know what the envy was about but he said "there are no trials that are impossible, just ones that are beyond your capacity at certain times, in your case, the trial is epting that your moralpass is not verypatible with the ordinary ones, if you need a way to look at it then remember you are extraordinary, why measure with ordinary rules? there is nothing wrong with you, you just looked through the ordinary eyes for far too long, maybe it''s time to switch back to the true sight that you naturally have"


    "Then if you have true sight, you can tell me what these books are simply from what i taught you, after all everything you learned came from these books". Lucian suddenly changed the conversation to a new direction, although he was not averse to letting Yunan look through his soul, he had a new thought in mind, was Yunan worthy of sharing his burden, simply put, since Yunan was allowed to see through the burdens and help reduce them, could he also be capable of sharing them?


    After some thought Yunan asked to look at the books again for a few seconds, he could now see a bit more details when focused on them. the sniffing wolf had a deer reflected in each pupil, the casting wolf was disying dominance, the running wolf was part of a pack and the howling wolf was alone under the moon.


    "The first one is for ranging, tracking prey and hunting, the second is for casting, disy the might or hide in the shadows, the third book is about teamwork, running as part of a pack, recognising the needs of the pack, thest one is about lone survival, calling to the moon but relying on oneself" Lucianughed hard, so hard in fact he rolled on the floor, Yunan picked up the books to read what was inside, he had a very ugly look on his face, they were empty, these books were not actually books, they were an illusion yed on students.


    "That my boy is superb, fine you passed, time to share the burden and have your own students" after theughing fit, Lucian was in a very good mood, certainly something new to witness, Lucian looking happy without Leader around was very rare and valuable scene. "So the books are just a lie?" Asked Yunan while trying to kick Lucian up from the ground. "Not a lie, there is magic in them, if you can understand the essence the pages be empty, it means there is no need to learn what is inside these things"


    "Wait, are you telling me, just by understanding the covers you automatically pass? Meaning there was no possible way anyone can read what is inside, even if your wife got her ws on this she would have nothing, sweet mother of mercy! what kind of legacy is this!". Lucian finally picked himself up and started dusting his trousers "the most absurd legacy ording to my master" he said " the point of this thing is to teach concepts not actual spells and techniques, having them with you is the exam needed to ensure your students understood the core of your teaching, technique and spell can be found anywhere at anytime, understanding of the subject, that is different"


    "So i am currently eligible to teach the way of the wolf?" Asked Yunan feeling huge disappointment.

 Chapter 355: sparing partners

    Chapter 355: sparing partners


    Lucian and Yunan returned with two different moods, one was jubnt and the other was spiteful, because his supposed legacy was empty, therefore the library has gained 4 new addition that were out added to the golden shelf.


    Upon return Lucian grabbed Leader and took her somewhere while growling a threat to any who may think about following them, Dustan and Balin were trying to get a time and ce for Yunan to do his consultation but he refused, answering them by saying "just leave it to fate" after having a few mood uplifting moments with his wives and daughter, he stepped into the dungeon and the 66th floor, there he found himself back on solid ground, but inside a cave system, the resident monsters were a type of digging moles that looked like kobolds with oversized sharp ws, strong upper bodies and legs made for fast sprinting, these furry things did not look half as ferocious as they actually were, they relied on outstanding 3 types of attribute points to fight, dexterity, constitution and strength, they were masters at attacking with both strength and speed and their soft looking fur was more like an armor that protects them and keep them warm.


    These monsters were called digging hares, they had to dig for hours on end to trim down their stupidly durable ws, it worked both as training and trimming, the ws never stopped growing and would someday out grow their owner finally making them unable to lift their hands and effectively stop them from moving, it also worked as a showcase of strength and ability to keep ws that are longer than most.


    Yunan found out that these ws were extremely dense and full of mana, the ws feed on mana from the monster constantly growing and strengthening, they can start as brittle nails and then keep growing into things that can make steel feel like tofu, just a brush and the metal would sunder and make way to the w.


    For the first time, Yunan felt what it was like going against himself in a fight, impable defence, unrivalled attack and sneaky-sneaky footwork, the good news, he could keep up, the bad news was they knew how to gang up, there were probably the first monsters with no magical attack after the ninth floor, their mana waspletely focus on growing their mighty hand ws and making them the best weapons possible.


    These monsters were basically the best dual wielding sword masters Yunan met, the way they integrate both strength and agility in their attacks marked them for being duelists, there were little to no ws in the swordsmanship and the footwork, prompting Yunan to enter enlightenment and upgrade both his footwork and weapon mastery to new heights, these things tasted like wild hares and were as delicious as you might expect, the fact that mana was not used to enhance the body too much meant that it was still as tender and soft even though it''s muscle mass was high, these were the new favourite delicacy at home for a bit, reminding Yunan of the taste of the small and bite sized silver mice, and brought back the memory of the brave and dauntless Silva, Yunan wondered for a second how beautiful the little girl turned out to be after twenty years, he thought maybe he should bring her home but brushed that idea entirely.


    Catelyn was his only daughter, so far and she was to stay that way until she gets proper siblings, there was no need for Yunan to adopt a stranger just for sentimental reasons, that and his wives would kill him if he brought up a fully grown up daughter when they did not have their own children yet, somethings must never happen, Yunan came to the conclusion after think about it for less than a second.


    The digging hares were very helpful as training partners, unfortunately they were not tameable nor could they awaken, very few monsters in the dungeon were unable to awaken, and most of these needed a catalyst to awaken, just like the cloud falcons, still Yunan could see the benefits of making them sparring partners, unfortunately he was actively trying to speed up, and the little bit of enlightenment he got had to suffice for now, he steam rolled through the ce using the utmost of his ability, especially after adding the ability to strengthen his dragonborn form ws, the ability was troublesome if it was in its raw form, something Yunan didn''t need to worry about.


    The digging hare boss was a berserker tank forck of better terms , it relied on its tough hide to tank the iing damage while attacking with reckless abandon, its ws were as big as two handed swords and were sharp enough to slice and dice most of what was below its level, it was something that it shouldn''t have done while fighting Yunan who could do the same and had the extra advantage of being able to employ much more than just a thick hide and sharp ws.


    Yunan used his dragonborn form to duke it out with the boss, and just like that, two nuclear tanks shed against each other, a winner was dered 3 hourster with blood and flesh littering the floor of the burrow, greyish white fur mixed with crimson and ck scales, at the center of the boss arena stood a battered Yunan with a broken w piercing one of his armored wings while on the floor a headless digging hare was sprawled on its back with its ws either broken or chipped like rusted old saws.


    Yunan was recovering visibly, his body healing and restoring back to shape, his self-healing has progressed to the point where Yunan thought he could survive as long as he had a head and a heartbeat, once Yunan was functional again he fed the boss to Dragonification so that it could repair itself, being merged with Yunan during his dragonborn form did damage but nothing that cannot be repaired by feeding on a big tough boss.

 Chapter 356: impatient heir

    Chapter 356: impatient heir


    After an absence of two weeks Yunan returned home to find his inws at home, Lady Mito looking a bit older and Hoshi looking as haggard as usual, apparently his troubles only grew with age, most likely the problem of an heir was the current cause of his troubles, as usual Hatsu was standing behind the emperor like a statue, it has been a while since Yunan saw him, he was a 79th level adventurer, a powerhouse in his own right, but he was serving someone as weak as the emperor.


    Yunan thought that Reina had missed her parents and brought them over so he did not care much, he just waved at the guests and paid his respects before heading to the bath, after two weeks away and 5 months of intense fighting and getting lost in the maze-like burrow of the digging hares, he sought thefort of the bath knowing that Ophelia would being to check on him and help him rx a little bit.


    After a good bath, Yunan sat down with his father-inw and had a good conversation with him, bothdy Mito and empress Hana were present but kept quiet and let the men talk it out, Hatsu chose to use the spirit cave for the time being, of course he did not trust Debauchery with his liege, he only left after the exotic son-inw returned.


    "So, you know i have very few children" the emperor started discussing after the table was cleared and onlyva wine and lotus fruits were left on the table, and the leaders of the next generation are mostly from the brothers and cousins and other branches of the family, since Reina who was supposed to be the next guardian has gotten married to you and left the position open, the usually obedient and silent branches turned restless, and since the Oracle has failed to choose the next guardian candidate, things turned sour fast, hidden alliances with outsiders, ns for rebellion and so on were uncovered and dealt with"


    "Last week we were invaded by some religious federation, they used the excuse of theck of an Oracle approved heir to the position of a guardian as a springboard to upy the pce and cate the poption. Currently, they published that the Oracle has chosen a guardian and her failure to do so before was due to the illegitimacy of the current ruler"


    Hoshi heaved a distraught sigh and downed his cup of wine, behind him, both Mito and Hana were equally demoralized and feeling guilt, most likely it was their own conflicts that spurred this type of horrible destiny to befall the eternally blessed sun inds,although things may seem to be good for the moment, an istionist country like the sun inds being open to a religious federation that advertises its protection of all religions would lead to a theocratic dictatorship over thend.


    Yunan was not very bright about these things, he might understand how to y the game of thrones he was by no means good at solving things like betrayal, therefore he was thought for a moment before asking emperor Hoshi seriously: "father-inw, do you require Reina to retake her position as the guardian or do you want her first child to shoulder that responsibility?" after thinking about it, there should be no other way to gain the endorsement of the Oracle, even if the new government had ns about it.


    The current guardian Hatsu was old, it took almost 7 generations to assign Reina as the next guardian since he was chosen, therefore, either Reina would have to fulfil her own destiny or leave it behind to her posterity, meaning her children or grandchildren. Yunan was 70% sure that was the case, and that the oracle would only be able to choose a different guardian if Reina died or left behind no bloodline.


    "That is her duty, she is a kitsune bound by thews of our blood" Hana was as stiff as always, too stiff for her own good, even when asking for favours, still Yunan was not the type to pay her too much heed. He turned to Reina who was sitting behind him and asked for her opinion with a simple gaze. "I will do as husband says" Reina was too good to be true, just like always, and Yunan felt that he has yet to deserve her.


    "Then take Balin, Dustan and a mech, go burn down a few countries, take revenge, get the boys some celestial maidens to serve them and burn down the imperial pce of the sun inds, execute all who were in on it, use the kitsune bloodline to determine the traitors, the Oracle should help, that would count as fulfiling the duty of a guardian, rebuild the pce and bring all who has the bloodline back to the sun ind, let the Oracle choose a new government, and start over again, break all diplomatic ties and return to istion, use anything you need from the warehouses, if the girls want to go out for sightseeing take them too, leave Lucian and Leader out of it and send Fae to pige the burned federation".


    And that was that. Hana had her face turn from pale to green to purple in a cycle, Mito was mortified, Hoshi, on the other hand, broke into a sweat, this was basically a hostile take over, it was a very direct and radical way to deal with a problem that can be solved with Reina showing up, Yunan was more interested in the deterrence factor, he wanted it to be something to be remembered for millennia


    This whole thing was probably some heir being impatient and trying to rule ahead of time, before the fight of the throne started, unfortunately for them, Yunan was not good with diplomacy thus annihtion was their end.


    It took less than 3 days for Reina to deal with everything with the help of the Oracle, Balin and Dustan were very happy with their new harem of celestial and holy maidens that waited on them, Hoshi was reinstated as the rightful emperor under the blessing of the oracle, Fae as gotten enough loot to smile happily for a decade, mostly because there were enough ingredients for beautification taken from the temples where the holy maidens were brought up to give her eternal youth and ageless beauty.


    As for the reward from the Oracle for bringing back order to the sun inds, Reina got herself a prophecy, "... shall sire a god-king, a dragon among men, to rule was his birthright and to rule is his destiny  " is what Riena remembered from the whole thing, Yunan only chuckled at the prophecy, that was basically, literally, what a son of Reina and Yunan would be, dragon bloodline and the prince of two countries, if he did not rule by birthright he would rule due to endless potential.

 Chapter 357: the 6th guardian

    Chapter 357: the 6th guardian


    Even though the fight with the digging hare boss was close, Yunan still chose to push forward to the 67th floor and all the way to the 69th floor, passing by armoured moles that could swim through soil like it was water using an extreme adaptation at maniption of earth type magic on the 67th, a type of barely visible bugs that could eat away at his armoured dragon scales as if the armour was tofu, and the boss was basically a queen that could mobilise the whole swarm, Yunan had to walk around pumping out all kinds of chaos and elemental magic on the 68th floor in order to avoid them.


    As for the 69th floor there was only one monster, a keeper of sorts, it was built like an amalgamation of all the monsters in the 60s, it had the build of a yeti, the exoskeleton of an ice wraith, the armour of a mole, the spirituality of a yuki, the great potential of a jtunn king and finally the sharpness of the storm falcons.


    Yunan was out of his depth, but that did not mean he spent thest 2 years pushing past the 60s like a curse on steroids without gaining anything, and so he fought the 8 bosses in one with unrelenting spirit, the fightsted for a whole week and resulted in a defeat, Drogon did not interfere until thest moment and teleported Yunan back home for treatment.


    And like so a vicious cycle started, Yunan begins his week fighting the 6th guardian for 6 long days before returning home to get treatment and have a rest day, Drogon took this chance to boost his own power by helping in the fighting in thest day making sure Yunan does not slip and dies by some stupid mistake from the prolonged and overdrawn fights.


    Life was like this, hard and strenuous for the hard working and easy for the trophy wives, even Catelyn was growing fast and spouting nonsense faster, too fast for Yunan''s liking. Soon the date for the promised vacation came creeping closer and closer, even when fighting in an already overloaded match, Yunan could feel the excitement at home for the trip towards the awakened ind, thankfully his ability had caught up to his understanding and was getting the better fight each week.


    right fist to punch the monster arm away, left hand arm guard to parry the iing w, wing to swipe at wing and miniature sound bullets to disrupt blood flow, tentacles shooting anesthesia and venoms, weapons manoeuvring in mid air like they had limbs invisibly wielding them about, sparks of magic to devour and block flew amidst the chaos that outsiders would perceive, inadvertently however, to the two involved, it was chess at the highest level, each limb cut off, each block, each breath, each drop of sweat, everything was perfectly calcted, the sole purpose was victory.


    This was a battle at the doorstep of the sage level, this was the introduction to sage level for those who would cross that threshold in the 79th floor or a bit earlier.


    Sage level was something that could be felt and described but only grasped through hard work and devotion, although Yunan was a step away from pushing open that door, to cross that step was to be twenty times as good as one was before reaching the door. For some, it was even worse. Like Yunan, who, due to his potential and many many lucky encounters, he needed to be at one hundred times better, this turned thest step from a hair crack to be a canyon, and Yunan steadily bridged that gap over a long year''s worth of daily near deaths.


    The 6th guardian had a limit, it would be twice as good as anyone who just stepped up to the door of the sage, to Yunan that was nothing big especially when he was already past that point inprehension, his only shoring was the slow climb of the attribute points, the fact that he neglected his own growth came back to bite him.


    Contrary to us, to Yunan, what he saw was the only way to get used to fighting with attributes as low as the other adventurers, they had parties and he was alone, but if he was no match to them on the same level, he would think that his years of training were wasted on him. Thus after spending 8 months fighting like nothing else mattered, he was finally on the same level as the guardian, and he could fight it to a stand still without much effort, thus he took the chance to train his Drogon for 3 more months.


    As a dragon, Drogon could just forgo fighting and eat his way to the highest levels, but his master was Yunan, therefore he was required to be able to earn his food when needed, thus he went forward with the 3 months of training, the duo were able to both grow and increase their level of synchronization to be as close as a having the same heartbeat.


    With one month left before the assembly at the awakened ind, the crest on Sapphira''s brow started to glow and show itself, prompting Yunan to finally kill the 6th guardian and enter the 70th floor, he didn''t even wait to take a good look before returning home and start packing, he gave the the genie and the grown up artificial intelligence at home a few ideas to improve the research on the mechs, and told them to fire up the much improved floating fortress and get it ready to travel.


    His rewards were plenty, a few items for the armour to feed on, some knowledge crystals and other things, the most important among them was an introduction to the sage level golden book, although he had the book from Apophis, it was the outlook of a deity, this one was written by those who passed the sage level while still ignorant about ascendance and deification, something that a deity like Apophis would not ount for, the book also had stories of failure due to seemingly logical and sometimes irrelevant small details, something that most gods would never have to face, because to a god failure means to just chose another path, to a mortal, failure means the end of the road most of the time, rarely is there a possibility to start over or correct the mistake.

 Chapter 358: on the way

    Chapter 358: on the way


    As the newly upgraded and enhanced floating fortress made its way through the skies of Burkan leaving the Pearl kingdom behind looking like a rather big and shapely cloud, the world was preparing for the assembly at the awakened ind.


    The awakened were not the most hospitable nor were they inclusive if one could find the way to the ind they were weed to enjoy what it had to offer, otherwise, they didn''t invite people to witness the gathering that was mandated by the gods.


    To many people this event was the literal attraction of the century, where else could one bare witness to all awakened races and their own ways of life, whether it was enchanting sirens or the terrifying water dragonoids, all was possible to witness on this ind, enemies like the Yuki and the Yeti would dere a truce, and friendly races would bond closer, however, the most attractive theme of the assembly was the military showcase.


    How to show off to the gods? Military parades were suitable for gods who had the beastly nature deep inside them but to showcase civility was just as important, thus the military showcase, where a war dance would be performed to let the gods witness both the grace of the mind and the dormant power still deeply ingrained in everyst cell.


    Each race of the awakened would parade a group dance that epasses their civilized thoughts and military power, each move would have the grace of an entire race as well as brandishing their ultimate spells and techniques, a veritable feast for the eyes, especially to those who liked seeing "exotic" performances, the assembly is to be held without stop until each awakened race proved to the gods they were worth awakening, or so was the intended message.


    That meant, inyman''s terms, if any awakened race didn''t participate the assembly will still be held awaiting them to perform, the mark of the call will never fade away, until either the offending race returned to the fold or where annihted, no excuses where allowed, after all this was a summons by the gods, excuses were useless and any slight against the bored deities would bring about their wrath on the whole ind, hence there had never been a once such a thing as missing the assembly, but there were plenty of sickly, wounded and dying awakened being carried on a stretcher, their parade was their loudest possible war cry.


    Aboard the fortress, Yunan was being used as Catelyn own carriage, she sat on his shoulder and held him by the ears as he tried to make serious conversation with his friends and family, Sapphira''s summoning crest was acting as a beacon towards the ind, the artificial intelligence was driving the fortress, while the family were having the extended meeting about what to do on the ind and the list of things they wanted to do or see, items were added, changed, reced and removed here and there in the floating list conjured by the genie.


    Yes, the fortress has gone through many iterations to reach its current form, it could house both the cores of artificial intelligence and the house genie, it could change its form into a cloud and condense only what was required, it had all the luxury of home, and it had the most advanced viewing room possible, apletely transparent room with the ability to zoom in and focus on what those in the room want to see. That is without the need to mention its firepower and defense systems, it was just magnificent.


    One did not even know they were in a fortress of Yunan did not wish them to realize it, there was no detectable motion and no detection as well, no one inside or out would be able to locate the thing unless permitted to or if the other party was strong enough,those guys were rare enough that going into conflict with a few hundred gods would be easier than meeting them, but hey, someone actually did that some dozen years ago.


    On the fortress the whole family was gathered, Leol, Muscle and their two kids were present as the fat loyal friend clich, Martina and Markus were here too, cause Markus was feeling too old not to mention having troubles putting his penultimate (beforest) daughter on the council, Martin came by for the free ride and the good show that always follows the grand Debauchery family, Hephaestus, Luna and Death were here because Catelyn was having her first real-world outing.


    The only new addition was the god Apophis who was having a hard time adjusting to social life after so long in the chaos, at this moment he was telling Yunan about divinity and trying very hard not to look at the silly youngster acting as stilts for his daughter.


    "Completing a divinity is easier said than done, otherwise it would not have taken all those gods this long to only regenerate a tiny bit of their divinities, and they were the ones that made them in the first ce. You see, divinity is understanding, after forming the spark of divinity one needs toprehend the element of the divinity. You basically stole a bit of the understanding each god has about their own domains, if you have no understanding of a divinity, just give it back, eventually all domains lead to the same ce, even chaos is the same, all divinities and domains will eventually fuse to be one, something that is beyond even the creation gods or the old fogies".


    "Having a divinity, without having any understanding of it, will only hinder your progress, if you focus on it, so i would advise that you startprehending your own original divinity before working on mastering control over the dream divinity then branch out from there, use the smaller divinity shards to elerate the growth of your other domains, I may make it sound simple but my chaos divinity is still notpletely under control, unlike Death''s divinity which can even control other divinities thanks to his massive understanding, one must also say that Death has had enough time for a few creation gods to be born and die as practical experience."


    Yunan was almost dumbfounded "you can''t be that old, we are talking about counting ages in how many cycles of creation, that is too even if it was only one cycle" he addressed Death who was currently sipping daintily from a pink cup with some masterful braids and colorful ribbons in his head. There was no majestic aura of age nor was there any of the pressure one would expect from facing the one true god of death.

 Chapter 359: arrival at the island

    Chapter 359: arrival at the ind


    Everyone in the room wanted to hear the actual age of this unassuming man, he did look aged and gave the feeling of a tree that has been rooting in the centre of the earth far longer than memory, but he just chuckled and said "there are far older things than me out there, entities that can only be fathomed through abstract names like Chaos and Void, Darkness and Light, they remember the birth of Fate, the shaping of Destiny and the first trickles that became the river Styx, and even they have something they fear, sopared to some, i am just as much of a youngster as that little girl over there, kids, no matter how old or powerful we are, so focus on yourselves, the big leagues are not even in your level of life".


    "So mysterious, feels like its gonna be boring if we go beyond the scope of our own cycle of creation, guess i better have fun now and die happy" wise words spouted like a fountain of youth from the ugly teeth of Dustan, who, without even noticing the several jaws that hit the floor, continued rolling his dice to y his boardgame.


    "Seriously, just making sure that no one can hurt my family is a task beyond impossible, if even the primordial things Void and Chaos can fear something, then where does this endless chain stop?" Yunan was a bit disheartened, it just dawned on him how utterly ludicrous the idea of being safe, ever, and he could bot help but question his own resolve. Thankfully Hephaestus came to the rescue and said to Yunan in a reassuring manner " listen here buddy, when you get to a point where you can sit with Death as your equal, there will not be any who would dare offend you, mainly because on that league, snuffing out a universe requires a mere thought, still, even if those primordial things care not about worship or revery, the ss of being beneath them do, instead of a bunch of adventurers needed to support me, they require multiple universes worth of worship to even live, for those beings, anything that can damage a single universe is a thing they avoid kike tge gue, so you just need to basically be able to shake hands with this man without getting atomised"


    Luna on the other hand had a more direct way of saying it "if you wait to be strong enough, your beloved ones would be dead, your whole universe would be dead and even their souls would be extinguished, therefore, focus on making them happy, and that should do, after we all die and take the eternal nap, you can then aim for dwelling among the primordial beings".


    With all thr support and encouragement that only Yunan would think of as such, the topic changed to a few other things, including guessing at ages, ying the board game, and other equally insignificant matters till they were reminded by the genie that they were about to arrive at the ind and should prepare for disembarking.


    It would be great if the fortress couldnd and they would leave it like ordinary humans, but we are talking Debauchery here, ordinary and normal were concepts long lost from their dictionary, of course they would not act like what others would assume, they did not even ride the cloud falcons, they went for the more "interesting" action of free falling from a cloud.


    even showing off had limits, for others that is, to Debauchery there was only interesting and boring, and neither of the two had any limitations on what they could do, as is proven by a score of men and women falling from garenteed death heights with a 3 year old toddler. They attracted do much attention with their boisterousughter and high pitched screams as they turned from dark specks in the blue sky into twenty suicidal idiots that only decelerated just before they hit the ground, causing the rather crowded street where theynded to fall in panic.


    They had to pay a fine and were warned against such actions but nit one of them actually cared about it, evident by how Dustan was hitting on an awakened femalew inforcer that looked like half lizard and half minotaur, even though she was on duty and had not finished scolding them just 2 minutes ago. On the other hand Balin was more interested in shop clerk that was busy polishing the items inside.


    After thew inforcer left the party red faced with a promise to bring some of her co-workers to a mixerter on, Yunan and party followed the cat Sapphira as she led them to her own home, she lived in a very big estate that looked like a primal jungle, but after passing through the 100 meter long tree line, they were weed by a spacious and sunny looking grassy in, catnip was everywhere, scratching poles and climable geometrical constructs as well, one could see this ce was a heaven for cats, therefore, it had so many cats it was almost crouded.


    Sapphira enjoyed the respect from the cats of all shapes, races and sizes that were present in the front yard, she led her family to the estate at the centre, the closer one got, the more humanoid the cats became, at the door, an old butler looking male was waitingfor the guests, he bowed deeply and kept silent while opening the door to the estate.


    "No need for preparing anything, we will move to my courtyard, tell the patriarch and the matriarch to expect us after we settle ourselves", speaking those words, Sapphira did not even stop to grace the old butler with a nce, behind her, everyone whispered greetings and "thanks for your hard work", mainly to bring her down a notch, even so, the social hierarchy was already established and maintained in this cat based society.


    The courtyard owned by Sapphira was very clean even though she had not been there for close to twenty years, fresh fragrant flowers in some good china, a cool pool with fishes swimming, wood furniture, hardwood floor, and some other luxurious items one would not expect to see in the awakened ind.

 Chapter 360: show off arena

    Chapter 360: show off arena


    "So you rank high in this catnd? what do you call it anyway? at least when we meet the hierarchs we would not be too embarrassed" Reina asked first since diplomacy was left to the wives.


    "There is no need to feel embarrassed. This ce is called exactly Cand, simple and to the point, call the hierarchy as patriarch and matriarch because I chose you as my family, there is no need for many formalities, we just have to go see the hierarchs to acknowledge their dominance over Cand, after that we can use this ce, as our base of exploration, and just for your information, I am the most powerful one, I just hate ruling so the current hierarchs rule in my stead, even so, appearances must be kept"


    Sapphira''s looked a bit pumpous as she said thest few words, after all, as the house cat, she doesn''t get the opportunity to show off very often at home, therefore everyone was saying things like "as expected of our cat" or "it would have been shameful to have less then a chief-level house cat" or "our Debauchery is awesome, even the little pets are without match", making Sapphira feel even better.


    Visiting the hierarchs was an exercise in tedium, polite words were exchanged, gift were given and epted, talks about how majestic and magnificent the ce and its masters were, the basic premise of every formal exchange between royalty, thankfully neither side was willing to keep the faade any longer, the Debauchery family left soon after towards the police station that fined themst time, to pay the fines and pick up the officers with the excuse of being ignorant about the indw, that and them being in need of someone to keep the impulsiveness under control.


    Yunan just took his wives, his daughter, Drogon and Ignis under the guidance of Sapphira to be tourists. The rest, Balin, Bai and Dustan were hitting on their respective officers, Anne and Fei were discussing whether to follow Lucian and Leader or get their own guide. And thus the group split into three, Leader, Lucian, Fae and Anne went towards the shore, Yunan and the rest of the younglings went towards the centre of the ind where the main attractions should be and then the perverted trio went to a random direction to cause as much havoc as possible with the least amount of trouble.


    Drogon hung on Yunan''s medallion like he always did, Ignis sat on his shoulder, and Sapphira took the lead in the form of a giant cat, on her shoulders sat Catelyn who did not seem to have enough eyes as her head darted here and there without stopping, almost drooling from all the excitement, Leol and Muscles each held onto one of their kids as they deemed it impossible to keep them on Sapphira with all the new things to see and y with.


    The wives chatted among themselves about this and that leaving Yunan to himself, he didn''t particrly feel lonely and just let his brain go idle as he responded to the minimum stimtion possible, but as anyone trained under Debauchery, he would immediately be alerted by a treasure or a hidden gem, he spent gold and monster cores without care, he knew he was being ripped off but he did not care, as Dustan had said sometime ago, "what is the use of hoarding money? I only care about to gather as much as possible to spend it on the things I like, if it is worth the price than it does not matter if I get ripped off".


    Yunan was beyond certain that Dustan lied about thest part, Dustan loved hoarding money even more than dragons did, but one would have to say the guy knew how to spend extravagantly, and milk each coin of its value.


    Sapphira''s leading was not tourist friendly, she led through the shortest path and the least crowded avenue. The destination was a magnificent coliseum, it was beyond big, the circr walls were as high as the clouds, the sound of the hubbub was spilling out like it wasing from another dimension.


    "This is not your usual kind of arena, this is the ce to show off in the awakened ind, anyone who is worthy of being known had passed through this ce to get recognition, unfortunately, those kinds of people are not really toomon, thus it''s more like a ce to showcase ability then to perform miracles."


    As they walked into the coliseum, they found out it was not just one big arena with seats, but many arenas, some even hanging or floating, some were indoors some were open, but all were upied with one thing or the other, fighters duking it out, tabletop games were being yed, gambling with cards or dice and more was also evident, this ce had all kinds ofpetitions in it, even a floating swimming pool passed by Yunan and the rest as they walked towards the great arena, there were some dancers performing in the water with cheering spectators following the pool.


    The great arena was home to the most basic kind of showing off, look at what I killed, the participants would hunt monsters and bring them back to showcase and cook for those who want a taste.


    "This started because of some ancestor who was not capable of fighting like the others and was thus considered weak or useless by the people of the ind, but he did not care or defend himself, after every fight in the arena he would bring the newest monster he hunted and show it off to the females and cook the choicest bits to those who would spend time him. It didn''t take long to prove he was stronger than all the others when every week he would bring a bigger, more ferocious monster back to unt, after the second year, he brought out monsters that the others would not even approach while it was dead, thus the females started swarming around him. Unfortunately he had already chosen a mate during the earliest days, his mate loved the way he cooked the monsters he caught so much she basically left a well off life to live with him, anyway, ever since that guy, those who were looking to prove themselves no longer fought like madmen, they only fought for training orparing techniques, otherwise they would just bring their kills here to show off and cook for potential mates who would taste the meat of they were interested."

 Chapter 361: under the light

    Chapter 361: under the light


    "What a weird way to show off" Sarah was not very impressed about the way or the origin story. It seemed like an uncivilized way to her who grew up among duels and other ways to unt about, moremonly luxury and wealth, and the show of possession rather than ability, nobles were more prone to showing off a pelt than the actual monster that wore it, still she could not say that she waspletely blind to the charm of watching a strong man unt his kill, a side effect that can be observed after having a prolonged time with Debauchery family.


    Kitty took her daughter and ran about sampling this and that with Lili behind her looking as menacing as Dustan while Ophelia just smiled her way as she made sweet conversation with the various hunters and strong men, women and animals, she even got herself some secret ingredients and tales about the healing abilities of body parts or herbs. Yunan has not seen the group of gods sincending, there must have been something since even Fortuna was missing but he chose to just leave messages for them, they would answer himter on when they can anyway.


    Things were very interesting, for a guy like Yunan here, he could use his knowledge to exchange with others and even gain more know-how and techniques, even if he might not ever use them, he could teach them along with the way of the wolf, or maybe start his own school of thought, that would be in the future, so for now, it was good to umte more information and correct some old methods and outdated concepts.


    Left with only Sarah and Reina, Yuna led the two to walk around the ce, he sent ignis and Sapphira to look after Kitty, Catelyn, Lili and Ophelia, just in case things went wrong, even if bloodshed was forbidden in this festival, there was no harm in being cautious, after all, the problem would not be Catelyn, with so many things on her person that could literally die for her, she was safe, the wives were the ones in danger, therefore, having both Sapphira and Ignis were enough to dy anything long enough for it to be solved or removed.


    On another part of the ind, somehow, the perverted trio somehow found a gambling den, they were currently in the process of emptying its coffers, they did not pay much attention to how the natives were looking at them, currently they were betting on Balin, who was currently using a candle me to forge a dagger, this kind of bullshit bet was only possible because the awakened were totally ignorant of the extents these guys can reach in order to win a bet.


    One has to say that the way bets worked in the family was the best incentive to make an ant grow wings just so that it would not fall into the weird punishments and other weird conditions they make, the losers would always suffer, that was obvious and an established rule, thus forging on candle me may seem like it is impossible to others, Balin cheated his way to make the dagger, he influenced the mes to burn brighter, channeled heat magic through the hammer, used his own genius to make sure the materials would neither cool down nor turn solid ahead of time.


    Of course, these things were only cheating at home, outside it was called the basic kit of a smith, which cksmith could work without control over the mes and small adjustments through skill and magic. And through these technicalities, they showed the world how to do the impossible. For example, Dustan kneading a block of lead as if it was dough or Bai pickpocketing with both hands tied behind his back, and more stupid things that were so novel to the gambling den.


    As for the third group, well, they were sunbathing under the utmost care of some caretakers, Fae was literally glowing with happiness, Leader was smiling as she watched Lucian try to keep his breeches and a drunken Anne trying to pull them off, the attendants who were doing their utmost to keep these rich customers as happy as possible could not help but wonder about them.


    If you think about it from their point of view, why would an angel like Mary be in thepany of a funless werewolf, a glowing elf who got happier by the moment and finally a lewd drunkard, some people just could not understand.


    After directing Anne towards Fae who would happily indulge her and even y along in her intoxicated antique, Lucian sat beside Mary who seemed oblivious to the world around her, he presented her with a cool drink and sat beside her, letting fluff his tail as they both enjoyed the sun "the world sure looks brightertely" Mary was never one to start a conversation, but Lucian was not paying this matter any heed, he was just a puppy after all.


    "It sure does, it creeps me out a bit" he responded with the same tone of being extremely rxed and enjoying the moment, he continued " after getting used to the darker side, the light side seems like it is full of traps and predators, I just can''t rx without something clouding my thoughts, the happy life is terrible". Mary beside him just giggled at him " but it''s more fun this way, right? idiots like us need to feel uncertainty to live like people". Lucian could not help but nod his head at her words, some people were more suited to live in the darkness, even so, some time in the light was not actually a bad thing, that was a universal truth.

 Chapter 362: a few moments of fun

    Chapter 362: a few moments of fun


    While the kids were having fun, the gods were having to deal with being seen as intruders by the awakened gods, even if Hephaestus was wee due to his services and help for the awakened, the other two were basically red gs, the goddess of luck who might just curse the entire event if she was dissatisfied with something, and Death, not any death god the damnable main one who could doom the whole festival, all that would be needed is for him to forget to hold his power under control, and then disaster would be unavoidable.


    It is absolutely nothing based on any logical or realistic thought process, how could Death have anything less than perfect control over his power, not to mention Fortuna who has to work on providing and guiding the luck of a on her own, even if we say she might not feel good about something, she would not just curse a festival for it, if that was all it took she would have cursed the other wives of her man long ago.


    Still, Death politely sat with the annoyed Fortuna and let Hephaestus do the talking, he -Hephaestus- was the closest in the group to this exclusive club of gods after all is said and done, these gods would be forgotten about if they were anymore exclusive, thankfully, Hephaestus kept in contact with them and dealt with them often enough.


    "Come on guys, we are just trying to have some fun, we even came to the ind with mortals that are not linked to us by any means that is not friendship or mutual liking, even Death here is obedient around them, our own mortals are just that good, as for what you fear, you can have my guarantee, or does my word have no more meaning to you, kids?".


    The local gods were not very satisfied with the way Hephaestus put his statement, to them it felt like he was implying that each of the gods here was older, stronger and more importantly a senior that could just wipe them out of existence with a mere thought. Although that was true, the three actually did not care that much and if things got more annoying they can just barge in without a care, not like this bunch of local gods can even cast them out even if they wanted to.


    These gods were just trying to say "you are in my territory so behave", all three understood this, they knew not to get too hung up on this y, it is just that it was getting annoying, this was not the eternal in or the godly domain, it was just an ind in the mortal world, Hephaestus yed along because he was a nice guy, Death and Fortuna wanted to have fun with the odd family they came along with therefore this farce was taking away their precious fun time.


    With the annoyance on both Fortuna and Death already showing its signs, Hephaestus sighed and cut to the point, he too was getting a bit annoyed by the idiotic way these gods were acting toward him. He said with sudden coldness to his voice "so what do you want from us, letting us into the ind, what will it cost? we all know that this is a farce so let''s end it as fast as possible, we are not as free as you are". This sudden turn warned the awakened gods that things were not as they seemed, and just as they were about to start making demands, Apophis sauntered into the hall and silently sat beside Fortuna and Death, this was a tant show of disregard.


    Now that even Apophis was joining this odd group, the awakened gods now felt fear, it was known that Apophis was a loner, a neutral factor that never joined any side and dealt blows to everyone in his service to the chaos, it was therefore imperative to get these people out of here as fast as possible. The demands they made were easily met by the four and they promptly left to find their own targets.


    Hephaestus found his way to Kitty, Catelyn and the rest to check out the scenery, Fortuna and Apophis went ahead to find Yunan and greet him, while Death made his way to the perverted trio to see what fun they might bring him.


    When Apophis and Yunan met, they shook hands like old friends and then started chatting while walking around in search of any bits of interesting knowledge and techniques for Yunan to learn, meanwhile Luna was apanying Sarah and Reina to follow behind Yunan while they too asionally joined a circle in order to test out some of the attractions of the arena, games and skill events were as a way to show off superiority.


    Meanwhile Death was also sucked up in the gambling and stupid bets the perverted trio were having, he too performed some magic and talents that he picked up along the years, well that onlysted until he was discovered by Fae who came to bring the three rich men to pay for some sort of Luxury Leader was enjoying since Lucian started to run out of pocket money. He was taken away with the three to meet with Leader and her group, among which, Anne was happiest to see him, her drunken stupor was at its peak and Death seemed like a good target to cuddle with.


    Leader was really nice today for some reason and allowed Anne to eat as many men as she wanted, and Death was just hertest target. Meanwhile the four men in Debauchery chose very wisely to not step in her field of vision or they too would be eaten and discarded too, they started a betting round on how things will end, got themselves scolded by Fae, gave all their winnings to cate Leader, knowing they cheated a bit to get it, cheating was forbidden to all members of Debauchery party.


    On the other side Hephaestus was happily ying mule for Catelyn, while the wives; Kitty, Lilly and Ophelia started a shopping spree, even Ignis was told to turn to her human form to try so many clothes and buy only a chosen few, since Hephaestus was with them, there was no need to care about staying vignt and care about security anymore. As for Hephaestus, since he took the role for the mule, he was obliged to let her taste every sweet and savory candy out there in the arena, there were some who recognized the old man and deeply bowed to him but none disturbed him or hispany, these people truly knew how to be grateful.

 Chapter 363: its always the same

    Chapter 363: it''s always the same


    "The mortal world has changed much since myst visit, it makes me feel the years in my bones much more than ever" Apophis concluded his statement with a very aged sigh, one could feel the time from the sound of the released breath, as if something that has been decaying for an eternity left his lungs, Yunan just kept his eyes on the miniature theatre and the very realistic dolls, the y was something truly magical.


    This particr booth was showing off effortless magical control over a few hundred mini golems that were made to act out a vige, a true living vige was simted by the golems and acted out some story that was ratherpelling in nature.


    The vige was the fiefdom of a certain Lord, it was under siege by a massive number of soldiers armed to the teeth, they hade conquering and were not taking no for an answer, they were prepared to take this vige no matter the cost, at the moment it was showing a scene where the herald of the Lord was giving a speech trying to recruit the vigers into a makeshift army.


    The Lord was so engrossed in his own indulgence and gathering of riches, he did not even try to keep an army and only used the minimum number of guards; so as to cut on costs, thinking his own position as a rtive to the king was enough for security. s, life was really fond of shitting on the ns of mortals.


    "You will be granted free citizenship, for you and for your descendants for eternity" hollered the herald of the Lord " you will be the free soldiers who shall defend their country, never lose your resolve" the words kept flowing as the herald kept reading the document given by the Lord at the peasants who were gathering at the vige square with fear and apprehension.


    "You will gain riches and wealth, you will never go wanting again, the Lord shall reward your services, the Lord shall open his coffers and armoury for your sake, so that you may use the best weapons and treasures in this country, be courageous and beave the dangers". At this point, it was apparent that the words said by the herald only demotivated the peasants even more with each word, thus he chose to attack a more vulnerable spot: religion.


    "It is the holy cause for defending your children, your wives and families, not even the pope can deny you this martyrdom and sainthood, for the gods reward those who raise their anger for a holy and just purpose, unleash your rage for the holy quest, unleash your ire on those who besiege ournd".


    Unfortunately for the poor herald, his efforts turned futile, the peasants who were afraid of the army now showed an even deeper fear, the fear of disobeying the call of the holy crusade. Some even started stealthily running away, if they did not hear the holy summons sent by the bishop they would not be mistreated by the gods if they did not join the war efforts. When the crowd started dispersing, the poor herald could not find it in himself to say any more, he had done his job and sent the summons to the army, thankfully this wasn''t enlistment or the lord would surely relieve him of his head.


    Yunan felt that this ending was rather empty, true, but still empty and not so theatrical, thus he extended a thread to one of the little peasant golems and took control over it, the owner of the miniature theatre did not resist Yunan, this was a showing off, he would absolutely allow anyone to try their hand at controlling the tiny vigers.


    "We are the poor and the hungry, not soldier nor knights, we are a hundred peasants, we do not wield des or shields, nor do we know how to work the siege engines, we are illiterate and ignorant, untrained and unorganised, we are doomed to lose without a doubt" Yunan controlled the figure he chose to make quite the spectacle stopping the vigers from fleeing anymore.


    "All around us is an army of thousands of soldiers, armed, trained and ready to vent on our little town, they will bury us and enve us, not matter if we fight or sit still at home, that is the truth" as if on cue the horns of battle sounded outside the vige walls, and the besieging soldiers started their march on the town. The figure under Yunan''s control raised its voice again, it looked at the resolute faces of its fellow vigers and sang the hymn of battle in the area.


    "Under the summer sun, raise the banners as one, ring the assault horns and sing the battle hymns, to the walls! for glory!". Many then picked up the call and went to the walls, able or old, disabled or weak, woman or child, did not matter, today they decided to die at the walls.


    The theatre owner was very pleased, his theatre was a chance for others to y god and change the path of destiny in the little vige, it was not hard giving the tiny golems an independent personality, it was harder to convince the golems; seeded with the fear of death, to sacrifice themselves and change the story, from just any other vige taken in a war to a vige that fought in said war, even the watchers pped at the change, it was a better story if glory was sought instead of dying under a nket, hiding like cowards.


    Apophis chuckled to himself and patted Yunan in a thankful manner. This was the response Yunan had given him "no matter how the world changes, the inhabitants will always be the same, greedy, cowardly, brave and maybe even pious, as long as sentience was achieved by any race, they would exhibit the same traits no matter the age or the name of the civilisation, even gods were the same, over glorified beings with a bit more power than your run of the mill mortal, no need to feel the change of the world, the inhabitants were still the same".

 Chapter 364: old friends

    Chapter 364: old friends


    "The mortal world has gotten pretty interesting, to think that magic and technology has reached this far!" Apophis was really having a good time as he walked side by side with Yunan and talked with him about everything there was, especially the newer things, moreplicated and more impressive.


    It did not take long for the three small parties to coalesce as they arrived almost all at the same time before a gate at the heart of the arena, an actual colossal coliseum, this was where the truest festival was happening. While most tourist where still looking around at the oddities and the attractions, the worst ns had already sent out their representatives to start off the odd worship, since ording to Sapphira, the worst of the ns had either bloodline limited magic or verymon skills to show the gods, there was no need to watch the festival from day one. Especially since the first day would be allocated to the showcasing of mediocrity itself.


    It was alreadyte in the afternoon and the sun was threatening to dive beyond the horizon at any moment, and with herst rays, thest mediocre n left the colossal coliseum under the genuine pping and encouragement of the whole public, this festival, after all, was the only chance of seeing that, in the faction oriented ind.


    Having arrivedter than the ones already seated, even Sapphira had to sit in the further seats, it was possible to change seatster if some opened up or Dustan managed to bribe with enough gusto, using any means of violence or threat or deception was the shortest way to be the public enemy number one in the festival, and it would result in death, most oftentimes, this was a sacred time with sacred rules after all.


    Not many were even paying attention to Dustan and his generous donations to acquire some better seats, that onlysted until the big log of an orc brought out some of the delicate things that were considered as rarities and were sold only now and then back in Tartarus. And that was when Yunan had the epiphany that would make his life a bit harder, everything had a price, what was that price range for himself and his family? If even sacredness could be walked around and bent for some "rarity" then nothing else was without price, even divinity could be bought, thus what was his price?


    Yunan brushed the though fast enough, there was absolutely no need to dwell on such things, his price could not be met by any power currently at the top of Burkan, he was not that cheap.


    After changing to the new seats, things looked much more alive, no wonder those who got here were very reluctant at parting with these seats, not only one could feel the magic take shape and flow among the performers, one could also feel the levels of coordination all performers from each n have reached, the unity was sometimes very terrifying, it felt like a single entity controlled and moved the performers and their magic, that was most apparent with the intellectual type of awakened.


    Synchronisation was not the only oddity, Yunan got to witness some rare spells and abstract ways of magic casting that he never imagined before, the sidementary from the gods nearby did not make things any better.


    The ns that started to appear after the change of location ranged from the odd to the fantastic, from species who still walked on all fours, six sometimes, to those walking upright on any number of legs paired with any number of arms, most of the ones with anything more than four limbs either belonged to humanoid versions of arthropods or tentacled beings, still there was beauty to witness and techniques to be learned from the well-orchestrated moves, for those who looked beyond the mesmerizing faade of course.


    Although the noise beside Yunan was rather distracting, he lost himself in focus on all the enlightenment he glimpsed from watching the performing ns. He learned a lot from the low-levelled ns, he learned a sudden movement skill from watching the spider-descended Arania n, which incidentally had a wide range of performers fromplete spiders to half humanoids and half spiders, and thenplete humans with extra arms.


    From the Ant n, he learned how to distribute weight and power on limbs that would otherwise be unable to support such an influx of power, how to use his tentacles for more than just extra arms, and instead incorporate them into distractions and extreme threats to strike on opportune moments.


    Even though he got much more enlightenment in the half day he sat there than he could by simply fighting for years, Yunan hated ost that he was snapped out of his reverie by the hungry Dustan who was chosen for his ability to take a beating. Since it was rare to see Yunan so deep in musing over enlightenment, it took an hour for the family to finally snap him out of it, they wanted to got find something to eat, and as they were about to leave Yunan felt a look on his back then all of a sudden he heard the rusty roaring voice of a lizardman calling to him "exalted champion" called one of them who was mirrored by the rest of his team, it was the first time Yunan heard someone start their show by saying anything other than to praise the gods.


    Knowing he was the one called to, Yunan took a moment to look behind and rummage through his memories, something was very familiar in the voices he heard, seeing Yunan turning around, the rest of the family looked back, and not two secondster both Balin and Dustan had jumped inside the arena and were bumping chests with the reptilians who were very happy to see them. Yunan nodded to the lizardmen after his memory was jogged enough to know who these people were. He then retrieved his two unruly friends with some help from Lucian and Bai, he then sat down to watch the familiar dance with his family by saying: "the food is not gonna run away, let''s watch and cheer for our old friends.

 Chapter 365: new citizens

    Chapter 365: new citizens


    After ending their performance, the lizardmen bowed again to Yunan and proceeded to leave the arena, followed by Yunan and the family who left the stands and went out to meet their old friends, Apophis and Death were rather curious about why was Yunan called "exalted champion" by a bunch of lizards, they found the ensuing story and exnation by the overly dramatic Fae, meanwhile the family was surrounded by a hubbub of lizardmen as soon as they left the huge arena, apparently, the whole tribe from the 30th floor was there.


    The elder of the vige was first to introduce himself to the old ones while the younger generation of the tribe half invited half dragged the rest to their own little vige in the ind. And they all had the same thing on their snouts along the way, exalted one this and exalted one that, they seemed to be rather happy for meeting Yunan and his family for some reason beyond Yunan, even Hephaestus just smiled mysteriously at the probing looks he got from the members of Debauchery.


    Not until everyone was sitting beside a roaring fire and eating the provided delicacies specially made for the guests did the elder stat talking earnestly, seemingly he has got past the point of being starstruck and fangirling like the rest of his tribe who was still looking like a bunch of screeching and stampeding K-pop fangirls who got a glimpse of their idol right after a rather well-performed concert.


    "Exalted one" the elder actually kneeled and made a salute to Yunan who was tearing off a big bite of flesh from what seemed to be a thigh bone of some monster. Being caught like this did not really embarrass Yunan who just used his free hand to make a kingly gesture to allow the old man to speak. Once given the acknowledgement, the elder stood up and spoke.


    "Exalted one, our n has nothing but deep gratitude and worship for you who has so graciously allowed all of us to awaken, your gifts to us shall never be forgotten and will be passed on as the story of our tribe for all eternity". The elder looked visibly shaken when he heard Yunan''s reply that almost all of the feats turned silent almost immediately, the answer was "so, what did I do?".


    "Surely, you jest oh exalted one, such thing can not be done unintentionally, no matter how you look at it, awakening a whole tribe is something miraculous and not idental" however seeing the curious look on this exalted one his tribe has worshipped for nigh on a generation seriously had no idea what was this about, thinking about it a bit more, this idol of his did not seem the type to not know what they did or the consequences of their actions.


    Eventually, the elder started to rify " well, the short version is, through using the gifts given to us by yourself and your followers that day, we have seeded in gaining enough knowledge that all of our tribe was deemed worthy to awaken, even though we were not monster, to begin with, Tartarus seemed to think we have be civilised enough to let us free in the outside world, in this ce we got to let go entirely of our warlike nature and could both be civilised and fight endlessly to our hearts content, thus we have taken you for our idol, and we have worshipped you ever since we got here, for this to not be your wish for us is truly depressing"


    Not only did Bai and Lucianughed until they toppled over, but the wives also giggled and snickered, even Death found it to be amusing " seriously though, you guys should stop with the worship thingy and just forget about it, we are friends, just like before, if you insist on worship, then do it, just to be clear, those gifts were nothing more than just some items I thought were valuables during the time, but I have to say, I am really happy you guys left that dungeon, this world is a better ce, no matter how you look at it, let''s toast, to the awakening of the nicest warmongers I have ever met"


    That was enough to get the party back on track, even though it seemed like the reveal was a bit disappointing, the gifts were not why the lizards worshipped Yunan, they worshipped him for the opportunity, which has nothing to do with his will or whatever, since the idol was here, there was no reason to sour the festive atmosphere.


    Fanaticism is a hairline away from idolisation, although the lizards were close to the former they were firmly part of thetter, they could ept that their worshipped Idol had no intention of causing anything when he left behind the gifts of pearls, food and other materials behind for the lizardmen tribe, he was truly just giving back, after all, the number of books he got from them as well as the resources he achieved thanks to those books was truly a bit too much.


    As for being the object of worship, Yunan wasn''t sure what to think about it, thus he decided to just roll with it, graciously epting the spiritual energy offered by these wonderful people, for a waring species, they sure were nice and warm-hearted, probably a side effect to the meaninglessness of life to them.


    "Hey, elder lizard, how do you guys feel about joining my nation? I have this quaint kingdom and it has been a while since they started dungeon climbing, I would like it if your people could train the army in the ways of battle, and you guys get to be our direct link to the Awakened Ind, There are other people I think about inviting to work, so that my little kingdom and your two races work in a partnership, how about it?"


    "Will we be allowed to fight and use our ownws and rules?" The elder was really thinking about his tribe more than enough, that brought a smile to Yunan, who simply gestured to Reina and Sarrah toe closer and discuss with the elder, eventually they came to an agreement that was beneficial to all sides and the elder didn''t hesitate to announce it to the entire tribe.

 Chapter 366: the simpler things

    Chapter 366: the simpler things


    The agreement was only a rough outline, it would be hammered outter on when all three parties were present, and the festival was over, it would be a bit disrespectful to the local gods if he started poaching the Awakened while they were supposed to be worshipped by all who were on the ind, tourists included.


    The party did notst long, no one wanted to miss out much on the rest of the show, especially Yunan who seemed ever so close to reaching the doorway to the sage level, therefore any enlightenment he could glean was of the utmost importance, the rest all had their own excuses, only Death and Hephaestus who seemed to be urgently called left the ind with a very unwilling Fortuna.


    As for the rest they Debauchery party returned home, Reina and kitty took the chance to get the overly excited Catelyn to sleep and rest a bit, Sarrah and Lili went out with Sapphira and Ignis on some kind of quest, leaving only Yunan and Ophelia to apany him, otherwise it was a sure thing that Yunan will be too absorbed to notice anything else.


    After leaving the miniature vige of the lizardmen, Yunan and Ophelia walked hand in hand back to the great coliseum, where they watched more and more tribes performing their arts and showing off their battle strength to the gods. The two of them chatted about what they saw and what they learned by pointing out small details that would escape the notice of casual onlookers. They witnessed the rare hypnotic gazes of the Gorgons, the charm exuded by Lamia''s dance, the fear-inducing rattle of the Bonesmen, the highlight of the first day was the water control of the water drakes.


    For being descendants of true dragons, theycked the majesty and were bathed in ferocity, even their Awakened could not help but let hints of this trait seep in their water control, although it was a sight for sore eyes, one could not help but feel a shudder run through them as the water changed to, from the shape of a charging stallions to a score of flood dragons bringing a storm with them from the high seas, the perfect control and the intent hidden in the roaring waves made the show exactly what you want to see upon witnessing the uniqueness of the event.


    "Did you have fun?" Ophelia was for some reason more quiet than usual, that was why Yunan asked thedy about her experience. "I haven''t been able to hold your hand for so long in the past, do i had enough fun for the next decade" Yunan had to blink in astonishment and think for a moment before holding the fragile little hand a bit tighter "its frightening how easy it is to please this wife of mine, I feel like I wronged you when you say things like that". " My husband treats me just nicely, so no worries, but sometimes I feel like holding hands may feel a bit better than sharing you with 5 other women" there was a pink blush spreading on her cheeks, she leaned her head on his shoulder as they walked towards the lodging of the cat n, the happiness of the moment was clearly overflowing in her heart and by extension making the rest of the wives ask what was so blissful.


    Yunan knew that the simple looking Ophelia was the wife that would never ask too much of him, just being around her was enough to get her happy, what he didn''t understand was exactly that, Kitty acted like that out of loyalty, her highest wish was to be around Yunan, but to please her took a lot more than holding hands, only Ophelia was simple like that, she would never reject his love and care, she just liked it better if they did not do too much, thankfully when she felt Yunan struggling with this detail she exined it to him.


    "I am no good when ites to expectations, I can''t expect people to do things for me, especially if it was this husband of mine who keeps thinking about making me happy, no matter what I feel happiest when husband ims ownership over me for all to see, you once told me that you would fight even the gods as long as I was yours, back then, I was just a nurse, and you actually took away my fate from my god, therefore as long as you still prove that I belong to you still, I will smile to the end of days".


    The best response Yunan coulde up with was to wrap his arms around her waist and pull her as close as possible to himself, Yunan was seriously thinking about actually diving into Fate to see what he did to deserve this kind of unconditional love.


    The answer was so simple that he missed it, he cared, for his friends, family, employees, pets and anyone that had any rtionship with him, he cared about them so much it was painfully obvious to those who he cared for, he may not notice this, his mother taught him that caring for those that surround you is a given, not something to think about, it was a fixedw of the universe for him, to others who experienced neglect and disassociation from those around them, Yunan was like a shining star of warmth andfort, especially people like Ophelia; who had no one care about her other than her master, she was especially weak and sensitive to Yunan''s endless supply of care and gentleness.


    "Well if that is what my wife wants then let''s give the wife what she wants, also can you be a little bit greedy and jealous, it makes a husband feel good when the wife is a bit demanding and possessive". To that Ophelia onlyughed sweetly, since she was satisfied with the simple things, she can only enjoy the extravagant treatment he keeps heaping on her all the time.

 Chapter 367: sage level: walkthrough

    Chapter 367: sage level: walkthrough


    Instead of resting for the night, Yunan took the chance to meditate on his newlyprehended skills and enlightenment, sure he didn''t need to, but there was nothing better than practice to consolidate any kind of gain, something drilled into him during his school years, hard work always paid off, no matter what, there is something to be gained from working hard enough.


    By morning Yunan was exuding a stronger presence and gave off a feeling of control, every action he took was nearly perfect as if he was controlling every cell of his body to perform on such a level, when he met the old Apophis after leaving his room the old man gave him an extra nce and nodded his head, this young friend of his was so much better than those geniuses even though he has no particrtent talent, still luck itself was part of one''s strength. Hence he chose to discuss the realm of the sages with Yunan along the way, just to see what will this kidcking talent can achieve with a little push.


    "little friend, do you know what lies in the realm of the sage? I know you have peaked through the door, tell me what you saw". Yunan immediately knew he was receiving yet another lesson to push him forward so he answered after careful consideration.


    Looking inside him and feeling what his skills and experiences imprinted in his mind and soul, the answer came readily "control" Yunan answers "near absolute control, reaching out to the world around me and make flow ording to my will, my reach going beyond just affecting my body, but using the world toplete andpliment my own power and acts, it feels like my body is no longer the limit that holds my mind, at the same time I feel that my mind can not handle the amount of power that it can output at the moment, it feels like I am shackled by something, something is needed, my instinct is calling for more, more of what, I have no idea at all!".


    "You need more restraint, you wear your power on your sleeve, it is always in touch with the world, you need to control it so that it can not leak so freely, that is why sages are the step before divinity, knowledge and power are not sufficient, you need to keep your power in check unconsciously, otherwise the world would warp and change with you just existing, it is hard to rein in the powers you worked so hard to unleash all your life, so far, you have been pushing yourself to acquire endless amount of it, it is nice to see you can control it to this extent."


    Apophis continued "s it is not enough, from my point of view you are leaking like a broken dam, the immediate surrounding ispletely flooded by your influence, to you, it might feel like you are only in touch of an inch outside of your body, but it is wasted power, your control is near perfect enough as it is, so what do you think the next step is?".


    "Efficiency" Yunan blurted out "to lose all the shiness and simplify everything, maintaining all actions to the absolute minimum, reduce all output to almost nothing, bing nothing, losing oneself to the world", these were the teachings of Debauchery, although he has not seeded in achieving them he was very close for someone in his age and at his current stage.


    "Rein in your wild power" Apophis agreed with Yunan "using as little of your strength to overpower those stronger than you, keep your mana in your body, refine it if you must, think of yourself as a vessel if you can not fill it any more, then just boil the impurities away, refine and purify, an ounce of pure gold is worth more than a pound of unrefined gold ore, that is how you will find the way to gain absolute control over your own strength".


    Apophis did not say more and just walked by Yunan''s side as he thought about what to do next and how to do it, for Yunan, the issue of impure mana, unstable foundation and any bodily taint, those things are extremely minute, thanks to the cleansing baths, the spiritual fruits and endless benefits of theva wine, not to mention the dragon and phoenix bloodlines, it is, therefore, harder for him to cleanse himselfpletely since it would be near impossible to detect such a small amount of impurities, even his endless supply of mana has been tempered by the endless use.


    In other words, Yunan did not have tainted mana because he burned it either on fighting or it was absorbed by the private dimension, this endless cycle of regeneration ensured that his mana did not have the time to form impurities by contracting the mana of the outside world, as for the body, decades of cleansing and stress management, as well as extreme nutrition, did well for the body that was cleansed by both dragon fire and phoenix mes, the only way for Yunan to find and detect these impurities is by perfecting his control over his skills and movements, once a hitch was found, cleaning it would be easy afterwards.


    Yunan did not regain his rity of mind until it was time for the highlight of the second day, although he was sitting in the stands and watching the great show, he was so deep in thought that he forgot about those who sat around him, he even ended up missing lunch and dinner, while his family decidedly left him alone because Apophis required them to. Otherwise, they would have snapped him out of his own world much sooner, as soon as he woke to his surrounding he saw the violent Yeti tribe start their show, it could only be described as a military drill, one of those nightmares fueling drills from hell, both magic and body pushed beyond their limit, just to showcase how much of a warlike tribe they actually were.


    After the Yeti ended their show the Jtunn and their king made a great mockery of the fighting drills by turning them into game and dance routines, coordinated by the magical show of the king, Yunan felt the admiration deeply because he suffered under the might of the Jtunn, he even decided to sneakily reward the performing Jtunn with some of his pearls, he was still smirking to himself for being unnoticed when he saw something that made his jaw drop halfway to the floor, he was pinched out of the surprise by different hands that shall remain anonymous; he looked around and saw both jealousy and murderous intent and only his little daughter looked worried about her daddy looking like he lost his mind.


    The Yuki tribe who were ranked under both the Jtunn and the Yeti tribes in the dungeon were going to be the highlight of the show, they looked like proper human females at the moment, warm and beautiful, unlike the snowy look they had when hest met some of them, there were some who shed him bright smiles as they walked to the arena in file, they whispered and nodded to each other as they took their ces, then to the shock of the audience the beautiful and enchanting Yuki all knelt towards someone and showted in sync "king!"

 Chapter 368: home of the snow daughters

    Chapter 368: home of the snow daughters


    Yunan felt a huge headache threatening to take over him and some subtle threat that was looming over his soul from an unknown ce, but he did not pay much attention to any of it, he was troubled by this tant show of favour and respect, twice already he has been greeted with reverence, the first time he acknowledged the greeting by reciprocating it verbally, this time he chose to give a nod and a dismissal gesture with a "carry on" thrown in for good measure.


    The arena waspletely silent after Yunan spoke, but then again everything started to regain its casual fervour after the Yuki started performing their ice dance, meanwhile, Yunan got a pat on the shoulder for a well-handled situation, he turned around to see that both Leader and Lucian were smiling at him approvingly.


    The dance featured by the Yuki tribe was just an ice storm, bold and arrogant, sweeping and gripping, although there was no cold in the viewing stands, there was a noticeable chill tugging at the audience, this prowess was showing off their affinity for the clod and ice elements, it was beyond question at the moment that these snow women were the masters of ice in this ce, not even the Jtunn or the Yeti tribes were able to convince one that the ice show was actually deadly and not just a simple dance and routine of elemental maniption.


    Ice swords flew and converged into light blue coloured lotus flowers, the snow flying around the performers became white cherry blossom petals, converging and diverging like a flower blooming over and over again, but no matter how beautiful it looked like it still made anyone watching feel a chill of death locking on them.


    The contrast of beauty and danger almost pulled the audience into a trance, but the cold atmosphere kept everyone at the edge of sanity, just barely enough for them to be enticed by the strange and unique show, to the point it felt like no time passed when the performing Yuki came to halt, breathing heavily with ice petals king on their hair and clothes, it took a moment before the roaring cheer sounded through the Coliseum. After watching the snow womenve the arena, the crowds started dispersing, it would be hard for the uing races to top what the Yuki just pulled out.


    Yunan did not go out with his family as they left the Coliseum but instead headed to the entrance used by the performing teams to meet with the Yuki, he wanted to spend some time with them and meet their leaders, he was not very sure about meeting the snow women before but since they called him king, he thought he should do so, he put his daughter on his shoulders and sent away his wives with Ignis and Sapphira as escort, there were some objections and quibbling that ultimately did not work.


    "King!" kneeled a certain Yuki before Yunan almost as soon as she saw him, there were others that bowed or knelt as well, there were some who looked unhappily at him, even so, he greeted each snow woman and introduced himself as well as his daughter to them by saying "well hello there, good to see you again, how have you girls been? This is my Daughter Catelyn, my name is Yunan and I am the current king of the Pearl kingdom, at your service".


    The way Yunan conducted himself was very friendly, mainly because of how the Yuki treated him in return. Soon he was surrounded by the no longer cold and icy women who also introduced themselves and led him to where they were lodging for the event, a literal iceberg hollowed out and turned into a mobile fortress. Upon setting foot on the ice Yunan immediately felt the mana saturated and reinforced ice, with veins of mana throbbing through the iceberg like it was a living thing, strangely it was warm andfortable inside, therefore Yunan did not need to use Drogon to keep the little child warm and safe, but he still chose to cast an istion spell on her, the abundant mana may be harmless to himself but since the little girl was not used to such high mana concentrations, he choose to be safe than sorry.


    Inside the iceberg were many rooms, hallways and halls for different purposes, he walked to the heart of the iceberg surrounded by a crowd of Yuki that only kept growing, it was after all very rare for anyone to be invited to the iceberg, let alone, a human male that was already famous among the women for being the promised king, some Yuki whispered and some shouted out loud, Yunan greeted everyone who cared to greet him, he enthusiastically returned waves and shook the hands that reached him, even the asional hug was not out of the question.


    Inside the main hall, there were a dozen older snow daughters on thrones, they were the source of the mana that coursed through the iceberg, upon entry Yunan presented himself as kingly as he could. "Good evening mydies, thank you for indulging my sudden visit and agreeing to meet me on such short notice, I hope these gifts would help you forgive myck of manners".


    With Catelyn still sitting on his shoulder, he bowed slightly and conjured out some especially ice attributedva wine and some beauty lotus fruits, enough for everyone in the icy vige to have a few samples, the snow daughters numbers were abysmal for a n with their strength, they numbered no more than 300 in all.


    "Wee King Yunan, we wee you to our home, although we have to say that your gifts are surely enticing to old women like us, putting aside your familiarity with some of our numbers and your promise to them about visiting, we again wee you to our home" the one that spoke was the one in the centre of the 12 seats but Yunan could feel all the 12 seats answering him through her, this was probably some shared will, more likely a way to join the strength of the seated, so that they could feed the iceberg with mana.


    "My sincere thanks to the elders, it would be amiss of me to waste time with too many pleasantries, it is therefore that I must divulge the reason for my visit" Yunan straightened himself and put down his daughter to stand beside him "in my capacity as king of the Pearl kingdom, I would like to invite the snow daughters to join my kingdom as citizens, I would like for my kingdom to build some strong ties with the awakened ind, through trade of goods mainly, I have friendly ties with the lizardman tribe and have alreadye to an agreement with them".

 Chapter 369: that is a given

    Chapter 369: that is a given


    There was a certain murmur in the hall, especially behind the visible crowd, hints of dissatisfaction and mistrust wafted through the air and the shared look of the sated, all of it made it obviously painful to anyone watching that the Yuki tribe have been betrayed one too many times.


    Yunan waited patiently while Catelyn could barely close her eyes, the crystal-like structure of the hall made it look like it trapped rainbows in the pirs and exuded light from the walls, she did feel a bit ufortable under the scrutinising eyes of the present crowd after her dad spoke, but eventually, she just walked away to a pir and seriously asked one snow woman beside her in an excited hushed voice "is this made of rainbows?"


    "Terms?" was the answer Yunan received while Cat was touring the hall and spreading her charming innocence all over the ce, as for Yunan he answered almost immediately " you only need to be our representatives in the awakened ind, we have some items produced in the twilight pearl, all of it is mortal industry, and we would like you to be our trading partner, we expect a certain revenue from our products, as for the amount you profit by selling it on the ind is your own concern, we would also like to extend the same invitation we have issued to the lizardmen tribe, you may like to work as instructors in or dungeon guides for our kingdom''s army, our army is very new and is currently climbing the dungeon slowly, we are in need of capable instructors and guides, we in return offer amplepensation and protection"


    "Sounds too good to be true!" the answer of the seated was to be expected, the awakened did not enjoy a good standing with the sentient races, even the limited trade is considered by most sentient races as piracy or treason, and Yunan was not going to make excuses he only proceeded to make a simple promise " in the twilight pearl, we have a very peaceful and stable atmosphere, we are sure that sudden introduction of the awakened races may result in some form of istion but we are very certain, that if we start working with each other slowly we can remove most of the prejudice and otherwise unsavoury feelings between our two nations"


    "We assume you want to say that at most the interaction will start with trade and tourism? That ismendable but we have to say that we have heard it all before, and it was all lies, the awakened, including us, have been bitten by such lies too many times before, what makes you different? Why would we trust you?"


    Yunan was not prepared for such an issue, he was truly unaware of the bloody history between the sentient and the awakened, so he stood there silent for a few moments, then took out one of his battle mechs, it waspressed due to the small size of the hall. "This is the weapon that only our family has, it is one of our secrets and has only been employed in true battle once, this is my guarantee to your tribe, it is functional and can be used immediately, you may have it to defend yourselves if anything goes awry, it works simply by injecting mana into it, it is much bigger, this size is the result ofpression due tock of space" that led to huge exmation in the hall from both the seated and the audience.


    It was beyond trust to offer a war machine that was exclusive to Yunan and his closest family, it was certainly beyond what the Yuki thought Yunan was willing to do. Yunan did not have any ulterior motives, he just thought that if his allies were able to protect themselves from exterior threats, it would bode well for their rtions further down the line. The Yuki tribe certainly were not weak, they could ensure their own safety in the world if it was not for some ambushes or predetermined actions.


    "At least there is enough sincerity from you" muttered the seated, they took a moment to confer among each other then asked with clear anticipation, "will you grant our wishes if we agree to join your little kingdom?", "I and my family will not treat this tribe with anything less than satisfactory, we, after all, do not ept very many people among us, let alone seek them out for anything"


    The hall turned silent, the words were strong and convincing, it was not like the Yuki tribe did not research and understand this man the moment he was called king by the neers some years ago, they knew about him enough to know how exclusive he can be, thesetest words of his was him dering that if the Yuki joined his little kingdom, they were immediately part of his family.


    "Full citizenship andplete rights, ess to the governing body andmunication pathways,plete autonomy over our internal structure and ruling, we only answer to you alone, we decided how to trade and who to trade with, and finally, our own patch ofnd must be a privet property solely for the use of us, the snow-daughters, and can never be removed from us not even by you as long as you and your posterity rule the Twilight Pearl, those are our initial demands, if you agree we can iron out the restter on with your governing body"


    Yunan had an odd look on his face, he really did not know how to reply, seeing the weird look in his face, the seated almost thought he was pondering whether to refuse or ept, they were about to just tell him to just leave when he said "that is the bare minimum, you also get to be included in all policy and development, current or future, you gain the right to a representative in the parliament and anything that is granted to all my citizens, that includes the right to purchase property and trade, I am literally inviting you to be part of my kingdom, I would not skimp on the basics"


    Again deafening silence, it was so awkward that Yunan had to bber a bit more in hopes to change the atmosphere.

 Chapter 370: bad feeling

    Chapter 370: bad feeling


    The sad awkward silence truly showed what the Yuki thought about the way Yunan would treat them, it was not inferiority, no, it was more like disbelief, the awakened were not treated very well by outsiders, especially by dungeon explorers who had some bad time with any single race inside of Tartarus.


    Taking a deep breath to clear his mind, Yunan continued talking just to remove the silence. "You see, I was nning on giving you special rights to conduct trade and act as the kingdom''s representatives as well as the domestic counsellors in all manners rted to the awakened, as you may already know, we already have an ambassador turned house pet in our midst, we were supposed to be the link to expand thework of the awakened into the maind, well we are trying to fulfill that role because of a promise made years ago, I have decided to chose your tribe as the main link ever since your kind called me king. The awakening of the scaly tail tribe was just more reason to actually go on with the n"


    "We understand, we as long as you guarantee we are treated the same as any other citizens we have nothing toin about, as for those extra benefits you mentioned, well, we will see when all concerned parties are together" the seated were really talking with fervour and excitement.


    Seeing things go the way he wanted them Yunan had to ask " do you really do not want anything special? The mech is still on the table, anything else you wish for, no matter what, I will do my utmost to make possible". The seated took a long moment to ask their sisters and argue about what they wanted, eventually declining anything more than the equal rights, even after Yunan wanted to write down a magically binding contract, they simply told him they would wait to write that contract in till they finished all discussion and agreed on everything.


    Yunan left soon after, leaving behind the coordinates to his own kingdom and along the way made his ministers know about his newest ns, the ministers were as dumbfounded as you would expect, no one in their right mind would actually make the awakened their citizens, let alone give them privileges and parliament seats, Yunan also wanted to be broadcasted across the kingdom, the kingdom has been always epting of tourists of all races, it was high time they included other races as citizens.


    When the royal decree was announcedter that night, there wasplete silence in the world, only the guild ever dared deal with the awakened, and only sparsely at that, as for the people, the older generation had some reservation about having monsters as neighbours, the younger generation who has benefitted most from the few reforms Yunan made, they were all in favour, especially since they were introduced to the dungeon, as adventurers they weed any sort of change.


    Even with the reservation of the general popce, after most of the details were released, there came public support for the new action simply because of the king''s weird move of granting equal rights to the neers, the king was supported for his honest ways rather than the question of the benefits that the Pearl may or may not find in this endeavour.


    The guild and the church of light immediately announced their full support for this bold move, they even pledged to help with the enforcement of the agreement as well as protect the new guests from the malicious and evil hands, promising military action against any who dares to harm the awakened. It was another validation for Yunan to be so wholeheartedly supported by the guild and the church, after all, not long ago both heads were present in his wedding.


    As for Yunan he was currently sitting and meditating trying to restrain his overflowing aura. He had be painfully aware of it ever since he had his talk with Apophis, it was really challenging to constrain the power, each part of his body was literally overflowing with the aura that he did not know what to do with it, he tried to keep the aura around him instead of letting it dissipate to the world, he even tried to stop his own body from generating said aura, he failed in many ways, thus he chose to try and rx and change his temperament from raging river to calmke, and so he sat to meditate and try to make his overwhelming power be mild and peaceful.


    After a long night of trial and error, Yunan seded in marginally slowing down the aggression, it was still raging and overflowing, it was just a bit tamer as if it was learning to listen to orders, Yunan did not try to hold his aura anymore, he focused on muffling it, he decided to let the aura flow out but without the fanfare.


    As usual, Apophis noticed almost immediately, he gave Yunan the thumbs up discreetly as the family gathered outside Sapphira''s lodging, he seemed to be thinking about something and was notpletely focused on the gang, he just followed hollow-eyed and empty, although Yunan knew something was up in the eternal domains, he did not use his divinity to check on themunication with the ascended, not unless they called for him.


    After stepping inside the great coliseum, Yunan had a bad feeling nagging in the back of his head, to the point he could not get into focusing onprehending the vast knowledge on disy, he finally decided it was time to head home when even Dustan noticed his unusual state. He immediately teleported everyone to the floating battle fortress and from there took everyone to the Twilight Pearl and used the doorway he left inside the bright pce to reach the private dimension, an action that did not go unnoticed by the family.


    Lucian and Leader approached Yunan while they were in the fortress speeding home they stood behind the captain seat waiting for Yunan to exin. "I just have this felling nagging at me, I really don''t know what is going on but I feel it is wiser to go home the old fashion way". Lucian left the two and Mary sat on Yunan''sp "shall we do some divination?" her reassuring smile as infection and alluring as ever.

 Chapter 371: recklessness unpunished

    Chapter 371: recklessness unpunished


    It had been years since Yunan actually performed divination, he was the kind who always forged his own future and ploughed his own path to tread upon, his divination skill was mostly used for misceneous things that were mostly unrted to his decision making, at the moment, Yunan was very troubled with the bad feeling he had and what mighte of it, especially if it was rted to Catelyn his little daughter.


    "I''m going all out, channel your spell through me, I n on using my shards of divinity" after saying so, Yunan open his mind and soul for Leader to intrude upon, she took off her clothes and started drawing a circle of magic on the floor, he undressed as well and took out a pail of fresh clean water and waited for Mary to finish the circle.


    After she finished drawing aplex and very mind-boggling piece of ritualistic art, she used the water to cleans both their bodies in a certain pattern, from left to right for her and from right to left for him, the two then sat in the heart of the ritual drawing and entwined around each other, then she started channelling her magic through him, he allowed the magic to fill him and then seep in his sea of consciousness where all shards of divinity stood in line, each shard was then used as a catalyst and were arranged in some pattern ording to the ritual, eventually linked and Yunan''s mind flooded with a prophecy.


    You have read it correctly, it wasn''t a premonition nor was it a prediction, a vision or whatever, it was a prophecy, and it just flooded his mind with so much information he almost went mad. It didn''t help that Mary used his mind to sort out the noise and filter the true prophecy through it, she took advantage of the existence of the shards and the fact that he opened himself to her, all so that whatever this prophecy foretold, it wasn''t going to be misinterpreted.


    After some time, Yunan felt Mary untangle herself from him, he opened his eyes to see that blood has erased the circle of the ritual, his mind was still slow and hurting to realise that both he and Mary were bleeding from every pore, he saw her wobble and the fall face first onto him, he was so powerless that he could not even withstand the impact and he tooy with her on the ground, spent, tired and in need of sleep, neither of them knew how, but they both fell in dreamless sleep.


    When Yunan woke up he was in the honey pit, still naked and holding to a waking Mary, whatever toll was taken for the prophecy was heavier on her, how could someone who was strong like her only wake up at the same time as him.


    "Home" he heard her mutter with a weak voice, he too extended his senses and felt everything exactly like it should be, even the bated heartbeats of the family resonated in his ears, full of anxiety and stress, then he felt Leader dive in his mind and search frantically for something that should have been there, although it hurt as she rummaged in his sea of consciousness, he took it silently and waited for her to calm down.


    Once Leader pulled back her consciousness, he looked through his mind, everything was in order, the shards were where he usually kept them, his memories untouched, his thoughts and mental notes still as disorganized and chaotic, but something was missing.


    "I don''t remember", he said, "do you?" She shook her head, never has Yunan felt Mary and Leader switch so many times before, he patted her hair gently, it was sticky and dirty and bloody, she calmed down slowly, the lost look in her eyes made Yunan feel like shit, it was his fault, he knew, so he kept her close and touched her gently until both wereposed enough to stand from the pool and go clean up, they huddled together in the bath as they let the water wash over them. "We screwed up bad, huh".


    After leaving the bath, the gods were sitting with the family sharing the sombre mood, Hephaestus was holding his head in his hands as the ck Fate floated beside him, Drogon was keeping Cat safe while Apophis tried his best to meld with the background, the wives were huddled together, Debauchery were doing the same andstly, Ignis and Sapphira were looking like they were on guard duty, they patrolled the room with sharp killing intent obvious to all.


    Mary sent a look to her partners and Yunan looked at his wives, but neither said anything, Yunan sat between Luna and Death, while Leader sat beside Apophis, seeing no reaction to their arrival Yunan voiced a very cautious "so?". Hephaestus looked up and waved his hand making the ck Fate return to Yunan''s hand, he sat straight and smiled.


    "Congrattions, you just scooped up from fate itself and survived, you lost nothing but your memories of what you saw, that is truly getting away lightly", Death was not so impressed on the other hand "I have yet to meet someone as reckless as you in my entire life, what were you thinking? diving into fate before you could evenprehend destiny is no less than suicide", on the other hand, Fortuna just said "talk", she red at him as if she would have to tweak something inside his brain.


    "I had this bad feeling nagging at me, it was so bad we left the Awakened ind and decided to perform a divination, she used some ritual and I gave her my shards to power up her magic, it went fine at first, we got a prophecy, we made sure to take it all in and properly record and interpret it, but after the ritual was over, we were bleeding from every pore, then we both fainted and that was that, when we woke up, it was gone, just the prophecy, nothing else was missing, we even knew it was a prophecy but couldn''t find the memories, neither in her mind nor in mine, it wasn''t deleted nor ripped away, it just is missing".

 Chapter 372: zoning out the gebberish

    Chapter 372: zoning out the gebberish


    There were three simultaneous face-palming sounds that resounded around the table, there was a small moment of disappointment among the gods before something else overtook it, worry and amazement, Apophis was nowughing hard and saying "genius, simply genius, kid, I like your style, hahaha".


    "So, how bad was the feeling?" Asked Fortuna as she took out a gauge that has been visibly upgraded and tinkered with a few times, she looked at it and made some magic circles float around it as she waited for Yunan to answer. "It was bad enough, I chose to go through the long way back to home, I did not dare use phase shift, I did not even dare to use the genie that was inside the private dimension" Fortuna nodded as she confirmed his story through whatever she was doing. Apophis who has stoppedughing was now trying to squeeze in between Death and Yunan actively waving the old man away, just like someone with expertise.


    "Tell me three things, kiddo, what intent did you have, how many shards did you use, finally, how good is your control over your shards". Yunan immediately obliged the keen elder "I only intended to glimpse the root of my bad feeling, nothing else, I used all the shards" Yunan felt a bit bashful when he said that, it was too much for just a quick divination now that he mentioned it, scratching the back of his head he continued " I can make use them as magic conduits and actively share them with others to do the same".


    Apophis was roaring withughter again, Death was sweating bullets, Fortuna was proud and Hephaestus was obviously lost in thought. Mary wanted to leave the table as her hands shivered for some reason but she was held back. As if feeling her distress, Drogon brought over Cat and left her for Mary then took his usual spot on the medal, it took a moment before Fortuna spoke and hushed theughing Apophis. "I know hubby was very worried, but you can''t expect to use a few hundred shards of divinity just for a simple divination, that is the very definition of going above and beyond, you see, when gods look at the future, they are looking directly inside fate itself, when mortals look at the future, they glimpse from destiny, the catch is, destiny is malleable, it shows you what you want to see, fate shows you what you need to see".


    "Fate is endless, vast and ever-changing, epassing everything past, present and future, everything in there is a truth, destiny is like a river of time, it can only contain the possibilities, the ones that are easiest to tread as paths in the future, fate, on the other hand, contains it all, even the timelines that have been deleted, looking inside fate is like asking it to show you what you need, whatever you get, is a truth, even one that may seem like a lie to us, therefore, gods do not casually look upon fate with anything less than 5 divinities and a realm, it will only muddle the head if one knows something they should not".


    "Let me exin the mumbo-jumbo to you kid, looking at fate requires divine power and intent, the more power you have the more it is likely fate will show you something relevant, you two performed a ritual, using faith, a divine power open to mortals, then amplified it by using hundreds of shards, and used a very basic intent, ''why do i have this bad feeling'' basic but potent, now that you have both power and intent, destiny could not be the most precise instrument to look at the future, therefore, you were introduced to fate, and it liked you, so much so, it only masked the information you got, probably because the scope of what you looked at is currently beyond you, you will naturally act on the prophecy and solve your bad feeling without needing to have memories, and when you are powerful enough or knowledgeable enough, the memories will just show themselves".


    " I called you a genius, because no one has ever tried to call on fate for such reason, with such basic intent and so much power pumped into the request, you see even for Death it is draining to deal with fate, only those older than time can look at fate unhindered, you, for some reason, gave fate more than enough power to ask a simple question, it was like buying an astronomer association just to ask for the name of the moon or the sun, this much of unused power, was taken instead of paying the bill for looking into fate, I assume that your nagging feeling is already gone right?".


    Yunan immediately nodded, it was true, other than nursing the headache and the feeling of being drained, he was not feeling anything else at all, finally finding the courage and the stability of mind to talk, Mary with Catelyn in herp, said in a mosquito voice "I think I have something leftover from the divination, the prophecy it was for Yunan  my own intent was to clear up his bad feeling  I think fate showed me Yunan sleeping soundly with relief written all over him, fate did something to make it so " she really tried to hide as much as possible after she finished talking.


    "Why do I even feel amazed anymore? You asked fate, the fate, to clear up a bad feeling  sigh  I wonder why everyone else who asked fate to do anything is either, dead, missing in some part of the universe or literally absorbed by fate  it can''t be thanks to that  it''s not even  Hephaestus, you dove into fate before, was it because" Death was interrupted by Hephaestus who had a near invisible smile dancing on his lips "yup, it is exactly what you think it is, its already sshing about, don''t you think front row seats are the best". "I see, I see, to think that this little mortal is such a great figure, to actually go about sshing in the waters of fate, I think I should take him to the chaos for a few years". "My hubby is pure awesomeness, I am in love all over again"...


    While the gods spoke like some people talking about some in-joke, the mortals looked at each other and then at Yunan who was twiddling his fingers lost in some kind of thought not really paying attention to what the gods were saying, as if forcefully zoning out their gibberish.

 Chapter 373: the creator

    Chapter 373: the creator


    It did not take long for the gods to settle down, Death was really distraught by whatever Yunan managed to achieve, Hephaestus was simply looking forward to what the future would bring, Apophis was thinking about how to test this oh so ordinary little mortal, meanwhile, Fortuna was just tinkering with her gauge, turning dials and measuring god knows what.


    While the gods were still making noise, Yunan winked at Mary and the two snuck away, they each went to the open arms awaiting them, they were hugged, fussed over, punched and pinched, but ultimately they took everyone to the baths, Yunan was especially handled gently thanks to Ophelia''s threats and warnings.


    As the kids went away, the gods changed the subject of discussion as if keeping a secret. "So, the old dude ising back from his stroll, to think it would trigger the kid this far ahead of time". "We all know why he ising back, he did not make any attempt at hiding the rift and the residing inside, even the minor ascended have felt them".


    "The old fogies at the council are very restless and afraid, this was not supposed to happen yet, this universe does not have enough faith in it yet, even interster exploration has not taken form yet, this is too early, it does not matter, however, the rift seems to be still collecting faith to cultivate the into a world"


    "Do you think the old fogies will try to hijack fate earlier than they nned because the creator is back early?", "probably not, they can not risk it, even though it is just a fragment of a primordial, it is not easy to deal with, fusing with it is still beyond them, but with the creator back, things can get unpredictable", "as chosen by the primordial fate, we sure are in for some unsavoury events, but we have a trump card, someone outside the scope of fate".


    "Listen here geezers, hubby is not a trump card, he may be outside of fate in this universe, unaffected by it, but he is still mortal, fragile and weak, I like him, seriously, therefore you must tread lightly when this subject is at hand, we don''t even know what kind of thing the creator has made the rift for, and we probably may never know, not until it blows open in our faces, let''s do our best in our job, protecting the fate of this universe is our mission, and Yunan is the key to that"


    "To think from all the gods out there, he chose the four of us to be hispanions, Fate is really something isn''t it, driving all of us toward the man who managed to convince all of us to respect him, look at us, a crone born to fate before the creator, a smith with a better talent than the creator, the avatar of null and the avatar of all, how did we all acknowledge the same person, I could neverprehend that".


    "Well not every universe can be as fun as this, even if it is too early to make any judgement, it is nheless very intriguing, with the other avatars now focused on the rift, maybe this boy can grow into something fierce sooner than we expect".


    Outside of the Burkan, a round table was floating in the endless expanse of the void, the council members were for one all alert and discussing something with zeal. It seemed like an argument between political parties, each member advocating for something or the other, but all had one thing inmon, panic.


    "Why did he return now, we were so close, only a few more millennia and we would have finished the preparations, do you think Death told on us?" A visibly decaying sphinx-like creature spoke, the whole table was in chaos thanks to the sudden arrival of the rift, even the avatars nted by the primordial beings were focused on it, they too were surprised by it, why would a creator suddenly do something like this.


    A creator was someone like Hephaestus, a great smith, engineer and artisan, born on a under the jurisdiction of a primordial, each creator will build a universe, each batch of universes would be set against each other and only the strongest universe would be rewarded with the oracle of a primordial, sessfully bing subordinate to said being, each universe would supply most of its faith to their primordial as a form of payment for letting them live, any universe that doesn''t generate a minimum level of faith cannot be chosen to the culling, however, if it takes too long to reach a certain threshold it would be destroyed or absorbed by other universes.


    The rift that just happened to announce the return of the creator; of the very immature universe where Burkan exists, was usually a sign of the culling tournament, however, this particr universe did not even have enough poption, the number of life-supportings was still in the lower end, not to mention interster travel, there has not beenmunication between two differents as of yet, if we take Burkan as an example, thanks to the help of Hephaestus and other ascended, they had a decent amount of faith generation, but the world was currently dying to the mana corruption, its residents have yet to feel the need for colonies in the stars.


    The arrival of the rift means that the creator was up to something, the primordials would not care about this little universe even if their avatars died in it, it had no value, thus it would be left alone until it was mature enough, meaning the council had to contend with whatever the creator wished to do and survive it, they were given a chance by the primordial beings to prove their worth, this was an experiment they designed to be spared when their universe was destroyed. They made a bold im to the primordials, if the fate of a universe is consumed, it matters not if the universe was mature or not, it would provide the same nutrition as any other universe that reached the requirements for the culling.

 Chapter 374: return of the flow

    Chapter 374: return of the flow


    The gods sitting around the council, in order to prove their hypothesis, they were given a chance, if they consumed the immature fate and sessfully ascended to the rank of primordial, their universe was to be spared and even left for them to lord over it, a pretty sweet deal, especially since they would be included in the following contests for the mature universes.


    They made an oath with the creator of Burkan, they would not try to consume the fate until a god was born, who, without help from the primordial, without being an avatar, and ispletely independent in his ascension, the oath is valid until the culling or when said deity reached the level of a creator god. The upside of the oath is that they had the same authority as the creator, the downside is that the maturity of fate would make it harder to be absorbed by then. It is, therefore, they were already nning on breaking the oath, being cut off from their universe was already sapping away the power from the council, especially because they were almost ready to ascend towards bing primordials.


    "This creator has been away for so long there is no concern about betrayal, he might have known a thing or two but he would never act against the will of his masters, this rift may be something akin to a symbolic struggle in order to let his creation survive".


    "All your words are well and good, since we have no information, we can barely act now if we have any doubt that our n may fail, that and the interference from the avatars can be expected now, this stupid rift is nursing a, and they may hinder us just to see the end of this".


    "What about the boy, we were surprised by the return of the creator that we stopped the n to eat him, his little bit of luck has be a pain to deal with, should we just make Death harvest him?".


    "I believe that it is not as simple as that, I have been diving into fate to try and see his future, there is none, his path should have ended at the doorstep of an orphanage, he should have died after being in the cold rain for a whole night, something tells me if we act on him, the creator may just eat us and ascend himself".


    "Preposterous! We are older, stronger and far craftier than you give us credit for, a sole creator has no hope of going against us, just kill the boy and forget about consuming him, it''s already annoying that he can influence fate with his mere existence".


    "I would rmend to wait and see what the little that is hidden in the rift is made for, it is being nursed with vast amounts of faith just to develop it, I bet there is a trap, if we act in any way that may disregard the oath, we will be marked as oath breakers too early, we may lose both fate and our lives".


    "Let''s ask Death, then, summon him and questions him about the boy, if he goes against us, kill him, even if we have to anger the null". The one who spokest had the looks and the aura that indicated he was the defacto leader of the council, as he spoke Death materialised behind him still munching on Poison-type lotus fruits. "I was having a great time, what do you need from me old geezers and crones?"


    "The boy, you seem to have taken a liking to him, look at you, eating mortal fruits and having fun, shouldn''t you be reaping lives and growing stronger?" The decaying sphinx wasshing out at Death who didn''t even blink at those words, rather he focused his gaze on the tallest chair "is this about the boy? I rmend leaving him alone, if you want a reason, then take him as the god you swore to wait for, he has that potential"


    There were frowns spreading on the faces of the council members, if the boy had the potential to grow as strong as the creator, then he could grow stronger as well, that, and if they killed a likely trigger to their oath, the creator may go to war against them for the reason of interference, the primordial beings may or may not pass judgement, and that uncertainty troubled the council to no end, they were after all, away from home, had no advantage other than the tolerance of the primordials, it was imperative that they keep all their power focused on dealing with fate rather than the creator or the beings of this universe.


    "I will be going back to having fun and you go back to your scheming, I have to warn you before I leave, don''t think I will stand aside and watch you harm the kid, sorry, my own master is watching him grow too" with that Death vanished from behind the council, leaving them make disgruntled noises and curse at the kid, Death, and the null, however, none tried to leave their seats, this universe was getting troublesome by the moment, as if it was trying to reject them.


    Back at the private dimension, the family has already gone past thest incident, if it was solved then it was solved, who cares about it anymore, Yunan was currently in cloud form and ying as the hiding spot of choice for little Catelyn, hiding her away as they yed hide and seek, everyone was ying, even the gods, sometimes being childish was the best way to return the flow back to the family.

 Chapter 375: worship me

    Chapter 375: worship me


    While the days passed by in rtive happiness in the family, the general mood of the universe - henceforth referred to as universe Hosana - is the loaded quiet before the storm, all gods began shoring up their worshipper bases, trying to spread their own religious education or hijack the believers of lesser gods, it was a renaissance era for the religious beliefs across the whole universe, but since each and their gods were isted as of this moment, there were no alien gods intruding on Burkan. It has been a month since the prophecy incident, the Twilight Pearl was preparing to receive the two Awakened tribes, for this asion, the whole family dressed magnificently and flew to receive them on top of the cloud falcons in a show of wealth, ability and power. At the port where the iceberg carrying both the Yuki tribe and the scaly tail tribe would dock, there were three camps of people, those from the Pearl who came to witness the arrival of the new citizens, those from outside who wished toy eyes on the Awakened, especially knowing that the famously beautiful snow-daughters were among the arrivals, finally the third camp of haters and deniers who flocked to jeer on and bad mouth the Awakened, simply because they could not do anything about it. There were protests and demonstration against the inclusion of the Awakened in thends of the sentient races, unfortunately, neither the locals nor the king paid any attention to these discontent voices. Today, there were many religious and pseudo-religious groups, they were calling the arrival of the Awakened an affront to the gods, their voices reached the heavens as they tried to spread the beliefs of their gods to any who will listen. When Yunan descended majestically on the pier with his family, the iceberg was about to dock in the harbour, they let the cloud falcons y and frolic in the sky with Catelyn''s chirp-likeughter ringing all over the harbour. It didn''t take long before Yunan and the leaders of the Yuki and the lizardmen made the official greetings, exchanged gifts and walked the pathway for them toe inside the kingdom. Among the many voices either cheering or jeering, came a sonorous one that drowned the hubbub of the masses. "King Yunan, you have brought evil to the peacefulnd of Burkan, what say you in your defence!", Since the use of magic was forbidden, it was obvious that the man used faith to y on the technicality, unbeknownst to him, he was not the only user of the power of faith in the location. Ever since Yunan used his body as a conduit for the divination ritual, his mastery of faith peaked for some reason, Apophis called it the effect of touching fate, but Yunan chose to not believe him, it was just that he became more in tune with his divinities. Yunan stood still and answered "who''s the god that dares to call my act evil, name your god so that I can bring him to beg for forgiveness" using the same power to make his voice reach everyone without drowning any of the noise of the public caused everyone present to quiet down, when kings spoke, they did not raise their voices yet they made sure they were heard loud and clear. The man who challenged Yunan came forward with a smile on his face, thinking that he trapped the king, "what do you call a king who doesn''t respect the power of God, are you so righteous that God has to exin their infinite wisdom to you?". Yunan scratched his head then answered as if in doubt "you mean the creator god or the ascended gods, if we are talking about the creator, you should not be able to call on him, if we are talking about the ascended, which one, there are so many of them, and the number of those who actually dare to go against me are very few". Arrogance, pride, grandness, holiness. That was what the impression Yunan gave as he spoke, it wasn''t empty boasting or mere bravado, it was genuine confidence born from true strength, the man frowned, calling anyone who ascended by anything other than gods was not something that you dare to do, either you could or couldn''t, but the man still thought he was the one winning, " I bask in the service of Idan, the god of holy justice, and you have just incurred the wrath of my god, you will be smitten unless you repent and send away the spawn of monsters, back to whatever hell you fished them from" Laughter, unrestrainedughter resounded, Fae, Dustan and Balin were rolling on the floor, Leader and Lucian were chuckling as they leaned against each other, meanwhile, Bai was supporting both to keep them from falling, the wives were trying hard to pacify the Awakened along with Sapphira and Ignis, all the while trying to hold back from smiling or snickering too hard. As for Yunan he just smiled and looked at his family. "Excuse them, they have yet to hear such a joke, me, getting smitten by a lower god without even a realm, heh, that was a funny one, I admire your sense of humour, however, in return to making my familyugh, I grant you the right to kneel and worship instead of your weak ass god, if you refuse, I will smite you and lets see if your god dares protect you from my rage" As someone who has so many divinity shards, aplete divinity as well as a realm in Dreamscape, Yunan was stronger than many ascended when it came to raw faith power, him dying his ascension was mostly due to him trying to find his own original divinity, add in his sensitivity to the energy of emotions thanks to both dreamscape and Apophis'' teachings, Yunan was certain that he could take away this presumptuous preacher from his god. The man had his face darken and was about to spout something when the sky darkened and clouds filled the sky, clouds burning with rage and lightning raging like dragons within, Yunan held up a finger and the rumbling heavens turned silent, but still as menacing as ever " worship me as your god and live, refuse and burn in fire and lightning, this is how you threaten to smite someone".

 Chapter 376: smite

    Chapter 376: smite


    The rumbling heavens idea was something that Yunan actually gleaned from the emotion of the man who attempted to prosecute him, ever since he became more in tune with his divinity shards, he could more or less peer through the minds and the feelings of those he focused on, it was something like a reading a spreadsheet about the man, all the avable information on him was gleaned through a different shard.


    What Yunan felt when he tried to peer through others was what he supposed gods felt, but in a much more extensive way, for example, a god of justice would see the guilts of a person, thus could not judge a man guilty if the man had no guilt, a god of death or life, would see the lifeline and how long of it is left, as for Yunan, his shards gave him the ability to understand so many things, however the information would be vague and fragmented, except when it came to dreams, those were a bit more tangible andplete.


    On the crowded harbour, fear and anticipation saturated the atmosphere, no matter how legendary Yunan was, it was not simple to just take over a dedicated worshipper, however, the truth was that the self-proimed priest was not rted to Idan in any way, other than worshipping the deity, that is.


    It was simply outrageous for a god of justice to actively make his followers judge someone based only on the biases people have, there was nothing just about denying the Awakened a home in the continent, however, personal biases are a great way to recruit followers, something that is used too much in any religion.


    As a user of faith, the follower of Idan was rather adept at ying with the feelings of mortals, thus trying to use this opportunity to recruit more worshippers for Idan and get his attention that way, unfortunately for him, Yunan just pulled out his nightmare and brought it to life, the man''s own worst nightmare was to be smitten by his god for using underhanded means to recruit, even going as far as to frame the innocent.


    Upon seeing the rumbling heaven ready to smite him into nothingness, his resolve now weakened but still said something that was truly thest nail in his coffin. "You would smite a righteous man for simply standing up to you and dering you guilty of your wrongdoings". Yunan did not respond immediately, he thought for a moment then responded with a smile.


    "If you do not prove the evil in my act, I will not only smite you, I will make your own god banish you himself, using his own words and power, you see, among the gods, I have a reputation for making them do what I want". The smile Yunan gave made the man shiver, he wanted to speak but did not know what to say. Other than the biases known to all, there was nothing wrong with the awakened being part of any kingdom.


    "They are murderers, they kill our own kind in the dungeon, they are monsters who will only kill and destroy this beautifulnd." CRACK the lightninging from the sky descended upon the man and nearly burn him to a crisp, he stopped breathing, he could only look at Yunan with indignation, it was impossible to escape the dilemma he was in, the Awakened were by no means criminals, they have been away from the sentient races on an ind so as to avoid conflict, they also were not the same as the monsters in the dungeon, any adventurer knew that yet many still discriminate against them, that, and being born to a monster was no crime, it has been many thousands of years since killing the offspring and family of a murdererst came to pass.


    Seeing the man has not said anything more, Yunan snapped his fingers and the amalgamation of fire and lightning descended on the man and burnt him to a crisp, the ashes themselves scattered in the breeze, the people present were dumbfounded before their emotions finally split into either wonder and exasperation, fear and terror or pride and relief.


    Those tourists who only came to watch were positively in wonder and awe, this previously gentle king has shown power belonging to the gods as if it was nothing, those who felt fear were the mongers who came to disrupt the wee ceremony, they thought they would be next to be smitten to oblivion, as for those from the Pearl felt pride and relief, their king had godly powers, he also did not tolerate injustice and unfounded critique, his resolution was for all to see.


    As citizens of the Pearl, they would have felt insecurity if their king could not defend the people he himself named as citizens, even if they were monsters, as long as the king did not turn his back on them, he would not turn his back on any other citizen, ever. Unexpectedly as if Yunan heard their inner thoughts, he proimed in a voice that everyone present heard clearly.


    "In the Twilight Pearl, you will be judged by what you do, race and background do not matter, these people have been invited by myself to help my kingdom grow. if anyone goes against them because they are different, well, let me remind you that smiting is the by far one of the simplest spells I can conjure".


    Leaving those words behind him Yunan ushered for his newest citizens to follow him to the arranged transportation and then towards the plot ofnd he has chosen for them, it was a little forest with a stone beach adjacent to the bright pce, it was not renovated nor were there anyndmarks or enclosure, it was open for them to use as they see fit.


    As for those left behind on the harbour, each had their own thing to do, informants spread the word about Yunan''s extreme ease of using faith as well as his disregard for the gods, more news about the kingly way he stood up for his people spread, andstly, it was the news that Yunan was not as weak and hands-off as he seemed, he was strong and meant business.

 Chapter 377: fight me

    Chapter 377: fight me


    after Yunan did his duty as king and led his subjects to where they would reside and had aplimentary meal with them, he then returned home to slowly internalise the gains from the awakened ind, as he was deep in meditation,ying on the simple stone bed in the back chamber of the spiritual cave, he started receiving concentrated faith power, a new religion started spreading around Burkan, the worship of the god-king Yunan, the wise prowler.


    It was insinuated by the worship both the Yuki and the lizards disyed when they spoke about king Yunan and how he was truly a god in mortal skin, that and the fact that Yunan got away scot-free from smiting down a worshiper of an established justice god.


    Even if the worshiper was falsely iming his faith in order for some scheme or hidden gain, Yunan did not seem to care much about the ascended or their existence, in fact, it was as if the man had already defeated some of them and to him, godly power was no longer a deterrent.


    The church of the godly king was almost a secret society, birthing new religions in Burkan was a very risky business, risking elimination from all faction, good, evil or neutral, the worst part was that king Yunan had only acted so few times publically that, the church had only three things to name as their own holymandments.


    One must stand up for those who they associate with against any odds, evident when he burnt a federation to bring back the tranquillity back to the sun inds where his wife was from, or thetest incident with the awakened.


    One must preserve and improve the lives of those around him, evident by how he treated the twilight pearl, he did not change it to fit his vision, he only added to the lifestyle andws of the kingdom, giving the kingdom an army as well as introduce two awakened tribes to ensure even more progress.


    One must be gentle and righteous when in peace and vengeful when in war, evident in how he handled the underground world as well as the pirates threatening the kingdom, or his unassuming way of living in the kingdom, it never felt like Yunan was king when he walked with his family in the streets as they took the asional stroll in the capital of the pearl.


    It was therefore hard to form a religion around the god-king, he was so ungodly and so unkingly most of the time, only when he was met with adversity did he show what it meant to be majestic. This religion spread very fast among the locals and then among the merchants and from then on among the small folk, it was a very soft religion, more like a way of life than anything, even the church of light encountered believers among their charges.


    When news of this reached Yunan he held an address to the nation and the world by proxy, since the issue under discussion was a new religion, the theistmunity flocked to the twilight pearl with prominent figures and bishops making debates and demanding the dissolution of this new gue of the believers.


    The result of the awaited address greatly angered half the religious world and bbergasted the other half, it was by no means what would be expected from a guy like him at all, he has been sensible in all public matters before, this was simply atrocious to those who pegged their hopes and wishes on his usual wisdom.


    The address was held just outside the bright pce, Yunan simply walked outside and used the prepared podium to make his speech, his voice was broadcasted to the millions who upied the empty space between the pce and the city as well as the billion who cared about this matter across the world.


    "Hello, we are Yunan, the current king of the twilight pearl and today we im our ce and title as god-king Yunan the wise prowler" taking a moment to enjoy the speechlessness of the crowd, the awe and then the changing of the faces as the words sank, changing his tone continued speaking casually.


    "You see, I like the title god-king, it is not a falsehood since I already do have a few hundred divinity shards and some control over the power of faith, so having a religion is not something I will reject, even if I had no ns for it before, it is not in me to waste, therefore, I hereby announce that for all those who wish to worship me and have faith in me, you can freely do so, any persecution will be met with the same, also my religion is going to be even simpler than it already is".


    Not waiting for the world to even believe their own ears, Yunan kept talking "well, to worship me, is your own choice, I won''t reward or punish, I won''t interfere at all, the only rules in my religion are three, be good to those who are good to you, return grievances and finally, work as hard as you can to be better, that is all. Oh and for those who think this is a joke, intended to ask their gods for aid or simply think they can use violence, my only answer is, fight me".


    "The loaded atmosphere immediately exploded with popes and bishops summoning their gods, worshipers cursing and damning Yunan, others losing all semnce of intelligence and dere a holy crusade. Anger, fear, zealousness, piety, and more emotions all exploded into the world and Yunan just absorbed it all like a sponge, even the Dreamscape started boiling and roiling even worse than thest time it needed cleaning, as the avatar of the all, Apophis was looking younger by the second.


    Chaos erupted all over the continent of Burkan, that "fight me" was the straw that broke the camels back, most religious representatives were ready for the god-king religion to take a foothold in the twilight pearl, it was after all predicted by the gods that Yunan would not waste such an abundant resource willingly delivered to him. But the tant disregard was not something eptable.

 Chapter 378: divinity of Debauchery

    Chapter 378: divinity of Debauchery


    The uproar outside the bright pce did not die out until a monthter when the armies of the worshipers stood at the borders of the twilight pearl. Failing to advance a single step beyond it, anyone with malicious intent crossing the border was vapourised immediately. Lightning bolts as thick as pirs would descend on any that dared cross the border with any malicious intent, that included informants and criminals who actually used the official ways to gain entry.


    The nationwide spell also worked on the local poption, any malicious action against the new religion or the new citizens was punished by immediate execution by lightning. There were many who were not so happy with the trialless executions, but this was also the stance of their king, it was always a world where power gave you the right to do anything, the twilight kingdom was lucky to have a local tyrant that actually enforced thew.


    Yunan may have been king for about two decades or three but his actions spoke loudest, he always followed thews of the kingdom, made sure the kingdom prospered both internally and diplomatically, and most of all, his mere existence was like a safety that kept the kingdom from harm too many times to count.


    Thanks to this, and his forward way of doing things, the honest and just ways of his rules gained him more fans than enemies, even when he wantonly took thew into his own hands, it was to keep his words and ensure the well being of his people, not to mention his usual walks with the family around the pearl, although he used the power of his office to its full extent, he never shoved it in the face of anyone.


    It was, therefore, that even the dissenting voices against the immediate execution were only for advocating the right of a fair trial to those who broke thew, they wanted the Yuki and the Skaly-tail tribe to know that their rights as citizens were preserved and guaranteed by thew, it was purely political and in no way a voice against Yunan himself.


    As for the gods, the major ones chose to focus on gaining more worshipers, the higher gods were either busy working under the major gods or trying to consolidate their own power and worshiper bases, as for the lesser gods, they smartest chose to remain silent, the rest tried to use the call of a crusade to both block Yunan from advancing to godhood, as well as make some new worshipers using the mutual sentiment provoked by Yunan and his own actions.


    As for Yunan, he was currently meditating in Dreamscape with Ignis and Drogon by his side and Apophis swinging in the old hammock, the old man only felt old and looked like a teenager, his age was still regressing as the more and more chaotic emotions flooded from the continent of Burkan.


    The smile on Apophis was changing from blissful to gleeful until he heard a deep sigh, he looked up to see Yunan open his eyes and gently brush his fingers on the fire that was the true body of Ignis. Drogon also beat his wings in his Dragonborn form, showing off histest attainment in the way to the sage realm, only Ignis remained in deep meditation, her fire bing more illusory and translucent.


    "Boy, you actually turned the world upside down, even with my attainment in chaos I find it disturbing how easy you make the natural order of things fail at will, and now look at you, operating a nationwide spell while meditation inside your own realm, you have the enmity of so many gods and mortals, and you still don''t have the aura of someone causing all this, no wonder fate is . " for some reason Yunan did not hear thest few words, but he chose not to care, especially when fate was involved.


    "Old man, you look younger than me, soon you will look as old as my Catelyn, don''tpare me to the likes of you, even if chaos always is at my heel, it is provoked by my path and not by me, my aura is exactly as it should be, the aura of someone walking his own path, anyway, forget that and tell me, how about it? Is my progress satisfying enough to start seeking my own divinity?"


    "Not yet, your apotheosis is set in stone, even fate would agree with me, however, what you need now is not your own divinity, you need to grow a vessel big enough to hold your own divinity, although I must admit your container is already too big, it is quality that matters most, you did not gain this big of a container because of your effort, you basically forced yourself to expand enough to hold all the divinities you stole and even more, all thanks to the amount of divine power present at the moment you overtook the dream world from the control of Morpheus, now that you are a step inside the sage realm, you must make sure that your container won''t break when you introduce your own divinity."


    "Understood", said Yunan with a nod and looked around Dreamscape, the garden had grown by a hundredfold, it was much lusher and the flower pots had now be some weird fruit trees and some vineyards, as for the small hut it had now be a full-blown country-side vi, with the power of dreams gently weaving and saturating the whole garden.


    The turbulence of Dreamscape was still as endless as before, but now it looked much more distinct to Yunan, one look and he could tell what kind of dream energy was before him, what dream beasts were fighting and what nightmares were born, this ce was more alive than before, and much more hospitable, a fact exploited by the family for their own good.


    Debauchery party wereprehending the first threads about each of their own divinities, all of which were surprising to Yunan, Balin was studying creation instead of smithing, his divinity was titled by himself as dwarven creation, Fae choose what she called elvish nature, basically, she was trying to make Yggdrasil her worshiper by taking over the nature that elves were so fond of, Dustan was working on strength, Bai chose stealth, Mary chose medicine, Anne chose decay andstly Lucian chose the hunt.

 Chapter 379: almost there

    Chapter 379: almost there


    Where is the best ce to learn about and create divinity? A divine realm of course, and since Yunan had ess to dreamscape, the family started treating the ce as their own. It was not like Yunan had ever had anything that was exclusively his, he was always the type to share beneficial belongings with his closest friends and rtives.


    While Yunan was chatting with Apophis about the sage realm and how to link it with ascension, Fortuna walked out of the vi with both Ophelia and Reina with her, a rarebination to see getting along together, especially in Dreamscape, even after Yunan opened a stable path to and fro the divine realm, the wives scarcely ever entered the domain, especially since they gave up climbing the dungeon. At least while waiting for Yunan to take them down when he was strong enough.


    Apophis seemed to know something and excused himself and took Ignis with him, cradling in his arms and secretly injecting her with some of his own spiritual powers and understanding, the three wives did not look very troubled as they sat beside Yunan on the lively grass. Yunan patiently made some small talk and exchanged pleasantries with them, these wives were the ones tolerating his selfish ways, even if theyin or force him to do things sometimes, most of the time, they just stood by his side and supported him silently from the shadows.


    "Hubby, we think its time you started back on climbing down the dungeon, there are some things that are shaking the gods and yourtest stunt is not making things any easier for the whole world, we know that you are trying to grow a bit more before returning, however, with the unrest as it is, we decided to push you back, after all, this household needs your strength, so that we would feel safer in these turbulent times."


    Reina and Ophelia nodded as Luna was making her exposition, Yunan was smiling so happily that he could not help but grab hold of his wives and hug each of them closely, he always thought they were too good for him, they wanted him to strengthen himself as soon as trouble reared its head, even with the backing of four exceptionally and immensely powerful gods, they knew he would not seek their help unless he felt utterly helpless, and to avoid such a thing they decided to send him back to the dungeon, even taking into ount the failure to produce any other child for him after Catelyn.


    "You don''t want my children anymore?" he asked, his voice teasing yet full of love and appreciation, heughed as they red at him, "go wait for me home" he said, "this time, I''m not leaving without making at least one more baby in this family", although thedies were still scowling at him they followed instructions, and returned home, he stood up and called out to Drogon, who came flying at him with enough force to sink an ind.


    Apophis returned from his little stroll with an already awake Ignis to find Yunan and Drogon fighting like their lives depended on it, strangely, not a single de of grass was bent where they stepped, there was no wind from the shes and nothing to indicate how much power was being released with each strike.


    Complete control, nothing wasted, all the mana, energy, and spiritual power was precisely controlled so that no overflow would ur, even the dodged strikes and blocked ones did not leave behind any trace, it did not take half an hour for the two to exhaust all their power, the control itself was by far much more consuming than just wild release.


    Although both could still fight endlessly for another week or so, they were unable to keep their power under control for such a long period of time, especially since it was more demanding to control the power during a fight than to control it during a rxed moment.


    p...p...p "two months of meditation had done for yourprehension more than fighting a guardian did for a year, you again amaze me, who would ever think about using a superior divine realm to meditate on sage-level, how innovative of you". Apophis as alwaysplimented Yunan without restraint, it seemed that he grew fonder of the boy by the day, sparing no effort to guide him and share his expertise without prompt or much of a reason.


    Yunan took over the groggy Ignis and gave a thankful look to the old god "let''s chalk it to the impressive skill of resource management my teachers taught me, as always, your presence and instructions have been a good boost to my learning speed, how about I take you out on a mortal night out some day as my thanks". Apophis nodded his head and said as the four left the garden and stepped into the vi making their way back home "I will be looking forward to it, it is always fun to see the mortals have their own fun"


    "Onest thing, the creator is back and there are shenanigans afoot, he maye by to see you, you hold the divinity of his best friend, after all, just remember, this guy is not so simple, the whole Hosana universe is boiling with anticipation at what this creator is up to, if you have the chance to meet him, make sure you never ask and never try to probe, some knowledge is more deadly than idiocy" with that, he waved goodbye and shimmered out of sight.


    Yunan looked like he was about to respond but did not get the chance to, he brushed it from his mind and stepped through the portal and back to the portable home, he saw Death and Hephaestus chatting among themselves, he simply waved at them and made it straight back to his bedroom where his wives where already waiting for him, he smiled at thedies and burned the image into his mind, they were all waiting for him, he muttered to himself "since we have the grave, why not invite the guy over instead of wracking our brains about if he was to show up or not"


    He did not think about his own words too much and just dove into the king-sized bed with 6 gorgeous women were waiting to vie for his affection, he was determined to give them as much love back as he could, and a child would not be amiss either.

 Chapter 380: Kaeser

    Chapter 380: Kaeser


    After a good while of ploughing and nting, Yunan eventually got a seed to bloom, after trying enough times that would cause anyone to want to give up, Reina got her chance to carry a child, she was so happy she ended up kissing Yunan till his lips swell up to twice the size, having never seen thedy this aggressive before, he decided to spend his days making sure she took her happiness out on him. While the nights were spent challenging the guardian on the 69th floor.


    Yunan was hoping to cross to the sage level before stepping back into the 70th floor, as for the guardian, it did not provide enough of a challenge after three months, he would defeat it every night before dawn just in time to return to the increasingly fatter Reina.


    Three more months were enough for Yunan to breakthrough and be a full-fledged sage, he was able topletely stop his own power from affecting the world around him at rest, as well as reliablyst for a day while fighting without letting any bit of his power escape.


    He now understood why he could not tell when Debauchery party used magic or skills; unless they wanted him to take notice, now, he could do the same, but as a beginner and not as impressive as his teachers, especially when it came to skills, hiding magic came to him easier due to his proficiency in magic concealment skills.


    Since Reina was no longer sticking to him as muchtely, Yunan decided to start working on the 70th floors, this ce was a mountainous region dotted with caves and forests on the slopes and a prairie in the valleys and ridges between mountains, this was where he would find an abundance of wyrms with different affinities each trying to fight their way to the highest cave in the nearest mountain, as for the rest of the fields they were full to bursting with pray.


    As per the usual habit he sent Drogon to scout out and look for anything worthwhile to bring back to the portable home, as for Yunan himself, he started working his way through the mountain caves, since he witnessed the wyrms fighting over the caves, he decided he should do so as well, being dragonkin himself, it would be of poor taste to shun the habits of one''s rtives.


    After exploring the caves he came to a conclusion, each mountain contained some kind of an elemental core, each core had an affinity, and each mountain was swarmed by wyrms of said affinity, each cave represents a training spot to help the wyrms advance their elemental sensitivity, making their spells cast faster as well consume less mana, as he made his way through the mountain Yunan fought desperately for each cave.


    These wyrms were not very friendly to someone like him, someone with three bloodlines, even if one of them was telling the wyrms not to mess with him, they were not as smart and not as sane as the dragonkin that still live in the world.


    The wyrms had two types of attacks, an elemental breath and their bodies, the sharp ws and the dagger-like teeth, the thin razor-like wings, it was as if they needed no way to defend themselves, and they truly did not care about taking damages.


    The scaly hide and the taut muscles underneath worked like shields, although the ability to injure each other was there, the fights ended always with submission instead of severe injury between wyrms, Yunan was not as merciful and simply killed his way as he integrated the physical weapons of the wyrms into his arsenal, making his weapons and ws even sharper and tougher, capable of dealing much more damage andst longer in unfavourable fights, a really nice upgrade.


    The second child was born a male, Yunan had just cleared his first mountain range, it was a fire element one, after beating the boss of the mountain he dug out the elemental core and sent it home to see how it can be used, the core turned out to be a crystal of condensed fire element, it was a prism 50 meters long and 50 meters wide and 100 meters high.


    The boy did not have any special bloodline other than the default kitsune one, which dampened Yunan''s spirit, he had failed to pass his bloodlines twice already, that eventually turned into a long query that only ended after Hephaestus was fed the strongest alcoholic drinks to make his tight lips loosen up.


    It seems that for Yunan, even having two children was already too impressive, ording to the old smith, since both Dragons and Phoenix were blessed with long lives, their reproductive age was very high, to them, Yunan should still be in diapers, the addition of both bloodlines have made Yunan a juvenile, thankfully, they integrated perfectly, thus he did not return to prepubescence.


    That also affected his ability to share his bloodlines, he could force the bloodlines on his children but it was not as safe as being born with it, Hephaestus said that until Yunan reached maturity in terms of each bloodline, he would only pass on only his human blood to his children.


    Hearing this, Yunan felt much better, as did the wives, it was not their fault they could not bear children, they just had to wait for a few thousand years until Yunan went through puberty again, if they did not care about bloodlines, they could still try for ordinary children in the meantime.


    As for the boy it was named Kaeser, Reina wanted him to be as regal as an emperor and live asfortably as one, although knowing that his father will not let the boy off easy before making him truly worthy of the name, she still had hopes of secretly spoiling her child, just like she did with Catelyn.

 Chapter 381: annoyed into oblivion

    Chapter 381: annoyed into oblivion


    "Let''s make a festival!" was what Yunan having anxiety about at the current moment, the boy has yet to dry up from his own amniotic fluid and things were already getting out of hand, Reina was in another world and did not seem to care much about the predicament Yunan was facing.


    Newly instated emperor Hoshi was rivalling Lady Mito in tear shedding as they crowded Reina, Kitty was pulling at the two by the nape trying to force them to leave the room, they snuck in almost as soon as the midwives left, Yunan was standing by the door, beside him were certain people who had such big puppy eyes, they were begging for some grand festival.


    After pulling the grandparents away, Reina was taken by Ophelia and Kitty to the infirmary so that she would rest and recover better, Luna was on Catelyn care duty, as for the rest, they were arguing as best as they could, throwing argument after argument at Yunan who still has not gotten permission to hold his son.


    Looking lost and hurt at being forbidden from getting close to the infirmary, Yunan listened to the beggars surrounding him with all their ambitions leaking out, he looked around for help but only a Catelyn seemed to be not enjoying his distress, even the gods were giving him the "just submit already" kind of look.


    "We did not make a fuss when Cat was born, but this is the first male, the heir to your kingdom and your legacy, and as the offspring of an imperial princess, he must be at least announced to the world" Fae was looking like awyer giving Yunan some advice.


    "Kid, this is your first boy, besides, you just upgraded from king to god-king, so it''s a good reason to make double celebrations, not to mention having missed out on Cat, we need to make it know that you have an heir, we must make his reception to the world outstanding" Lucian was trying to trante what Mary was whispering in his ear as best as he could.


    "We need to make it a grand festival, nothing less, we can also use it as an opportunity to show off a bit of wealth and y around too, it has been too long, too long I tell you". It went on like that until Yunan could not help but run to Reina in the infirmary.


    The two leaned on each other as Yunan enjoyed the rush of fatherly emotions, Kaeser was sleeping peacefully in his arms, Reina seemed too exhausted and was dozing off as well, however, since Yunan came running to her, she resisted sleep and held on to her man to give him somefort.


    After Reina dozed off and woke up an hourter, the two chatted as she fed the little boy his first drops of mothers milk. "They want a grand festival, as grand and showy as possible, they said since he would be the heir and what not he must be publically acknowledged, and as the god-king, he is to be brought out to the world in memorable fashion"


    "They just want to have fun, let them y around a little bit, it is not as if any harm wille from it, as for the heir thing we all know it won''t matter which kid is it, so why not let them have at it, besides some joy after the whole crusade story is going to do good for the kingdom ".


    "I know that. I just hate the way they make it seem like I am the biggest boos and the fun police in this family, you know I don''t believe in publicizing matters that concern only the family, this is really going to be a headache, since we are doing it, what do you like to see?".


    "There is only one thing to require on my side, we bring the Oracle from the Sun inds and let her baptise Kaeser, that is all, it has to happen sooner orter, otherwise he would not be recognized as a bearer of the blood"


    "As long as she does not try to prophesize anything or make some kind of revtion, there is no harm in it, anything else?" Yunan was looking at the red furred little baby, he already had two tails out and they were swaying merrily, his gaze was as gentle as could be, he has lived a long life, he has been loved enough to finally understand what love meant, he was no longer just stuck at care as his definition of love.


    He could now appreciate love, more and more by the moment, it was a feeling like his own heart did not belong to him, he would smile unconsciously when he thought about his family, the simple joy flooding from inside him at their mere existence in his life was beyond description, he had been loving for a long time, he just now understood how those emotions and acts rted together, it was almost illogical, yet made the most sense to him at this moment.


    "Just hand the helm to them and go to work, there is one more person here who will need your strength, just make sure to return by the day of the festival, or there will be punishment waiting". The coquettish way Reina spoke made Yunan feel once more he did not deserve her, he had to thank his lucky stars one more time today, noticing he had been thinking those unknown lucky stars a lottely.


    After handing the mother and child to the care of Ophelia, Yunan went to the baths to find the rest of his band of misfits, they were already making ns, seemingly they were eavesdropping on him, he made his way to Leader who was yet again sitting alone, it seemed that every time they needed to talk, they would find themselves a private space.

 Chapter 382: behold

    Chapter 382: behold


    "Look at the enthusiasm, the eagerness is overflowing" said Leader as Yunan sat beside her, lovelier than ever and as warm as the sun rays, she somehow made Yunan feel at ease, "they make me feel like a viin every time, it is getting to the point where they need my approval to have fun".


    Comining to Leader was not the best thing to do, but where else would he find the chance to gain advice from the holy mother of Debauchery, knowing that, he decidedly startedining about his family.


    "Its because you are the hardest working one in this bunch, they subconsciously think that they should not have fun unless you allow it, it is likely that" Leader smiled as she stretched her arms. "Working hard all the time made you the guy to look out for, just a small push from me and you will be the de facto leader of this family, you should be happy, they look up to you".


    Yunan did not know what face to make, Leader always knew how to dump more things on him, now he had to actually start thinking as a leader himself, "I give up, just make sure there is still a home for me when all is done, I am going back to Tartarus, see you in a week" he kissed Leader on the forehead before phasing to the 70th floor.


    He put on his armour and waded waist deep into fighting the Wyrms, the nearest ones to the entrance were focused on the fire element, each mountain had a boss, each mountain range was dedicated to one element, so far, Yunan had cleared only two mountain ranges since he returned to the 70th floor.


    For a long week, Yunan battled and consumed more and more Wyrms, these winged snakes were violent and fearless, forgoing all defence and only retreating when oppressed, unfortunate for the Wyrms, Yunan was not the type to let a kill run away because it wanted too, especially one as beneficial as this one.


    Once the week was over Yunan returned home to find the festive mood taking over the portable home, even the artificial intelligence and genie were taken away from managing the trade outpost, he found a set of ceremonial robes made especially for him, the style was designed by Fae to look as majestic as possible.


    Putting on the robes, he stepped out to the Bright pce where he found servants waiting to lead him to the main event outside, as soon as he left the pce he was almost stunned by the amount of hubbub out there, the servant seemed to be rather adept at going through the crowd as he threaded his way to a giant pavilion, arge tent with a peak and cred decorations, surrounded by many smaller tents and stalls where a plethora of activities was taking ce.


    Gambling, games, food, contests, ys and performers, and many more activities he did not even know existed, today was actually the third day of this open festival, everyone was invited. ever since the crusades failed and the situation stabilised in the pearl kingdom, there had been a sense of pressure that was greatly alleviated, all thanks to the festival.


    The festival was grand, taking up enough space for arge town, the crowds shuttled slowly from attraction to attraction, ate and drank, participated in games, bought, sold, auctioned and traded openly, leaving behind them a great mass of joy that was visible to Yunan''s eyes, he didn''t even need to focus to see such waves of pleasure and glee among the many guests.


    Most of these guests were tourists, numbering enough to cause the family to build a number of hotels and amodations to support the overflooded capitol city, not to mention the tons of food and drink directly supplied from the portable home, from a nce, one could see different casts of people rubbing shoulders, even though he noticed the few arrogant bunches trying to make their way by proiming themselves, very few were even heeding such people.


    Security was not an issue, ever since the nation wide smite spell, few have been brazen enough to cause amotion ormit a crime, petty thievery included, as Yunan got closer to thergest pavilion in the heart of the festival he could feel much more anticipation and excitement from the crowds packed outside the pavilion. His way was not blocked as he expected, instead the crowd parted with hushed whispers, some bowed and some kneeled, some nodded and some sped their hands in prayer.


    Walking to the pavilion, he found his family waiting for him to begin the main event, he saw many familiar faces among those inside the pavilion, ministers and diplomats as well as the family friends, the numbers were not enough to make the huge tent feel cramped or stuffy.


    Taking his ce on the throne, he gave nods and greetings to those who were deemed of high enough status. After he sat down, the billowing voice of Dustan rumbled as the wives made their way to stand behind Yunan, Balin and Dustan took to the stage; a raised tform that was still lower than the throne.


    "Wee one and all" said Dustan "today, in this fine evening, under the light of the stars, we gather here to show the world, the first born son of our god-king, Kaeser, today under the witness of heaven, earth and man, this boy shall receive the blessings of gods, oracles and family" Balin waited for a moment before ushering to Reina and her child toe closer and announcing "behold, the offspring of the god-king, may the world grovel under his feet, and the heavens tremble in his palms" Reina then hoisted the boy up high for all to see the red furry ears and swaying tails.


    The boy looked at the crowds with curious nces, ufortably shifting in the awkward hold of his mother, as for the crowd, there were hushed sighs and exmations, but the noise was subdued as if by magic, it would not be good if Kaeser got frightened by a sudden wave of cheers.

 Chapter 383: hurry

    Chapter 383: hurry


    Yunan felt distaste for things like this, blessing and gifting a child is; ording to his own logic, to be done in a private manner, making an entertainment out of it left a sour taste in his mouth, he knew that this is the way royalty does things, he didn''t like it and that was that. Still, he couldn''t find it in himself to be the kill-joy and simply tried to show some satisfaction on his face.


    "Let the father bless his son" called Dustan as Balin took the child away from Reina and gently ced him in crystal crib, with woven pearls to act as the bedding and covers. Yunan stood up and floated to the little podium holding the crib. As soon as he touched the boy the crib lit up dazzlingly to hide whatever Yunan said or did.


    "Boy, just grow up happy, that is all that I require from you, put your heart into everything you do and never expect anyone to do for you what you want, gather around you some good friends and family, live the life you choose, be strong and be kind, find love and always pay back the debts" after saying that he put a small kiss on the forehead of the kid and left behind a ne with protection enchantments and resistances, simr to the one he gave to Catelyn, made by himself from the best materials at hand.


    After Yunan returned to his throne many names were called by the Duo, "let the mother bless the child" ... "let the oracle bless the child" ... "let fortune bless the child" ... "let the Dungeon bless the child" etc


    One by one the closest family and friends made their way to the little podium to offer a blessing and a gift, each in their own capacity, since the gifts were mostly symbolic they were left for all to see, as for the really valuable stuff, it was hidden back home in the little boy''s private room.


    After the family and friends it was a free for all, unlike what was expected, Dustan and Balin didn''t name a single person after they themselves gave their blessings but only said "let the world offer their blessings" and stood guard at the podium, beneath them appeared Bai, Fae who had put on a uniform and sat on a table, each, the two epted the offerings and put them in two storage rooms, useless or useful, they would not allow anything unchecked by the genie of the dimension to even get close to the boy.


    After giving their offerings, most people took the time to kneel before Yunan and praise him, requesting or demanding, some were there just to worship and pay their respects, Yunan dismissed them ording to their status and his own feelings, giving genuine smiles to those who came to only worship or pay respect, and he gave the standard political smile for the rest of them, especially those who came to request or demand something or the other, thinking that like all other kings, Yunan would grant wishes when showing off his child.


    Since there were too many people who wanted to offer blessings, Reina took the child about an hourter and left the four present to take care of the rest, Yunan didn''t leave immediately and spent some time to meet and greet those of the lower castes in society and only left a bit before dawn.


    The festival continued for three more days, and the number of visitors continues to rise, the attractions were seemingly too attractive, especially with the prizes offered by the family.


    Back at home, Yunan was now teaching Catelyn how to care for her little brother, she was nearly 5 years old already and spent most of her time hovering over Reina and Kaeser wanting to y with the little guy as much as she could, the week old baby spent his time sleeping as Yunan and Cat giggled away while doing this or that, meanwhile the self-proimed treasurers were going through the gains from the festival, every now and then one could hear "we''re rich, look at these piles of money"ing from them as they counted each golden coin in the treasury.


    At the edge of the universe, a young man was floating in the void, watching as faith gathered into a rift to hasten the maturity of a ratherrge, almost twice as big as a minor star, one could see this growing even bigger at a visible rate, flora and fauna were born, lived and died in mere moments, the continents shifted, converged then diverged, then converged again, the oceans changed colour from red to ck to green to blue, cycles of ice and green and yellow covered the surface without stop.


    The world looked like it was in a haste to mature into a life-bearing, it usually took aeons for any world to mature enough to support intelligent life, so far, in all the Hosana universe, there are no more than two scores with inhabitants that have an intellectual level capable of faith, Burkan itself was one of the youngest with less than a million years since the first civilization.


    The young man looked towards Burkan with a glint in his eyes, then between his fingers, the river of fate manifested itself showing the history of the. It was the most intriguing of all thes, with the number of avatars and ascended there almost twice as any other, he could see the council floating with their table discussing their schemes and biding their time, and finally after all was done, it showed him a live vision of a man cradling a newborn in one arm and brushing the hair of a child whoy snoozing on his knee.


    "Hurry", said the young man, " you don''t want to miss the next part of the show" then with a wave of his hand, the river of fate dissipated and the young man turned his attention back to the newborn.

 Chapter 384: wont it be interesting

    Chapter 384: won''t it be interesting


    Sometime after, when Yunan returned from his climb to check on his family, he found the gods waiting for him, they have been turning up oftentely, having their hushed discussions and enjoying the exclusive delicacies, they were weed at all times, they were part of the family after all.


    "Hubby, I think it is about time you starting to pay attention to the world of the ascended, you are not even checking out the publicmunications, therefore, we decided to tell you all you need to know because the situation is getting weirder by the moment". Upon hearing this, Yunan sat upright and focused his attention on the four people sharing his table.


    "First of all, the creator is back and is nning something, as you already know, he was away on a stroll, and he returned recently with a rift and a, he has been syphoning faith to help it mature faster, we really have no idea what will happen next, he is currently focused on the new, however, we don''t know what happened to cause this, he had a mild nature before, something must have happened for him to return with something unexpected".


    "Second, you need to know about avatars, we are links to the primordials and through us they look at the universe, although we are not supposed to share this information, the unexpected ways this particr universe and this particr has given us a bit of a leeway, I am an avatar of fate, born in this with iparable luck, the primordial of fate chose to abandon his previous avatar and took me instead, I am probably the oldest native god to this universe." After Fortuna introduced herself, the rest took turns to introduce themselves.


    "Avatar of null, Death, not a native to this universe. I was sent here to keep an eye on a bunch of unsavoury schemers". "Avatar of all, chaos, native to this universe, taken as an avatar after my own ascension". "Avatar of creation, smithing, native and chosen as an avatar afterpleting Tartarus". Yunan nodded his head, it was not strange for these talents to be chosen as Avatars, and it made sense for the primordials to send their own avatars and chose suitable ones to umte faith for them.


    Bear in mind that Yunan has no knowledge about how the primordials grow in strength and the world culling they perform repeatedly, for him, he only knows about entities that have such great control over a domain they be said domain.


    "Herees the heavy stuff, so I will let Death talk about it since he experienced it and we did not". With a nod from the other four Death started to speak.


    "Basically there are many universes, all of them fall under the might of a primordial or another, these universes can be divided into mature and immature universes, the immature ones; like this one, are left alone until they mature, as for the mature ones, they go through a culling, and only one single universe survives, the surviving universes are exempt from any further culling, they offer tribute of a certain amount of Faith to the primordials in exchange for being allowed to grow and develop. The losing universes are directly consumed by the primordials".


    "My task here was to keep an eye on those unsavoury bunch of schemers, they are gods who were almost ready to be primordials, they were in the midst of consuming the juvenile fate of their own universe when it was chosen for a culling, instead of fighting for their survival, they chose to consume the fate, midway through, their universe was crushed and the fate dissipated, leaving them hanging at the level of over gods ". Death sighed, taking a gulp of the poisoned wine before he continued.


    "When they were about to be consumed they struck a deal, if they prove that they can join the ranks of primordials by consuming juvenile fate, they would be spared and given their original universe, there were some terms between them and the creator, the most important thing is that they wish to devour fate and the creator has to nurture it. most the ascended think the over-gods are just older gods and have no idea they are foreign."


    "Lastly there are two things you need to know, first, fate has been acting strangely ever since the creator returned, second, you are for some reason outside the scope of fate, no one can see your future, no one can tell what your next move is, that have already put you as a target for the avatars and the over-gods, we are certain that they have something nned or already done something"


    "The most important thing as of this moment is your rtionship with the creator, you inherited the divinity of his old friend, you exist outside of fate, and currently, you are friends with 4 avatars who can be considered enemies to both the council and the creator, this tangled mess, may drive someone to act, so we need you to be careful and take care of yourself"


    Yunan listened intently as the four gave him this crucial information, even if he knew all this information, it had nothing to do with him so he simply pushed it back forter use, but focused on something they said. The four gods waited patiently for Yunan to take in the information and give them his opinion.


    Yunan suddenly smiled mischievously and an evil glint long gone reappeared in his eyes, the four gods took a deep breath from the intense re. Yunan looked at all of them, then slowly and deliberately said "you said that the over-gods and the other avatars have the intention of taking action against me, and they also are not on the best of terms with the creator, who we may have a good rtionship with, meaning we are losing the game, and in chess when the game is lost, the only viable move is to smash the board, contact the creator for me, tell him , I have the grave of his dreams, won''t it be interesting?"

 Chapter 385: a plan

    Chapter 385: a n


    Won''t it be interesting? Those words were like a light source, shining on the dark path, they made the four gods change their expressions, they; who in their stuporous moment; could finally remember why they were drawn to this young man.


    No one in their right mind would stir such an extremely explosive pot, the delicate bnce between the powers and loyalties was the best possible oue for the universe, but not for Yunan, for him, the only chance to escape the dangerous situation was to poke the ho''s nest, then let the chaos unravel itself while he got stronger as the world forgot about him.


    Apophis was the first to get the idea and start smiling, then chuckled and finallyughed hard as he understood theyers of the n, this was not just breaking the board. He was also setting up a new one, as well as fill the board with anything but his own pieces, it was like taking himself out of y entirely.


    Soon everyone got the idea and their eyes brightened up, this kind of critical thinking was really refreshing, it would be unthinkable for any of the other involved parties to do the same, this bnce is exactly what they need, to them, it is impossible for anyone to even think about breaking it, they would fight and die to achieve the bnce.


    To Yunan this bnce was a threatening existence, it was not an opportunity to grow, it was a trap where no matter how much stronger he got, he would be bnced out by the other parties holding the fragile scale, in order to make any kind of move, tipping the scale would bring the world toppling on his head, but if he broke it before he became part of it, he could grow and move freely, while the other parties, namely the avatars, the council and the creator would have to restrain themselves, while he freely acted in any way he desired knowing full well that unless he drew the ire of all three forces, even if two moved their forces to strike him down, the third force would move against thest two.


    "There is only one thing that I have to put forward" Yunan said to the four as they contemted the n "no matter what happens to me, I trust you will care for my family, in return, I will make this universe into the best entertainment for your primordials".


    "We''re not included in your ns?" asked Death, he was baffled, these four were clearly siding with him, him choosing to sideline them wasn''t something any sane man would do.


    "That is the point, there is no n, just disruption, including you into this may make your primordials act against me, so the best thing you can do without any consequences, is to sit and watch, keeping my family safe wouldn''t be going against any primordial, besides, if i do not have to look back, i can make the world shiver at the mention of my name".


    "My primordial agreed to the proposal, your family is under his protection as long as you can stir the pot" Apophis didn''t sound like he was saying much, but to Yunan, it was like removing mountain from his shoulders, the other three nodded as well, it seems being outside of the scope of Fate itself made him an enigma even for the primordials.


    Since things have changed, Yunan gathered his wives and told them the gist of it, he would return to the one night rest per week schedule, he told his teachers to get to the 89th floor as fast as possible, because he was going to get their post haste. He left the matter of contacting the creator god to Fortuna and Death, since those two would have a better rtionship with him, and they could make sure he understood the heart of the message.


    Yunan returned to the 70th floor and with Drogon swept through the ce like a hurricane, killing everything in sight and taking away all elemental cores. Adventurers were not supposed to find or extract the cores, at least no one had tried it before, ck Fate told Yunan that the cores would regenerate eventually, so there was little harm in taking them. It took less than a year for Yunan and Drogon to assemble all the cores in the floor, and find themselves standing before a gigantic mountain with its summit beyond the clouds.


    The boss of this floor was the sole inhabitant of the mountain, it was different and the core was also different, it had all the elemental affinities radiating from it, all 12 of them. Earth, air, water, fire, lightning, metal, light, dark, poison, psychic life and finally decay. This was the first boss that required a party to be able to counter all affinities, if the party wasn''tpletely able to deal with all of its attacks, it wouldn''t have a chance to surpass it and go up.


    Seeing this was the case, Yunan took out the elemental cores he had collected and consumed them, Drogon declined because his body would not be able to support so many affinities, especially when he was innately biased towards fire, Yunan had no such bias, even if he did, his consuming ability made it sure that his body would not reject the powers.


    After consuming and getting used to all those affinities, Yunan challenged the boss, it was a simple game of rock, paper, scissors, knowing which affinities to counter which and which to use as follow up. By relying on his buffs he could contend with the Wyrm boss, barely, that is why he took almost three weeks of battle to kill it, then immediately stepping up to the 71st floor.

 Chapter 386: breaking the peace

    Chapter 386: breaking the peace


    All the floors after the 70th through the 79th were home to Dragonkin, it was the most beneficial to both the bloodlines of Drogon and Yunan, consuming all those corpses even helped purify the bloodlines of both, almost to the point of getting rid of the mana corruption. Almost but not quite there yet.


    Yunan did not spare any time, he immediately crossed to the 71st floor; even as he consumed the all-affinity core, he kept moving forward, not stopping at all, turning all kinds of wyverns into food and mana.


    Since Yunan had just crossed the threshold to the sage realm, he chose to take the drastic way and force his development through constant battles, all or nothing, he would trigger his automated battle mode whenever he found some enlightenment to be gleaned. And as he went down floor by floor, most of his time was in a nearly unconscious state.


    By the time he reached the 76th floor, he was practically running out of mental space to keep his automated battle mode on, and consequently forced back home to finish meditation in a safer ce, having arge backlog of fights to look through and learn from, Yunan unknowingly spent close to a whole year in Dreamscape meditating on his own enlightenment.


    It has been 5 years since Yunanst took a decent rest, thus, as soon as he woke up, he went back home, he practically forced everyone to go on a week-long trip with him, he paid special attention to Catelyn who was old enough to start her own schooling, she would attend an academy established by the guild to start her own journey as an adventurer.


    The girl was too excited about her new life and friends that she did not stop talking for hours, she felt just like Yunan did back then, it was a whole new world to a path were only dreams were the limits, but unlike how Yunan took the matter too seriously, she was having fun and mainly ying around. The academy was a yfield for Catelyn. If she actually needed to learn anything, she had morepetent teachers at home, she could just order them to teach her and they would oblige.


    Kaiser, on the other hand, was already looking like a royal, Lady Mito already drilling her etiquettes in his every move. He was already learning the proper way to speak and behave, trying his best to impress his constantly absent father, his effort found purchase with Yunan who did not stop praising the boy and showering him with affection.


    For thest 5 years, Yunan had grown to look more mature, his gentle demeanour and kind face were gone, exchanged with the experienced and mature look of a true blue adventurer. He looked rougher and moremanding than before, even reducing Luna; who has not seen him in two years, to drooling with hearts popping about her as she took in all the "manliness" her boy toy had suddenly acquired, even Mary had to say a few words about this subject.


    During the five years that have passed, Yunan grew stronger, richer, manlier andstly, he became even more enigmatic, the creator had already agreed to meet after his new was out of the critical growth period, he did not specify a date, and Yunan did not ask him to, he just nodded his head at the news and kept focusing on the dungeon back then.


    Life was bing stable once again in the Hosana universe, the creator seemed to be too engrossed with his new that nothing happened, the avatars and over-gods were all trying to get their hands on the or anything that seemed strange about it, but failing to even find a hint, they could only contact the primordials to ask for help, they failed miserably because the primordials were not going to interfere anyway, this was a trial universe and not worth interfering in, lest the final result would change unpredictably.


    Since peace has been going for too long, it was time to cause a disruption, Yunan chose to strike by disrupting the flow of faith, it was a first step that he nned meticulously. He started the n after returning from the vacation, he entered Dreamscape and used the dream divinity to connect to the divine publicmunication channel.


    Dreamscape: @shiva, @satan, are you guys around, there is a good deal waiting for you both,e to the Dreamscape, I will be waiting, you will certainly like my proposal. If you do not n toe don''t make me wait and let me know, I will look for others.


    The chat immediately went silent, to this day, most of the gods thought of Yunan as a pest, one must never stand in his way, and association with him was just a no-no, it did not take long before Shiva and Satan cautiously responded.


    Shiva: @dreamscape can I know what kind of deal you need me for?


    Satan: @dreamscape, I thought I said that I don''t like the idea of making deals with you.


    Dreamscape: basically I am offering the unlimited use of all dream energy as long as you are working on my task, how about it?


    Shiva/Satan: @Dreamscape, not falling for the honey trap, but it is too sweet, so I wille by just to see what the task is.


    It did not take long before twopletely different beings were granted ess to Dreamscape and the three sat around a table to talk.


    "Wee to my realm, before you ask, this is not a secret task, as long as you keep doing it, there are no problems, also, there will be a binding contract if you chose to take the job. after my exnation is done you must ept or leave, no negotiations nor haggling, you either ept or leave."


    Taking a moment to let the two feel the weight of the mission, Yunan continued talking, with each word making the two crease their foreheads a bit more.

 Chapter 387: a rogue, a dwarf and a brute

    Chapter 387: a rogue, a dwarf and a brute


    After the two gods heard the whole mission, they stared at each other to confirm they were not insane, the words they heard and the things they were to do, sent shivers up their spines, however, neither rejected such a good chance to take a bigger piece of the faith in the, the two smiled at each other after seeing that they both were soaking wet from sweat, the unease in each face was the same.


    Still, the two gods were unable to refuse Yunan, he was giving them enough benefits to convince even the lowest of gods to take action against the divine realms, after a few moments the two signed the contract prepared by Yunan, using their divinities as their coteral if they failed to perform the rather simple but devilish n.


    After the two were given a small abode in Dreamscape to work in, Yunan left the ce and returned home, he grabbed Bail, Balin and Dustan and took them to quaint spot in the garden and sat them around a table full of snacks and alcohol, he even brought out the enved holy maidens to serve the four of them.


    "Well, let''s get done with, this is your therapy session, so whatever it is that is bugging you, just say it, I don''t feel like there will be any other time to spare in theing years, I hope you understand, I would have loved to give you more time, I fear that we don''t have any left"


    Bai was first to speak, he drowned a cup and roughly wiped his mouth " darkness and shadows were always part of me, I don''t remember since when, but dullness crept over my life, there was never a danger I could not seeing, there was never a good piece of news that was not part of my n, it was so dull I started working for those under constant threat of death just to feel something, then one day something fun happened, someone made her way past most of my traps and rms."


    "The fun part was that even though she was unaware of me, I had no chance to strike, under my watch, she snuck in and killed someone under the protection of my employer, the way she killed was like art, like a ghost, she came in, took a life and left, and I followed her, i watched her, she was as warm as sunlight, her interactions with her teammates were fun, she shone brighter each day, her path of revenge and self-liberation was truly dazzling to me, one who was drowning in the tar pits of a dull life"


    Yunan stopped the man from continuing anymore "you arezy" he said waving a hand and refilling his cup "your problem is just that, it was never about fun or whatever excuse you are using this time, you just want to do nothing, there is nothing wrong with beingzy, the problem is trying to make it look it was others fault for draining you. You are a rogue, it is your job to do everything as efficient andzily as possible, so what are you even overthinking about?"


    Before Bai could retaliate he was stopped again by Yunan " you are a member of the party that has no restraint, life and death and whatever others consider first are nothing but shit in your eyes, you do what you want to do, no one ever forced to stay nor will one ever force you to leave, so stop thinking too much, besides, you should be worried about making me happy, I will soon start pushing you over in the 80s".


    Bai stood up and looked at Yunan in the eye "will I get killed?" he asked as if he was embarking on an impossible mission. "I''d pity you if you lived" was the response Yunan made, the two nced at each other before clinking their cups and at the same time cheered "to a life worse than death" and emptied their cups in one gulp. Bai left momentarily to the bewildered eyes of Dustan who threw an axe at the rogue billowing behind him "I''ll y you, you shifty little thing".


    That was all there was to it, a dispute born and solved immediately solved, Yunan had an inkling about what Bai was nning to do, it just happened to resonate with Dustan in the wrong way, still, there were many ways to end the dispute, like ying if Bai actually did what he thought he wanted to do, for those who do not remember, there is a permanent link of thought between Debauchery due to a spell, they can literally read each other''s minds, converse and even share visual or auditory input from their senses.


    "I just wanted to see what the fuss is about, same for the brute, we two are the healthiest in the party, we have no skeletons in our closets, not like those 4, so why not say something profound and deep, we may experience psychological enlightenment" Dustan nodded at Balin''s words and added "tell us what you think we should hear?".


    "Dwarf, you are a short, blunt and a magnificent pervert, if you put as much effort into being a smith as much as you put in mischief, you would have ascended long ago, you really need to get a few kids, the problem is finding the one who could actually ept all your faults, as for you Dustan, there is nopetition, you are a brute, you have brute strength, brute humour, brute love and that is what makes you cute, you need to take care of this pervert and the others, be careful of Fae, she may actually marry you, that would not be as good as it sounds right?".


    The three of them drank and spoke some more, the two were much more receptive to his words than he thought, what held the two back was actually that they had nothing totch on, they each followed a path that was without markers, smithing and strength, one could always make better things and can never know how good they can be as long as they kept walking that road, as for strength, no matter how high you go, there is always someone who is better and stronger, in these kinds of roads, having an anchor is a must, the two have been pushing about with anchoring themselves simply because they did not need it.


    They still don''t need an anchor totch on at the current time, they can still ground their achievements inparison with others, but in the near future they will arrive at a realm where attainment cannot bepared, it was the reason Yunan introduced the concept of something to look forward to, Balin may have been a pervert, but his sense of family is outstanding and impressive, for Dustan, a brute like him would need a woman like Fae, one who is unfazed by his strength, one who could actually keep up with both his power and personality. In the eyes of Yunan, the two should have been a couple for a very long time, it has not happened because bothck the urge to find their own counterpart.

 Chapter 388: sage

    Chapter 388: sage


    Leaving home behind again was hard on Yunan, however, his mission to protect this family and make sure they lived happily, strongly pushed him forward and soon he was fighting the guardian of the 79th floor, he took his time battling the boss, it was his time to prove that he has seeded in entering the sage realm of mastery over his own power, not by chance, or brute force, but throughprehension and enlightenment, understanding and effort, and the guardian of the 79th floor was the opponent he needed to beat in order to prove himself.


    As Yunan was fighting in automated battle mode while deep meditation, he understood more about the will of the smith, Hephaestus, and his genius, he could see the path to greatness paved in the dungeon, how each floor and each environment challenged the adventurer, it allowed weaklings to get stronger using numbers, and at the same time, allowed those who were true geniuses, to grow alone or in a group.


    Generalization, specialisation, affinity, teamwork, battle sense and many more abilities were given the chance to grow in each adventurer, this was a path that if adhered to, it would lead one to ascend to godhood, this dungeon was not only healing the world and making the lives of the poption better, it was also making greater beings, beings who would be able to defend the and the universe when the time of the culling came.


    The will imprinted on the path made sure that it was functional, even though the power of the smith was not that good and his insight was stillcking, in the earlier floors, his will to lead every adventurer to greatness still worked. Adventurers were gaining strength even if it was minimal, even if 90% of the adventurers never passed the 20th floor, those who could pass it, had it in them to reach the level of gods.


    Looking back at how he learned brute force until passing the 20th floor, how he learned to strategize afterwards and each time he went past a zone, he learned more, he learned to explore in the 30s, to endure and persevere in the 40s, in the 50s he learned to look beyond what he could see, in the 60 he learned to investigate, and in the 70s he learned to grow.


    This whole journey was a lesson from Hephaestus, it was his own way of nurturing capable protectors for his, even if he was chosen as an avatar after finishing Tartarus, one could see that Tartarus was meant to raise protectors, and it seeded, so far there has been no god that actively tried to cause havoc and harm to the, except for a small number of people who could not pass the 89th guardian, most who passed that hurdle had truly acted in the best interest of the world.


    Yunan was thinking about all the fighting styles he adopted so far, he has been fighting for so long, each style had be part of him, each time he changed his style he had unknowingly stopped using the previous one, bing specialised in a different way, now he was trying to actively merge all those styles, from shield and dagger to spell and sword, he integrated them slowly into his automated battle mode, bit by bit, move after move, each time he added a new variable, the number of moves he could perform had grown exponentially.


    The guardian; too; was growing with Yunan, but it was not capable of reaching someone who could literally y a party by himself if he used a cloning spell. As those fighting styles merged and fused, Yunan found himself staring at a new world, unlimited possibilities, using his supreme senses, he could even predict the actions of his opponent and react to them before they were executed, creating a world where he was nearly invincible, a world under his control.


    As the battle stretched more and more, Yunan did not dare to exit this world, a ce where enlightenment was constant, his mind no longer restricted with his mental power, he was truly a sage now, everything in the world provoked something to beprehended, every action and every reaction, slowly revealing thews of the world to Yunan.


    As a sage, Yunan had no need to use mental strength to gain insight and process it, because he was one with the world, the world itself unravelled for him, the world was peeling itsyers for him, sight and hearing were no longer restricted to his eyes and ears, feeling was no longer limited to skin, and Yunan just let himself dive in this world.


    His battle with the guardian was a great catalyst, he was suffering from theck of both understanding, power and stats when he first arrived at the floor and started fighting the guardian, with each defeat he grew more and more, and that is why he would never let this chance to perceive the world go to waste, his automated battle mode was set to keep him alive, he opened his mind and devoured everything the world had to show him.


    Yunan has always learned under duress, the more pressure, the more he had to gain, he was taught that to be enlightened was a chance to be grasp onto no matter where or when. There was no need to fear the guardian currently, what was to be feared was that if he cut his meditation, he may never find a second chance toprehend the current knowledge sprawled before him.


    When Yunan woke up, he found that he had been meditating for close to a year, during that time he had killed a number of guardians, there was even a line of parties that decided to let him be, no one liked to be wrenched out of meditation, especially one that was as profound as Yunan''s. The man had been fighting with guardians until the guardians died out of fatigue and umted stress and injuries. As thanks for those who chose to wait, Yunan left enough items to arm each party to the teeth, he would not give them something that would topple the guardian, but they did not need to fear for their lives if they messed up.


    After taking his loot, Yunan descended and stepped back into the 80th floor after more than 10 years, now, he could prance around this floor at will, unlike back when he was in the 50s. After he arrived at the safe zone, he made his way to the trading post, it did not look like much, but the number of peopleing and going brought a smile to his face.

 Chapter 389: war

    Chapter 389: war


    Many eyes focused on Yunan as he made his way to the trading post, he looked too young by any standards, to look so young and arrive alone at the 80th floor meant he has just entered the floor. Most adventurers that reach the 80th floor never leave it, they may even start families on this floor. That and the fact that many factions have disagreements and they may fight each other, it was therefore almost a guarantee that adventurers never leave or enter the 80th floor alone.


    Lana and Rana were still the official faces of the trading post, upon seeing Yunan step inside, both bowed lightly, just enough to show respect and servitude but not very, Yunan waved at them and stood at a terminal. He checked the operational quality of the system, looked through the list of avable items and information for sale.


    He even nted his own information for sale, "the master of the trading post is dering war on all factions, join the trading post faction to be spared from the devastation that will hit all the factions", this was the cheapest piece of information, even free for some of the customers, this action was something that has been torturing many factions ever since the trading post was created, they had been waiting for this move for so long.


    It has been so long since the trading post established itself as the fairest trading partner, everything was bought or traded with good value, especially for those materials that were harder to get, even if their effect was minor, the pay always made it worthwhile to trade with the post rather than one''s own faction.


    The trading post never rejected any valid item, even monster corpses and bits, samples of flora and fauna and even mineral veins, as long as it had a value, was not counterfeited or known to be stolen, the trading post epted everything, many adventurers were able to empty their useless hordes of items that no one wanted and ended up forgotten, the same was true for factions. The trading post was a good dumping site, many a faction had emptied storerooms that were filled with trash and refilled them with more valuable items.


    Now that it came to this, many adventurers immediately broke away from their factions, and soon the rest of the loosely linked members followed suit. Employment under the trading post was iid with attractive offers, all items one would find or acquire, especially information is exclusively owned by the trading post faction, the finder is reimbursed ording to market prices and the rewards for attaining the minimum required contribution was mouth watering.


    With such attractive terms, one would not need to worry about items being stolen or losing contribution to a superior, everything was recorded and logs were maintained, as an employee, they were only tasked with finding items, they had no obligation toy their lives on the line, not to mention the fact that the trading post faction had all kinds of memberships, from simple contractors who are the least bound to the faction to inner members, this allowed some to be contractors even while being affiliated with other factions.


    The trading post faction as it was called by the residents of the 80th floors, had very well distinguished membership status, there was the family, members of this group are hand picked by the leader and are loyal, they have the right to make all the decisions and even disband the faction, the family had the highest status, currently, no one from those people are known.


    The second status was employee, this is dedicated to all those employed to officiate the workings of the enormous system, and keep it running, even the receptionists were included in this bracket, and they would answer only to the leader, they had no status to give out orders or do any kind of assignments, but they were to be protected at all costs.


    Although many worked for the trading post, the actual working mules were the genie and the AI, Yunan needed to make some people mistake the ordinary workers as the pirs supporting the entire operation, of course, even those who worked for Yunan did not know such a thing, maybe only Lana and Rana knew since they were in direct contact with the genie and the AI.


    The second status was member, these were given the right to take assignments and quests, they had a minimum of contribution to uphold or risk being degraded in rank, the next rank is the marginal members, they were those who only took quests as they wished and sold their items exclusively to the post,stly the contractors, those were able to just do as they wished, they could sign partial exclusivity contracts on certain things, but ultimately they were just like the old members who bought the membership rings, no strings attached.


    With this system of great liberty for adventurers, many immediately went to register as members, there were spies and cheaters among them, but there was nothing to gain, it was established earlier that the trading post did not give away information to its members, most of the information was on a need to know basis, not even rumours could be heard from the members or the employees, that was one thing, but the mysterious owner and his family, who even the employees failed to meet, was entirely another.


    With the challenge and the recruitment already spread as widely as possible, it was time to bring about war to Tartarus, many factions were ruined when the first message was sent to all the rings linked to the trading post, it was a notification with faction names that would be raided that week, many did not believe that a dozen or so factions can be raided and robbed without loss, but what happened was exactly that.


    Thanks to the information gathered by the rings on all those factions, it was very easy for Bai and Lucian to sneak their way into vaults and empty them before leaving a small note, it was worse for those who had their vaults and headquarters in the same ce, the floating castle appeared from within the clouds andid waste to everything, along with the battle mechs. The gains were astronomical but of little value to Yunan and the family themselves.

 Chapter 390: domination

    Chapter 390: domination


    War was the pass-time Yunan used to escape from the monotonous life of a grinding maniac, and a war was very fun if you had soldiers like the Debauchery party at your beck and call, just point them to the headquarters of a faction, you can just watch from your lofty flying fortress as they decimate thend beneath, reaping lives and riches alike, with each of them having their own battle mech, they got so brazen it was frightening to watch.


    For the factions of the 80th floor, they could only watch as they were stripped from everything systematically, first, they lost the outer members, then, came those undetectable vault sweepers leaving them nothing to pay their members with, the final straw was those factions who actually tried to resist, annihtion was enough to drive away all members from any faction that was named in the weekly hunt list.


    Most of the members that left their faction only after it was targeted were not recruited as members of the trading post faction, at best they became contractors, the rest were told to just leave. Some tried to bribe the trading post with information, sadly they were denied. Since all the information they knew was already useless to the trading post, there was no need to find a weakness in a faction that you can stomp under your heel like amon bug.


    Yunan was about to start the third week of faction destruction when Martin himself, showed up, he looked older, he was stiffer than usual, even his aura had be like that of a corporate ve, downtrodden and abused, Yunan thought that the guild was having too much difficulty in controlling the adventurers, the nice way of doing things is no longer effective.


    "Yunan, my child, what are you doing, breaking the bnce in the 80s will create a vacuum in power, there will be many uncontrolled monsters released into the world, we can''t have that, please reconsider". Although Martin was a man with stronger backing, he rarely threw his weight around.


    "You see, I am doing you a favour, what I am doing is opening a ce for the guild to take over the factions, letting them y around the lower levels is bad, let them try at it in the earlier floors, they follow the rules and can y kings and gods, but when ites to the 80th floor, you are dealing with people who are either sages or close enough it does not matter, these kinds of people require an iron fist to rule, my faction is about to give the guild the opportunity to restructure the system. Take it or leave it, as for my gains, I am only restricting the power of the factions, this way adventurers can focus more on advancing than feeding their own families".


    "We can take over for you, having more sages and pseudo-divine adventurers will always be good, just, what are you trying to do anyway?" Martin understood there was an overarching n, but he failed to see how recing the factions in the 80s is of any use. If maintaining a grip over powerful adventurers was imperative, it must be something really big.


    "Just look at it like this, the number of people stagnating in the 80s is far too high, for people who had such potential, it is uneptable, therefore a change of the system that is holding them back is in order, I want to make a change to this world, there will no longer be adventurers holding back each other, anyone who tries will be hunted, I will make an example out of those first, then through the Twilight pearl I will create my own guild supporting organization, anyone who dares hold back his fellow adventurers will suffer".


    Martin was listening with his jaw threatening to fall, this boy was actually trying to topple a system that took millennia to bnce, not to mention that he was overstepping over the guild, he was doing something good, true, but this was too overbearing, no matter how you look at it.


    "Why? what threat makes you act this way?" to answer this question Yunan closed his eyes then said "the end of this universe, I can only say, we need to turn everyone on this into sages before too long" that gave Martin yet another jolt, he took a moment before continuing. "We cannot wait until it is toote, I prefer to force it now than wait while doing nothing, I will trust you with this"


    "You already have ess to the genie, money is never a problem, just use the trading system to clean up all the useless stuff, there should be enough to make a better guild, just focus on nurture, the iron fist is for me to show off".


    After sending off Martin; who was really feeling distraught, Yunan contacted the new pope of the church of light, he presented his n in the same way, he asked the church to be the mediator, he wanted the church to expand its legion and create more such forces that were entirely dedicated to improving the lives of all races in Burkan. As for his hostile take-over over the power in the dungeon, it continued without paying attention to the pleas from all faction who even offered subservience in return for survival, but Yunan attacked any faction that did not disband, even those who thought they were secretly keeping their factions alive.


    Domination, before half a year was over, the only faction left standing was the trading post faction, all adventurers on the 80s have either became affiliated with it or have be independent, the guild had seen a whole new system where adventurers started forming smaller parties or hunting solo, as for those who thought they were free to cause havoc, they were made into examples by being tortured day and night for all to see at the gates of the trading post.


    It did not take long for Yunan''s dictatorship to spread to the upper floors, all organizations that profited from halting adventurers mysteriously disbanded, more and more adventurers started taking more courses, even earning more from their hunting sessions, increasing the number of adventurers that started going solo and escaping the 20th level roadblock, it was almost a renaissance for adventurers, even those who taught in the academies had been changed, only those who went past the level 40 were recruited to teach.


    And during this half year, two forces surged, one was the guild, it nurtured the adventurers, and the other was the trading post faction, it ruled the dungeon with an iron fist. This abrupt change made a great current in Tartarus, and in the world, the speed of this shift was too scary to any force who thought to even struggle or try to im a piece of the cake. The age of exploiting the dungeon for wealth ended so abruptly, no one was ready to deal with the consequences.

 Chapter 391: the plan

    Chapter 391: the n


    With all the other factionspletely wiped out, Yunan started building trading posts in every 10th level, creating tasks and quests as well as providing information, the system provided tips and advice as well as maps and monster weaknesses to all who arrived at the rest floor, other than providing all possible needs an adventurer could ask for, the trade posts also made training centres where adventurers could practice and spar, as well as teach each other ss specific information.


    With the adventurers free from the grip of factions in Tartarus, they also started ignoring those on the outside, especially with the protection afforded with the help of both the guild and trading post faction, they could simply find the guild and report who ever tried to pressure them, it wouldn''t take long for the aggressor to be shown the pain of going against adventurers.


    The world of Burkan was in a mess as well, the faith generation was reaching unprecedented heights, the poption of believers increased by the day, and something strange took ce, the number of people who worship a single god decreased drastically, while the belief in multiple deities spread wider.


    That wasn''t all, the usual noble cast system was changing to a meritocracy, led by the example of the Twilight Pearl, ever since the presence of the Awakened was epted, merits became the most important criteria to judge people as well as allow them to advance in their chosen careers.


    Many nobles andndowners were slowly losing their grip on their positions, especially after they lost their adventurers, even the ve adventurers were slowly buying their freedom, this forced them to let go of their pride and actively work to keep their lifestyles, the most sessful ones may have gotten to keep their status stable, the unlucky ones were even enved due to debts or the inability to even live independently from their titles.


    Nobility no longer was the dream of the masses, strength and ability were now the factors determining the worth of any individual, money and fame came to those who worked hard, those who were innately capable were sought after, those incapable of great feats were also able to live decent lives, they did the menialbour and helped, in their own way, in stabilising the world for those who would then protect them using their outstanding gifts.


    This movement was apanied by something strange, everyone was thinking the same thing, the whole world was thinking the same way all of a sudden, taking only 6 months to revoke the era tested systems and erect a new system, entirely dependant on merit and strength. It was as if the billions that resided in Burkan suddenly decided to agree, that it was best to shape the world that way.


    Yunan left his little garden in Dreamscape towards the turbulentnd of dreams, where he located a small hut, he opened the door to see two major gods, they sat there meditating and syphoning the dream energy like two sinkholes, as soon as Yunan entered the hut, the two opened their eyes, they have obviously grown stronger, still they looked with fear at Yunan, who smiled at them and sat down facing the two.


    "Wee, oh lord of Dreamscape, how may we be of help today". Even if the two were major gods with vast domains and great ability, after working on the task Yunan gave them, they looked at him with fear and respect. This little mortal was too much for them to handle. Not only did he find a way to use the endless energy of dreams, but he also did not use it for his own power, they both knew that they could not resist the temptation.


    The boy choose them because they were the most suitable for his purposes, Satan was the best at temptation and insinuating ideas, Shiva was the best a destroying all things, they worked together to achieve the most ambitious n, the n that made them sweat bullets and rivers could be used on any being capable of ambition.


    The n was ingenious and terrifying at the same time, Yunan told Shiva to destroy the mental attachment that the beings of Burkan had towards the old social system, and Satan was to nt the idea that change was not bad, then when change arrived, Shiva was to destroy the natural resistances that reject anything new, while Satan was to tempt the poption with the benefits of epting the new system, thest part was to destroy all extreme prejudice between adventure and their reliance on a single ss, while Satan provided the idea that being capable of doing more, is, by definition, the best thing to seek in a merit-based world.


    This attack on a whole actually bore fruit in less than a year, the most terrifying part of the n is that the gods themselves were also affected by it, even they themselves could not escape being influenced by it, only Yunan who was the lord of Dreamscape was unaffected.


    The two have decided to keep their task a secret because if the gods waged war against Yunan, they would be the first to fall, the ability to influence the entire world was truly horrifying. He could make himself the only worshipped god in the world with a thought, he could even make the gods his own servant with just as little effort, the fact that such an untapped treasure like this was around would cause a war in the divine realms.


    "I hope you both have benefited enough from your task, there is nothing left to do at this moment, since most of the work is done, time will take care of the rest, I hope that we can work together soon" as soon as Yunan said that, the two gods bowed their heads and left to their own domains, they had so many gains to consolidate about their divinities, especially Shiva who found a new direction to advance.

 Chapter 392: the rogue, the fairy and the orc

    Chapter 392: the rogue, the fairy and the orc


    Somewhere on the 88th floor


    An orc stands with his great battle-axes over the beaten body of a lean and lithe youth, heaving heavily as he stood there with a victorious pose. The orc himself looked as if he had just gone through the killing method known as one thousand cuts, thin shes covered the muscr orc, it looked like he just went through a blender.


    Under the feet of the victorious orc,y a rogue, beaten bloody and blue, there were broken bones, ribs poking through the armour, a jaw out of ce, he spat a few teeth at the feet of the orc, there was no regret in the smile he tried to sh through his broken jaw.


    Ten paces away stood 5 people, one was currently naked and brewing something that was not fit for human consumption, two were whispering to each other about something, thest two stood there dumbstruck, it has been a very long time since there was a duel in this party.


    "That is that, then, for the next ten years, Bai must not attempt any kind of vulgar acts with any person affiliated with this party, ves not included" said the person who seemed to be the most authoritative figure, and right after her words were done, the naked one took her cauldron and poured it over the downed rogue, he started to sizzle and fizzle.


    The orc got himself a magical heal as he proceeded to fall on his posterior, he looked satisfied enough to die without any regrets, meanwhile, the rogue was returning to look like a human instead of a battered mannequin, slowly, his bones healed and retook their natural positions, his skin and muscles cleared from all blood and scars.


    The party converged on the two sitting side by side like they had not just fought a duel halfway to death. The short yet stout dwarf directed a full strength punch to the head of the orc while berating him "what''s next? are you gonna challenge this goddess over here? You know the boy was just talking out of his arse, right?" he directed another punch at the orc who was still smiling silly.


    "Dustan, darling, when are you going to challenge me for the rights to have personal rtionships in this party?" Leader shed such a beautiful smile full of expectations and eagerness, the big guy just chuckled at her "not in this lifetime". His answer was earnest and sincere, in the mind of the big guy, he was never going to challenge her, not even if she was a pile of dead ash.


    Of all the people in the party on the elf; the sole reason for this duel, she had no words to say, she was conflicted about her own feelings, it has been a very long time since someone actually fought for her, these two had been breaking the knees of everyone whopeted for her. To see them fight so wholeheartedly was almost too much for her.


    "What is the meaning of this, why on earth did you to fight this duel, it was not worth it at all, it was so stupid". She asked the rogue, she knew better than to ask the orc something like that. "I just did what I wanted, and so did he, also, you should figure out who''s baby you want to bear before we ascend and all that crap, seriously, think about it".


    "Who would want your children, both of you can keep dreaming" the young looking Faeshed out, to her, all this talk about family and children was pointless, she already has a big family and two kids, they are not her own but she could pamper them at will, what was the point of anything more.


    Balin interfered to exin ss, calm down, breath, this is just your misfortune, you see, the luck bank told the dimwit to get a family, preferably you, he also told this shifty asshole to do what he wants to do for once, and there you go, one is trying to make a bride out of you, the other is just being his shifty self, all evil and nothing else"


    The elf looked at the two then gave each a kick before storming off to sniffle in Leader''s embrace, she mumbled to herself about how long it has been since she gave away some loving beatdowns to Yunan.


    "So, you actually listened to the luck bank?" asked Lucian as he squatted down besides Dustan "you know, his words are just words, he said you needed a woman like Fae to make a family, he probably meant that you just need to get closer to her, it''s not youck the women who you can actually fill with children, family to that boy is a bit more than just marriage and sex, and I agree with him, you acting a bit more open with all of us can help a long way".


    The brute orc looked at the werewolf before looking back at his feet. "I am not as smart as you are, but I know what he wanted to say to me the best, this is my home, you people are my home, and if this weakling should do as he wants to, then maybe I should act more orcish, vulgarity is not a trait orcs tolerate".


    "Well, be it as it may be, there is something to look forward to from all this, the punishment for infighting this time should be interesting, this is the first time that three members will be punished simultaneously, so exciting". Just as Lucian finished his words, a shiver ran down the spines of the three implicated in this duel, the elf started to actually cry her eyes out, the roguey limply on the ground and the orc tried to run, he did not get far.


    Mary stood with her three victims whimpering and shaking, they knelt before her inplete submission, they knew all too well that they were screwed this time. She scratched her chin as she mumbled: "what would be fun to do with you lot, maybe we should try that again". Upon hearing her words, the three of them fled as fast as they could, they would not run away from death this fast, but Mary just chuckled as she watched them as frantically ran away, she whispered to Lucian beside her "this is going to be so much fun".

 Chapter 393: a look around

    Chapter 393: a look around


    In the 85th floor. Yunan was riding on the back of Drogon as they flew around the floor, currently, he was snoozing peacefully as the dragon glided through the sky. It had be very peaceful in the 80s ever since the factions were purged, not many conflicts were reported and most adventurers now chose to focus on advancing, rather than waiting for a faction to hold their hands.


    Conflict is inevitable, there will always be a conflict of interest if there were sentient beings in the same space, and Yunan himself had participated in some such conflicts, most were caused over Drogon, a powerful familiar, but some were just your old fashioned robbery, Drogon was able to deal with most of these cases, Yunan in the meanwhile, enjoyed rxing on the back of his soul bound friend.


    Since the 80s werepletes, Yunan did not bother with hunting every single monster, he mainly scanned for the strongest beings and hunted those, one by one, this way, he would skip most of the grind, the worst part was that he would be beaten blue and bloody each time he fought, it was faster to grow this way, it was just that getting pummeled to an inch of his life so many times almost took its toll on his psyche.


    As for the rewards he umted, well, he did not check anything since he started his binge, all of it was stored somewhere waiting for him to find the time to open them, and that was what he was nning after killing thisst boss. Yunan was prepared for once and through the scan could tell that he would not lose if he went all out. Bear in mind that Yunan had stopped using his buffs some time ago, as he felt that they hindered his progress more than they helped.


    Thisst boss was a humanoid dragon-kin, famous for its ability to strategize against adventurer parties, effectively reducing the damage taken by disrupting the team efforts, using the chaos and disorder to its benefit, turning a coherent party into a tangled mess.


    This advantage was useless against Yunan who mostly fought one on one, with only a slight difference in stats, the two brawled like barbarians. Yunan did not use his automated battle mode, instead, he fought move by move, strike by strike in an attempt to enhance his own response.


    Choosing to finish the fight after casting all his debuffs and single target spells, Yunan returned home, he was nning to truly rest for the first time in years, he didn''t feel like he could fight anymore, therefore he went home to recharge on the overflow of love awaiting him back home.


    On his return, he passed first by the infirmary, where he received a checkup from Ophelia, then went straight to bed, it has been nearly a month since hest was home, he was sure he was missed because he too missed his wives.


    After spreading some love among his wives and children, he took a look around the private dimension, it was growing rather nicely, thend had grown and the biomes be more and more pronounced, the natural life forms that sprung out all, had the ability to feed on mana-rich food and exude mana into the world, that mana is harvested and condensed to create mana constructs of unequalled purity.


    He then took a look at the business model and made some slight changes, mostly, the exchange of items for mana as a new option in the trade posts. Looking at the numbers and the many zeroes at the end of each sum, he could not help but smile, he was so rich, he could notprehend how rich he was.


    Seeing that he had no need for so much money, he told his managers to provide cheaper services and waive off many of the taxes, he was essentially asking them to lower the margin of profit to near zero, as for the umted, he asked for it to be used to help out the less fortunate people; who have the ability to dive in the dungeon butck the funds.


    Home gave a very peaceful feeling, the kids were growing nicely, the bright pce has be a hub of diplomacy for half the continent, the Twilight Pearl has now be a direct contact point to and fro the awakened ind, the awakened had be a very usual sight along the paths of the capitol.


    The capitol itself has grown to 5 times its size, too many people had migrated to the pearl, Drawn over by the efforts Yunan had poured to promote the equality and merit-based society, not to mention the fact that he alone, exterminated all factions, that kind of power was immense and very attractive.


    Lastly, he went to his storerooms, they were filled to the brim of precious items he collected during his grind, he started with the books, opening them all and reading them on the spot, those that weren''t consumed were sent to the library, most of those were books about advancing the sage realm, some books were about some rare and very abstract concepts rted to the creation of divinity.


    The natural resources were sent to the back garden to grow, the back garden has already be big enough to be a, there was no resource that was without a ce to grow in, even extreme environments were provided depending on the resource. The rest of the items were either consumed or were without much use to Yunan who just sent them to be sold.


    Finally, he looked at some crystals, there were about ten of them, each having a cloud of rainbow-coloured smoke, they looked to be housing or sealing some kind of entities, he simply sent them to storage until he found the time to contact these entities and see what is what.


    He then went through his private item storage, he threw away most of it to be sold, the ones he left were items for his children to use, after going through all he needed, he sat down beside the grave near the spiritual cave, he was expecting someone toe soon, but instead of doing nothing, he sat down and meditated for a few days in peace.

 Chapter 394: a visitor

    Chapter 394: a visitor


    After waking up from his meditation, Yunan looked around to find that there were many people gathered around him sitting in meditation as well. He was promptly contacted by the genie of the house, first congratting him, then reporting the week events.


    "Congrattions master, your meditation must have been a sess, we have many customers who requested to join you in meditation, your sage aura has fully congealed, as to be expected of master, it is wless, even our guests seem to have understood that, they prefer to meditate alongside you, Leader allowed it. Are there any orders?"


    Yunan slowly stood up and went inside the spirit cave, all the way to the back room, hey on the stone bed before conveying his orders. "Genie, make sure that when my guest arrives, he is undisturbed, it would be best if he goes unnoticed by the customers, send Debauchery to Tartarus, I expect them to clear the guardian of the 89th floor by the end of next week, I give them a full month at thetest".


    "Understood" responded the genie and left to ry the orders, meanwhile Yunan brought out his Dream divinity and lets it float above his forehead, then he umted all his power and used the divinity as a lens, to focus and project a beacon, the ray of divine light shone brightly from the cave, passing by the bright pce, then leaving Burkan to announce Yunan''s presence to the universe.


    This beacon startled many beings in universe Hosana, such power would not just spring out of the void, there must be an ascension before this kind of power entered thepetition over faith in the universe.


    These beings had no Idea about the existence of the exception called Yunan, he had many divinities, enormous reserves of faith, near-perfect control over his divinity, and extremely pure mana to boot, he didn''t even need to ascend to wield such power, however, the drawback was that he couldn''t unleash this much on a whim, for that he needed to ascend first.


    Among the many who noticed was a youth floating before a rift in space, overseeing a as it matured on overdrive, he smiled when he saw the beacon spreading from Burkan, "calling this early, are you an idiot or are you very scheming? Well, I won''t know until we meet" he then waved his hand, the rift closed up.


    Back at the cave, Yunan wiped away some sweat and sat up, holding back the uneasy tiredness, he chugged someva wine to replenish some stamina.he was relieved there was no bacsh, the exhaustion was not out of his expectations, he was using all of his powers at once to project a beacon across the universe, he would lose more than just stamina if he was any weaker.


    Not long afterwards, the presence of a young man came to bloom inside the spiritual cave, he looked schrly and gentle, even hisplexion and demeanour did not pick him out of a crowd, he was just an average man, even Yunan could feel nothing from him, but the fact that he just came to be inside the cave meant he was powerful beyond a certain extent.


    It went without saying, the only person who was allowed to enter the private dimension was the creator, Hephaestus, Death, Fortuna and Apophis were not going to let someone this powerful in the private home. If he forced his way in, they would have been at his tail brandishing weapons. Taking this into ount that none of them arrived as of yet, he concluded it was the creator himself.


    Yunan was about to say something but decided not to, the youth was looking around the room, it was barren, outside of the glistening treasures that have yet to be appraised, the simple gravestone was the only thing that was out of the ordinary in the room.


    The youth looked at Yunan, he talked with a t dull voice. "he always had more dreams than possessions, you have preserved his inheritance well, but you left all these treasures unused, shame". He then walked to the grave and gently brushed his finger on the nameless gravestone, he smiled and looked at Yunan "how extraordinarily ordinary! She may have saved this universe single-handedly"


    Yunan nodded his head, "she was an amazing woman" he then stood up and walked to the door, the young man followed him, the two walked out of the room and soon they were outside the cave. Yunan stood two steps away as the creator took a moment to mourn for his friend, he revealed a hint of sorrow and longing but only for a few minutes, he then returned to his dull and gentleplexion.


    "Let us discuss your ns kid, you have some bravery, impress me, will you?". He followed after Yunan as the two walked down the mountain and took a seat under some tree, the creator seemed to have a weird fancy for simple things, nothing fancy or outward looking took his attention, but to Yunan, it looked like something else.


    In nature, the simple design is purely for survival, it was only after survival was guaranteed that life forms started showing beauty andplexity to the world. All beings that were capable of struggle, they took the simplest most effective formes.


    The two sat there in silence for a few minutes as Yunan contemted this idea of simplicity, after waking up from his reveries, Yunan looked at the Creator, saying a few simple words, "turn your new into a divine realm, make it so that all divine realms be part of it, I want all the divine realms, all of the gods to be taken there and isted from the universe, they canmunicate with their followers but can not escape the rift, if possible make it so that the divine realms are pieces ofnd on the itself, up for grabs, those gods who have nond must take a realm owner as their liege to fight for newnd".

 Chapter 395: who needs to ascend?

    Chapter 395: who needs to ascend?


    The creator blinked at the words of Yunan, he did not dare believe his own ears, he was literally taking all the gods in this universe and turning them on each other, even if the was big enough to give each god a realm of their own, making the a conquest location, things are going to turn sour.


    Yunan continued his exnation. " what I n is to imprison the over-gods, the avatars and the useless gods consuming faith without use. After those without realm subordinate themselves to major gods to evenpete over the, we also need to make sure that the over-gods are exposed as outsiders, with that, that they would be outcasts, however, some greedy gods will for sure include simply for their power".


    "We also need to keep the gods from knowing about the culling, that way we can remove those who are the same as the over-gods, those who would look out for themselves even as the universe is dying, as for destroying everyone who allies with the over-gods, leave that to me".


    The creator was still stupefied, he was afraid to even think how this little mortal wasing up with such ns, no one would expect this, true, the gods would be stupefied for some time, giving Yunan time to prepare, but the worst part was when Yunan said that he could deal with any god who allies himself with the over-gods, that kind of confidence, it onlyes from someone who had actually done it before.


    This n was certainly good, too good in fact, so good it was clearly better than his own, he had been nning to create a where he could hide an offshoot of fate, it was a lure for making the over-gods break the contract, but even if he imprisoned them for breaking the contract, they may have other ways to leave.


    Yunan''s n, on the other hand, it wouldpletely put the over-gods under lock and key, they would have no way to escape the if all gods were to enter a tournament ground, one arranged by the creator himself, even the avatar will not escape, let alone the over-gods.


    What was more terrifying for the creator, was that Yunan gave out the n and his role in it, it was as if he was talking about the weather, there was no malice or slyness, there was not even harmful intent directed at the future victims, just another day, just another mission. Theplete and utter detachment was very scary, especially when it came from a mortal who has enough power to rival the major gods.


    "Suppose I can do that, and let''s say that you could eliminate the traitor gods, how about the losses among the ranks of the ascended? Surely you are not nning to actually wait for the next generation toe about, the over-gods could do so much harm during that time".


    "You do not need to worry, all the useless ascended will just fade away with time anyway, better to use them as incubators and strip them off of their divinities and nurture our own generation of gods, as for the gods with fighting ability I n to trade forplete divinities with them, I think exchanging a uselessplete divinity for faith in a ce where faith is more precious than life, can be very enticing, even the over-gods would be willing to trade, they may even sell each other if I give them a good incentive".


    Yunan gave out a sly smile after he finished his words, he did not want to trouble the creator too much with his ns, which, by the way, ran deeper than just what he said, spilling the beans already would spoil the fun of those primordials watching from the void.


    "Well, it all can be arranged, I won''t ask too much more, I fear for my psyche, the time frame for the to be ready is in about ten years, give or take a year or three, make your preparations, I will see you by then", with those words, the creator left as if in a haste, thankfully, the n was told to him before thepletely matured and he had to spend too much faith to make adjustments.


    Yunan simply nodded his head and waited for the eavesdroppers to reveal themselves, the most impatient one was Fortuna, who hugged Yunan with a big grin on her face, repeating "my hubby is the best", as she swayed left and right with all kinds of feeling overflowing, most were pride and adoration.


    "I want to open that head of yours and see where all these ns sprout from". Death was not as taken in as the rest but he too was impressed, to him, this little mortal could outwit all the primordials if his life depended on it, he might be even doing so right now with no one the wiser.


    Hephaestus had some concern and had to ask "well, when are you going to ascend, you still have not my little daughter, you have yet to even start working on your divinity, not to mention condensing a shard, evenpleting your divinity is going to take more than a century, what about us, we are also going to get pulled into that, your family will not be as protected as it is now, let''s not forget about reversing the mana infection of Burkan. Do you think ten years is enough to do all of this? I have spent thousands of years and still have not done much"


    The way Hephaestus spoke was like a concerned father rather than a friend, he was putting too much thought into every little detail, not that Yunan had not thought about all of these things, he just did not show outward concern for most things, his focus was on other things at the moment.


    Yunan''s answer made everyone''s brains freeze. "Who said I need to ascend at all?".

 Chapter 396: Missions

    Chapter 396: Missions


    Yunan is not your typical hero, he really is not, he is overpowered true, but he has no Deux Ex Machina to save him, each move he makes can end his life, he has his lucky moments, but most of the time, it is his own process that kept him alive, his scheming and strategic ns made him who he is.


    He enjoyed the stun on the faces of the four deities, he did not exin any more, some things were not meant to be shared with others, still, he prepared a table and some refreshments, he slowly wiped away the stunned looks on the four gods, it did not take long, he shifted their attention from his ascendance to more urgent matters.


    "You four have been idling about for too long, for the next ten years, each of you is going to have a mission, I expect you to focus on your mission and nothing else, even the paperwork has to be forgotten". The four were immediately on attention, Yunan always made trades, he ever asked for favours, for him to give missions was a big moment in history.


    "Fortuna, your mission is to horde luck, I don''t care how many people will lose their luck, how many charms will lose their effect, I want all the continent to have basic ordinary luck, no more good luck, no more bad luck, luck must feel like it has vanished from the world. When the mortals start to pray for luck, you crystalize the faith, anything else that requires your attention will be forgone".


    "Hephaestus, I want you to build me containers that can hold and distil faith into crystals, you have the freedom of my stores, anything you need, just tell the genie, I also want you to start creating armaments that can be powered by faith, the more faith you put in, the more power they use up, make a few sets that are very cost efficient, and make some that consume too much faith for the output, just enough to be attractive, but not enough to put off customers"


    He turned to Apophis, "soon there will be emotional instability, I want you to do the same, collect, store and distil those emotions, it would be helpful if you ssify them as evil, good, or neutral, keep some samples in their raw form, finally, you are to shift as much of the emotions you can not store as possible, and let them loose in Dreamscape, I will grant you full ess".


    He turned to death "finally, Death, I want you to make sure your reapers start appearing before those who are destined to die, as a matter of fact, I want it to be known that all who see a reaper are going to die, one more thing, I want you to focus on those who have escaped death too many times, or sessfully increased their age, I want the whole world to fear death and hope for life, if you can make your reapers look like angels for the good and devils for the wicked, it would be helpful"


    "In the next decade, we must umte vast reserves of both faith and emotions, the bigger the stores the better off we will be, this does not sh with your neutral stance in the war toe, I hope you all can perform well, as for your rewards, in return for finishing your missions, each of you will gain aplete divinity of your choosing, if the results are not satisfactory, then you will be given a shard or a random divinity, depending on your performance".


    None of the four could say anything for a while, the little boy who they once thought of as cute and interesting, was no longer that easy to read, he was now truly a king, his demands were as enigmatic as they were strange, they served a purpose that can only be guessed at, even if they knew the four missions he gave them, as well as the request to the creator, all of it merely leads to spection.


    Yunan himself had only a vague goal to reach, his path grew clearer with each n, each time he acted in any way, it made the road he must walk a bit more tangible. Others may think he was driven and focused, knowing perfectly what to do next, but in reality, he was in the dark, as much as everyone else, his advantage was that, for him, feeling his way in the darkness was much more preferred, when others felt confusion and sought answers, he found his own solutions.


    This quality, advancing even when everyone else stood still while looking about, this was his trump card, as long as he was not at a dead end, he can just keep going endlessly. That was why muddying the waters for the whole universe, became the only path which gave him a way out.


    "Son, we all know that shit has already hit the fan, this universe is doomed, there are no visible ways to save it, struggle for the sake of struggle, there is no point in that, we all know that, so tell me, are you really going all the way?" Hephaestus spoke the words everyone wanted to say, he could not hold it any longer, for them, the end of the universe was not too far away, just a few more moments in the river of time.


    "I will say this only once, the entirety of existence is a dungeon, the day I clear it, is the day I ept the end, so what if this universe dies, so what if the primordials disappear, so what if the entirety of existence dissipates, as long as I can try, I can keep making paths where no one has tread before, if this universe dies, I''ll build my own, if the primordialse for me, I will consume them, if the entirety of existence stands in my way, I will restart all of it".


    With endless patience, an indomitable spirit and a strong will, those were the tools he needed, everything else could be exchanged, everything else could be rebuilt, there was no other tool, other than the mentioned three, that would give Yunan better chances in his endeavour.

 Chapter 397: Seed

    Chapter 397: Seed


    One month had passed, Yunan was brawling with the 89th-floor guardian, while Drogon waszing about. Debauchery party too were watching, some were even feeling shameful.


    Yunan was making an exposition as he fought the guardian. "You see, between the 15th and 16th left-arm swing, there is an opening near the 7th rib, you stab there, the guardian will take damage, and then will change his style, now magic beams will being out, this gives you an open shot at the eyes, you send a few small-sized projectiles, preferably with neuro-toxin, now, the guardian is using more energy on healing the toxin".


    "Now, you give it the magical burndown, just as much magical damage as you can, for example, a simple mana burn will ignite all the mana it had stored in its flesh, see this, the flesh is no longer healing as fast, now is the time to buff and use your close-quarters weapons".


    "Don''t just sh, you need to shred the flesh, not just slicing and dicing, you need to make the flesh separate intoyers, leaving the flesh still linked to the body makes it use even more energy on healing, with that, you can start to apply debuffs, and as you can see, the guardian is now sluggish,gging in speed, not healing, and it is much easier to deal with".


    He then decapitated the guardian, aimed it so that its head wouldnd just near enough for Drogon to snap it in half and swallow it in two big bites. "Now you guys to try it", Yunan sat down beside Drogon and asked Tartarus to spawn another guardian.


    The ease of atmosphere that Yunan was giving off, really made the Debauchery party feel awkward, even Leader found herself somewhat unhappy about it, it was always him in the ufortable spot around them, now, however, he had surpassed them, they were feeling ufortable around him, especially after he started telling them what to do.


    Once the fight was done, Mary threw herself in Yunan''s arms, blushing like a maiden. "my dear boss, did I do good today? praise me plenty". Yunan could not help butpliment her, if not on her performance during the fight, it was for the act she was putting now, behind them was some rather bloodied group, gnashing their teeth in whispers, all in agreement that someone needed a beat down.


    It did not take long for the group to loot the treasure chests and descend to the 90th floor, as soon as they descended, Yunan stopped them from taking a step outside the safe zone. "You can only leave here when you condense your original divinity shards, I, myself, will do the same, After condensing your shard, you can leave, one must not wait for the others and start hunting around immediately, thest to leave here will be punished, also, no one may leave this ce before then".


    Yunan sat down and closed his eyes, he looked back on his entire life, from the first memory, the quiet time of reading with his mother, to the time he met with Bai, that day he first killed, the day he first escaped with his own life. Memories flew past his eyes, each fleeting and intangible.


    He focused all his mental power, he scanned each memory and each moment he could remember, looking for the thing that would be a title for his life. The only thing that stood out was his effort, not his lucky days, nor his sessful schemes, it was not his friends nor his mother, it was not even himself, only this effort could put colour onto Yunan''s life.


    Looking inside himself, he understood that his life was the distition of his endless struggling, he tried hard, pushed himself above and beyond, he broke all limits, he brought out powers from within, he worked so hard, he unknowingly be strong beyond his own imagination, who could believe that an orphan with some luck, like himself, could reach the 90th floor within 80 years?


    A seed suddenly sprouted in Yunan''s sea of consciousness, it started absorbing all kinds of energy to nurture itself, mana, faith, luck and many more types of energy were sucked inside it, in Yunan''s own words, that seed fed on his sweat and blood and tears, pain, exhaustion, stress, scars, and satisfaction after a job well done.


    This was the truest essence of divinity, it fed only on the experience of the user, something thates from inside, there was no need to receive the worship of the masses to bring it to life. Yunan''s seed wasn''t just a seed of divinity, it was much more, he felt it was more, but he had no idea why, and he would only understand when things became dire enough.


    Yunan could feel himself being sucked dry, his divinity seed was greedy, it wants to consume everything he had in reserve, it did not discriminate against anything, as long as Yunan had a type of energy, it tried to feed on it, this was weird by all means, no guide on creating a seed of divinity had mentioned something like this.


    Yunan allowed his seed to feed as it will, and with each experience it absorbed, each grain of power, it grew bigger and bigger, funny enough, it did not cast its sights on all those divinity shardsying about in the sea of consciousness, it did not care about those delicious morsels of energy, well, not until it started to run out of space.


    Even if Yunan''s container was big enough to give a primordial a scare; for a mortal, it was too little for the seed that just sprouted. What it did next made Yunan almost lose his meditation, instead of halting its expansion, it absorbed all the shards, leaving behind only theplete Dream divinity, then it pushed at the walls of the container forcing it to expand, seemingly willing to grow without end.

 Chapter 398: Deep well

    Chapter 398: Deep well


    The seed in Yunan''s sea of consciousness continued to expand, it used the energy from the shards of divinity it has absorbed to expand the container, it converted all the foreign divine energy into nourishment for the growing container.


    The seed itself did not consume the divine energy from the foreign shards, all it consumed was produced by Yunan and his efforts, even the faith he gained from the worship of the poption, the goodwill that came from the adventurers, even the hatred gained from the over-gods was absorbed.


    The seed did not spare anything, even the pain in his memories, the stress and scars from his endless fights, it even drank deeply from Yunan''s consciousness, driving him into a trance-like state. This strange state of being, where he was being emptied from everything, it triggered a resonance with the universe, an instinctual move, the result was Yunan tapping into something old.


    When Yunan woke up from his trance, he was the only one sitting in the safe zone, strangely not much time had passed, ording to ck fate, not even a full day had passed, it seemed that he was tricked by his teachers, they had already condensed their divinity shards, they just wanted to rub that fact in his face.


    Looking inside himself, Yunan was almost shocked out of all his wisdom points, his sea of consciousness was still a pool of pure mana, theplete divinity of dreams floated alone near the surface of the pool, and then there was the gigantic seed, so massive it looked like his pool was but a drop of dew, while the seed was asrge a sun, if one focused on one of the two, one wouldpletely miss the other.


    If Yunan himself did not look for the seed, he might have thought it was extinguished. Yunan could tell from a single nce that this seed was hoarding enough power to topple the universe. He could barely believe it, the sense of suffocation from the overwhelming power was simr to the disparity between himself and Death. During their show-down, Death had made his power obvious for Yunan, he just did not use that amount of raw strength against him, now, Yunan could tell that his seed was harbouring powers beyond what Death showed at that time.


    Seeing that he was no longer bound by his own rules, he stood up and stretched, his joints creaked and popped as if he had been sitting for decades, his muscles felt like they were freed from some restraint, even his blood seemed to be happy to rush through his veins.


    His first step took him 300 times the usual step, the second brought him 500 times as far, he moved so fast, he could hear the sonic booms arrive after he stopped. He flexed his fingers and felt that his body was the same as the day before, it just felt like it was freed from something.


    Feeling strange about the new state of his body, he simply went to find pray, it did not take long to find a massive dragon to test his power on. By the end of the fight, Yunan understood something, even though his stats were still the same, he could extract much more from them, too much power in fact.


    It was like Yunan just found out that his little well was much deeper than he thought it was, he could draw on much more water, it felt like as if his rope just suddenly grew longer, thus discovering the hidden reserves of water, he continued to fine-tune his control over his newfound power, it was all him, it did note from the seed.


    Unbeknownst to Yunan, this was a direct result from the seed feeding on his efforts, among the things it devoured, stress and trauma from old injuries, ''hidden injuries'' is the best term to describe such a thing, it was mostly attributed to the loss of life earlier than normal, most adventurers live less than 90% of their life spans, as dictated by Constitution, what happened was that the seed of "effort" had also fed on the stress Yunan acquired.


    The seed identified Yunan''s stress as part of his experience and efforts, thus it consumed all those hidden injuries umted along the years, naturally, hidden injuries also have the effect of sealing away some strength, it may be unnoticeable for some, but to Yunan who always walked the sharp edge between life and death, it grew tremendously.


    Living on the edge of life every day, almost dying all the time, that kind of relentless hard work also showed in how much his seed grew, if he had taken his time, fought safely, never met any form of danger, if he had that kind of nearly effortless life, his seed would have been much smaller.


    With the seed seeming to stop its growth, Yunan added a few notes to his n, he could more or less understand that having this kind of divinity seed was a trump card in itself.


    His exploration of the 90th floor was eventfull, he estimated that he now could draw up to 30 times more power, his reflexes have sharpened by near 100 times, while his body seems to have be lighter, tougher and even more durable. Yunan did not know what to attribute his new gains to and decided he would not tell anyone about them.


    Drogon who was by his side was silentlymenting the fact that his owner has suddenly be too strong, no matter how he saw it, Yunan had upgraded too much after a sitting of meditation, if he didn''t know Yunan''s strength like it was his own, he would have thought nothing about it.


    It did not take long for the two to clear the 90th floor, thanks to all the dragons they consumed, Drogon''s bloodline finally seemed to break free from the grasp of mana corruption, pity that all the dragons found on this floor were far too corrupted to be saved, losing both the ability to reason and the ability to evolve.

 Chapter 399: Tartarus revealed

    Chapter 399: Tartarus revealed


    As Yunan turned the 90th-floor upside down, the council of the over-gods continued to discuss endlessly, Death was standing aside, the noise he made as munched on something made those sitting on the council even more agitated.


    Death was smirking at the panicking gods, and they kept ncing daggers at him, all of them hated him at the moment, he was the biggest part of their n before, relying on his aid for many things, now, he was just watching them, after dering his neutrality, they could not get the aid of null, not unless they could find a new avatar of null from this universe, unfortunately, the number of death gods was too big to let one grow enough to be noticed by null.


    What irked them the most was that he became part of the enemy generals, even if he yed neutral in the war, as long as no fight had taken part, Death was firmly on the side of Yunan, he even threatened the entire council, word for word, he said: "do not get any funny ideas about the pocket dimension, I do not usually issue threats, but lets take this as the first andst time, if you even think about it, the deal you made with the primordials is void, and I will harvest your entire universe before your eyes, then I will harvest you as well, the boy is up for grabs, if you can get your hands on him, as for his family, even dreaming about harming them is enough for me to take action".


    Death was by no means easy to deal with, to the council, Death having nothing better to do than munch on fruit while watching them is a waste, they had made use of Death too many times, but the up jumped Yunan had done nothing of the sort. To their knowledge, Yunan was truly fighting a war against three fronts on his own.


    What lead them to this thought, was the fact that the creator has left too quickly after visiting Yunan, since they couldn''t spy on the meeting, they assumed that the two were at odds, there was no way that making any kind of deal would take so little time, they assumed that details needed to be discussed, especially when it came to contract between gods, the peace treaty details made for the true battleground in any war.


    They could not even imagine that Yunan had a n so good, the creator did not even need to know the details, just the outline was enough for him to ept his role as a pawn for Yunan, and with that n, Yunan finally left the chessboard. Even taking him into ount at the moment was the wrong thing to do.


    The avatars thought the same as well, they kept their eyes focused on Yunan and his every action, the moment he ascended was the spark to ignite the war, as long as he remained mortal, he had no power. Unfortunately for both sides, Yunan had little care about their movements, even the asional report from Death was shrugged off, no matter what ns they hatched, as long as they made their preparations to be in the physical universe, it was moot.


    Once the was ready to house all divine realms, all their ns will go up in smoke, what truly mattered to Yunan is to n for the true battlefield, the divine realms. For now, he had ess to 3 different realms, the realm of luck, the realm of dreams and Tartarus.


    Yes, Tartarus is not a simple dungeon, it is the divine realm of the smith Hephaestus, a truth Yunan only grasped when he created his seed, how else could an artefact possibly be made of 100 floors, each floor is a pocket dimension. As artefacts go, the pocket dimension made for Yunan was the best Hephaestus could create, it was an independent universe capable of growth, as long as it was fed enough, it could be a true universe.


    It also made sense that the awards in the treasure chests came from a divine realm, the monsters dying and respawning endlessly, it ould only be exined if their souls were residing in the divine realm, Tartarus was not the name of the dungeon or the divine realm, it was the name of the manager, the one Hephaestus called his daughter.


    Powering up the realm was a simple matter since the power of faith came from mortal souls, there were billions of people in the dungeon, all of them were exuding emotional power and praying all the time, praying for loot, praying for good hunting, they even prayed as they died.


    All of that could be umted, treated as an energy source, granting the divine realm enough sustainable and renewable energy for as long as adventurers could step inside of the dungeon.


    Yunan had been wondering why other gods were prohibited from getting inside the Dungeon before, even Fortuna had toe by stealthily and did not use her godly powers, it was not that Hephaestus was able to enforce that rule, it was that he did not grant entry to gods, he could do so as he pleased, for example, if Fortuna was not a friend and was visiting Yunan; who at the time was friendly with Hephaestus, she would not have had the permission to enter.


    This also solved the problem of why there have been no gods trying to kill him in the dungeon. If even the over-gods; who have been hostile to him for a long time, did nothing while he pranced around in the dungeon unimpeded, it meant that they were unable to force their way inside.


    A war on a divine realm was a veryplicated matter, one had to spend a crazy amount of faith, they also had to make their realms and divinity vulnerable for the taking, none of the over-gods had faith to spare for a realm invasion.

 Chapter 400: 400th Chapter

    Chapter 400: 400th Chapter


    After a week or so of hunting around the 90th floor, Yunan returned home, confident that he wouldn''t cause any injury or damage, finally, the control over his strength has returned to him.


    Riding on the back of Drogon, the man and pet dragon arrived at the pocket dimension, where a silent atmosphere smothered the ce. After finding himself alone, Yunan took a bath before heading out for the maind.


    The bright pce was full of merriment, cheerfulughter and smiling faces everywhere, there were decorations, colourful lights and some very neatly-dressed guests wandering here and there, all of them were having the time of their lives, holding drinks in hand, they danced, flirted and socialized, the scene could only be described as festive.


    Yunan felt a bit lost among all the strangers, he asked a servant about his wives. The servant almost fainted from fright when Yunan asked his question, not daring to dy the king, the servant lead Yunan to the gardens where a tent was set up. There he found his wives mixing with some dainty looking noble women, all of whom were young of age and had bright eyes.


    The unnaturally enthusiastic guests were nearly stunned into stone statues when Yunan walked inside the tent. The sheerck of respect to the queens, not to mention the uncanny simrity to the God-king, the degree offort exuded by Yunan was the most stunning, his slow walk into the tent in simple attire, nothing fancy or festive, no aura of nobility or strength.


    The bright-eyeddies emerged one by one from their stunned state thanks to the bright smile on Reina, all this time, the queens were prim and proper, polite smiles and perfect manners, that only broke when Yunan strode inside the tent, each wore a brilliant smile that stole the light from the room, the naturally enhanced beautiful faces almost bing sources of light themselves.


    Hugs and sweet whispers were shared before Yunan could even realize what was going on, it felt like he was out of his element, but he did not dare to show anything on his face, Lady Mito would y him for showing any signs of his true emotions in public.


    Ignoring the jealous gazes, the intense stares and the asional worship sent towards him and his wives, Yunan made a small gesture and his wives led him to the centre of the tent, there he found the rest of the family and family friends trying to keep up with the number of people rubbing shoulders and elbows with them. Sone enjoyed the attention, some cared little and some outright rejected the advances of the crowd, especially old Markus, since he was no longer pope, he hogged Hephaestus and Martin as well as Fortuna and Death, a collection of wines and snacks floated around them like a shield, stopping all those who wanted to exchange words or socialize with the bunch.


    Apophis didn''t join them, no, he had been roped into some kind of religious gathering, he seemed to enjoy the chaotic feel of the group much better, there were some priests and bishops and the asional god in disguise. His teachers were doing their things, the spot where they stood felt like a good ce to be, a sign of something being terribly wrong going on.


    What attracted his attention was the absence of both Cat and Kaeser, although he had been an absent father, he didn''t skimp on guidance and support for the two, thankfully, Kaeser grew up like his father, working hard and taking care of his responsibilities, he wasn''t the best material for inheriting the throne, but he would be a good king. not that there was anything to do as the king of the Twilight Pearl kingdom, one only had to read the reports and let the kingdom run itself.


    As for Catelyn, she grew up into the dream girl, the perfect girl in her mothers'' eyes, willful and headstrong, but still capable and experienced, she took well to etiquette and the role of the prettiest pretty princess, socializing and making her existence known throughout the world, she was aplished as an adventurer, diplomat and badassdy who can open a can of whoop-ass on anyone that disrespect her, her attitude during negotiations and other political meeting was sweet and reserved, but if anyone made any unwanted advances, said the wrong words about her family and kingdom, well, there had been recorded incidents of her beating up people and walking away.


    Since the two were not present, the asion was not even worth asking about, he just followed the lead of Reina, who introduced him to a few people along the way, he said the pleasantries, smiled the smile but never got his attention away from the gods in disguise, many of which tried to avoid his detection.


    The group didn''t linger and joined with Markus and the rest, Markus was looking very old, Martin looked like he was losing his strength, both were the former generation of world leaders, even if Yunan was a Primordial, he would show his respect to the two of them. He bowed deeply and greeted them with his best mannerisms, then, as if they were equal, he hugged each of them and joked with the two about their ages and wrinkles, mostly teasing them about his divinity and readiness to help the two in ascension if they so desired.


    The asion was simply a reurring party that Cat started of boredom and then it became a yearly tradition, neither Cat nor Kaeser were too bored this year and decided to do something or the other, as for the gods hiding among the mortals, Yunan guessed that they belonged to the type who enjoyed meddling with mortals and watching them live their lives.


    Since the party was already ongoing Yunan sat down and hung around with the group of elders, him being old as well by now ording to the standards of ordinary humans. The rest of the people in the tent took their leave soon enough, most of them hated the idea of being there around the god-king, the rest felt that being ignored by said god-king was too much to bear with.


    The clinking of tankards, the chokingughter and the asional physical roughness made the atmosphere feel as typical as it usually is at home, even the two youngest joinedter as well, seemingly well integrated into the festive culture and strange debauchery of the family, all nice and cosy and happy at all times.

 Chapter 401: taking the next step

    Chapter 401: taking the next step


    What is the most terrible aspect of effort? It is the most underrated part as well, it is that effort is umtive, meaning, one man''s effort can be enough to dig a grave, but a group can do it as well or even better, efforts have the gall to be additive and cumtive, meaning the more people making an effort, the bigger the achievement that can be made.


    This thought lit up the darkness in Yunan''s sea of consciousness, that is always how it looked when he meditated on the oversized effort divinity. He always thought that the effort in his divinity was always his own, but that thought took his meditation to a new path.


    It became painfully obvious to Yunan that all his efforts were not always solitary, there were many times when he was guided, helped and inspired, all those bits of foreign aid and contribution also helped, therefore, Yunan felt that effort was an amalgamation of many different sources and origins. Another jolt rushed through Yunan as he understood another side of his little reflection. If his effort could be influenced by others, is it possible to influence the efforts of other people, if it were possible, is it usible that he could feed his divinity with the efforts he influenced?


    Going deeper into the rabbit hole of this simple yet mind-shattering idea, Yunan dove even deeper into the meaning behind the effort and for a moment, he saw why it was so overbearing. An effort is beyond simple trial and error, every act and thought towards a goal, regardless of sess, is an effort, it is one of the most neutral concepts of them all, it needs neither orientation nor requires a system. Effort is just effort, that is it, deceptively simple yet deep and hard to probe into. It is also why Burkan had no god for effort and hard work, no one on the verge of ascension would choose to work even harder, the little bit of effort needed to take that step is; to some, a hurdle that can never be ovee.


    As the owner of the divinity of effort, Yunan worked as hard as ever, not to mention simple understanding of the divinity, what little control it required needed an unshakable will; just to withstand the amount of divinity and faith stored in there. Will and effort went hand in hand, to the point Yunan almost thought that effort and will were the same domain, his will was tested so regrly that he felt a divinity of will forming inside him, thankfully, that feeling only tranted to a strengthening of the sea of consciousness, nothing more.


    As Yunan grew more in tune with his divinity, he found that it was not as idle as he thought, it was syphoning the efforts of the people around him, especially his wives and pets, the link they had made with the master brand became a two way channel, they grew stronger passively as their efforts were harvested from them, even without stepping foot in the dungeon, they were growing to be as strong as Yunan, depending on how much effort they traded with Yunan, the amount of power gain was determined by the divinity itself.


    It took Yunan the better part of 5 years to stabilise and attune into his divinity, control it perfectly, as well as harvest the rted faith passively from the ambient energy in the Dreamscape.


    Dreamscape has be the main way to contact the outside world for Yunan, it was used as a channel to receive the worship of the masses as well as the faith from dreams and effort, the harder people worked, the more he could gain. Dreamscape was not only a way to Burkan but to all the others in the universe, it was closest to Burkan due to the creator himself. Yunan found that humans were not the firstborn of the gods as they always fancied themselves, ording to the energies of Dreamscape, Burkan was thetest life-bearing in universe Hosana, other life forms are older and more mature in both faith and technology than humans.


    The Dreamscape was the domain of the first god, a god born from the first dream the creator had inside universe Hosana, it is the ce where the dreams of the creator were stored, and from those dreams, one could see his ns for his creations. To gain ess to other worlds, Yunan had to actively seek out the connection, doing so would give him authority over the dreams of the he connects to, but it would give the deities of that a warning to his existence. Resistance was inevitable, no god would allow a stranger, god or otherwise to juste to their and enjoy its faith without repercussions, hence the dy in getting contact with those worlds.


    5 yearster, all the gods would meet and be exposed to each other, by then Dreamscape would be used as the gate to connect all those worlds, and with all gods imprisoned, no one will stand in Yunan''s way if he sought to invade or influence others, he could do as he wished, and with only 5 years left, it was time to start making ripples everywhere.


    The start was inside Tartarus, breaching the final levels and reaching the control room was too easy, it was recorded in the guild that the highest floor avable for adventurers was the 94th, mainly because one needed to be a pseudo deity to pass to the 95th floor, hence leaving the ranks of adventurers, and condensing a divinity shard would immediately let one know they are inside the divine realm of Hephaestus. Most of the pseudo deities end up failing to ascend, and instead of leaving the dungeon, they are offered ces to stay and work.


    In the divine realm, they can still try to ascend as long as they do not give up, but once they leave, they have to find a faith source just to survive as demigods and that was by no means an easy feat, most demigods die out of age or by war, gods and other demigods would hunt them down, sharing faith was not something deities were known for. This way, most demigods would rather stay in the divine realm as workers, slowly building up faith as pseudo deities, leaving the thrice ursed life of demigods to those who have resigned themselves to it.

 Chapter 402: heartless

    Chapter 402: heartless


    The rewards for passing the levels beyond the 95th floor were mostly symbolic or items that would help in the process of divinity creations, items that would adorn the library back at home, sitting there and waiting for someone willing to give them attention, the final item Yunan received for defeating the 99th floor guardian was the body of aplete phoenix, one that has never been tainted by the mana corruption. The phoenix was immediately consumed and used to purify the phoenix bloodline and subsequently purify Ignis as well, although theck of phoenix type monsters in thetest floor was not helpful to her, the final gift from Tartarus felt like a remuneration instead of a reward forpleting the challenge of the divine realm.


    Taking the next step would finish Yunan''s oldest unresolved quest, delivering the ck Fate to Tartarus and taking her out, either killing her or fusing her with the other hearts. The four hearts in the outside world have been hiding in seclusion, their fifth, on the other hand, worked tirelessly to help the world stabilise, all in all, Yunan was standing at the step of making a very big decision, what would he do with the first artificial life form created by Hephaestus.


    The door opened on its own, an invitation from the heart of Tartarus, the ck Fate led the way into the next private dimension, the ce that could overlook and influence everything touched by the power of Hephaestus, taking the step felt like travelling to a new universe, thews here were different, maybe it was the same mathematically, but the feeling it gave Yunan was different from the feeling he had while inside universe Hosana, he assumed it was a seed, to be grownter on and develop into aplete universe, just like his pocket dimension, except that the pocket dimension called home would never birth life, it can only sustain it.


    What Yunan saw was an office room, cubicles stretched to the horizon and beyond, papers flew between cubicles and the asional shout of anger or despair would resonate, drawing the ire or the pity of those close to the screamer. The strange room was full of these cubicles, bursting would be an understatement, there were so many in all directions, up, down, east or west, with each cubicle, only being 6X6X6 feets or 2X2X2 metres, each housing a demigod or a god, and each working diligently on whatever matters were handed to them.


    Walking between cubicles should have lead to nowhere, but Yunan had a guide, the ck Fate on his finger, the silent ring that apanied Yunan most of his journey now radiated some faint light that led Yunan through the maze of cubicles to reach an isted little flower garden, where he found the little girl he saw many times before. She sat there with closed eyes and something super fluffy covering her like a nket, she gently rubbed what Yunan assumed to be the head of the strange creature.


    "You finally came? Do you know how long have I waited for you? Hurry up and do your thing!" the look on her face was one of annoyance, but Yunan still stood there doing nothing, he looked around at the garden, the weird flowers, took in the sight of the hedges and trees, he smelled the fragrance and generally let himself absorb the location and its essence.


    "Nice ce you have here, how about you follow me outside?" the question posed by Yunan took Tartarus by surprise, evident from her gaping maw and her disbelieving expression, she could only respond with a bit of embarrassment. "I can never leave this ce, my father has yet to grow strong enough, I have to wait until my universe is ready".


    Yunan''s response was to grab her by the cor and use phase shift to drag her away from her safe spot, he took her to his ce, threw the little girl into the arms of Reina leaving behind a few words: "she is spoiled rotten, don''t heed her requests, I will be back soon". With that Yunan phased out towards the lonely mountain where he would find Mina and the rest of the hearts waiting for him.


    "Alright, I did as you guys asked, I found Tartarus, what is next? Your quest is about to be finished, anyst words?" the sudden presence of Yunan in the secret chamber under the mountain almost gave the hearts a heart attack, even Helios looked unprepared for once.


    "So, you made it to thest floor, what is next?" Asterion was oblivious to the ramifications of the words he just heard, he, therefore, looked much morefortable than the other 3, Helios was first to give in and ept followed by Mina and after some resolve, Yggdrasil also resigned to her fate as well.


    "Long story short, it''s time for you to die" Yunan answered the question concisely he then looked at everyone present before saying his final words to them. "The world no longer needs you, even as symbols you have lost your worth, I will use your lives to make something so explosive it will shake the pirs of creation, onest bit of brilliance before the world leaves you behind". After saying hisst words, Yunan waved his hand and the four turned into 4 artefacts, a hammer, an eye mounted on a lighthouse, a tree sapling and a ferocious idol of a roaring beast.


    Life still pumped in the four hearts, but now they showed their true forms, no matter how much life they had in them, they were nothing but artefacts in the end. Yunan smiled derisively at himself and his thoughts before waving his hand again and collecting the four hearts into his palm, he whispered some words to them that shall remain secret, the four artefacts gave out a bright light before turning dull again.


    His words to them were, a promise of sorts, a prophecy only he can im to see, only he can im to have what it takes to fulfil, and to the four who were being marched to execution, those words meant to the four enough to show onest sign of their willingness to be sacrifices. With the hearts in possession, Yunan returned home and immediately went to the forge, summoning Balin and Hephaestus to assist him, with the heart of Tartarus as the base and the hearts as the catalyst he created his first living item, a divine weapon that can only be described as revolutionary.

 Chapter 403: Divine weapon

    Chapter 403: Divine weapon


    In the private dimension, the forge was billowing with mes, heat overflowed through the doors as the fire of dragon and phoenix merged and wrestled to provide the divine weapon being forged the ultimate nourishment.


    "My little girl! you heartless monster, how could you kill her without even batting an eyelid!", Hephaestus was disying some grief, nothing too serious though, he was mostly watching this new creation made from his daughter take shape. He still nheless kept hammering at what her true form was, a doll, trying to beat out some undesirables that Yunan pointed out, most of them were materials that would only hinder the creation to be.


    Balin himself was melting some ores and infusing them with mana, alongside him were piles of failed attempts that would be recycledter on, the degree of purity that Yunan required made the dwarven smith sweat bullets, even if the me was hot enough to burn him along his materials, he dare not show any signs of displeasure and worked hard.


    Yunan, on the other hand, stood at the heart of the mes, slowly shaping a cluster of metal to his liking, he kneaded his mana and divinity in the metal itself, it was then shaped to look like a sword. the hiltless double-edged sword would asionally float out from his hand only to be caught again and kneaded, again and again, all to reach a perfect base. his answer to Hephaestus was as nonchnt as he could make it, "you made her into material for forging, her gaining life and handling the dungeon was just a bonus, also, I need you to use this form to turn her and the rest of the hearts into ink, Balin, leave those ores alone and go melt some of that mana metal we made".


    and so the three talked as they made preparation, Hephaestusmented his inability to have onest meal with his daughter, while Balin cursed his mentor for deserving her death, as for Yunan, he stayed mostly silent, giving out orders and asionally responding to this or that.


    once all materials were ready, Yunan used his fingernails as carving tools to carve the intricate design he had in mind to power up his sword, then with the hearts as ink, he drewplicated runes in a flowing pattern that looked like a growing vine, each stroke weaved untold power into the sword, bit by bit, the design waspleted, it was then covered in molten metal to fasten the ink to the sword, then came the hilt, made entirely from mana metal, it to was etched and treated with its ownplimenting pattern, when both linked a hum of energy spread from the weapon.


    as for the final moment, it was doused in a solution made from liquid mana and distilled spirit stones, once the weapon was quenched Yunan plunged it into the heart of his effort divinity, in there all those runic patterns etched on the sword lit a glow and frantically absorbed divine power from the divinity, among the absorbed divine power was that of dreams, it was stored in pommel. the sword then linked itself to Yunan''s soul, bing part of him, it was the first weapon of its kind to be born, no one dared link their souls to a weapon, if it shattered, it would deal unheble damage to the soul, eternally scarring it and forever losing some amount of power that can never be regained.


    souls were the only resource one was born with, no one could recreate such a power source, it was something as old as creation, no one knows how they were born and no one knows why they can exude so much energy, once can manipte and destroy them, creating them was without question impossible, some artefacts would birth a type of pseudo-soul when they grow intelligent, souls were only born naturally, the process of giving life to anything was merely preparing it to host a soul, new or reincarnated mattered little.


    for Yunan to take such a risk, it was only because it was countered by the sheer power of his divinity, if there was anything effort had that no other divinity could match, it was the size and amount of power it could provide, the only divinity that can outdo it is infinity, to gain that divinity, one has to understand infinity, making it finite, this paradox made it impossible to have a god of infinity, effort, however, could be infinite, and that endless power could perhaps keep the soul bound sword intact or mitigate the consequences of its destruction.


    now we get to the important part, how powerful could that sword be, well it was as strong as Yunan himself, anything that can break Yunan can destroy it, otherwise, it could never be destroyed, as long as Yunan existed, the sword would be reborn endlessly no matter how many times it is destroyed, the most horrifying part is that it was powered by the chaotic energy of dreams as well as the indestructible power of effort.


    it was sharp enough to slice through divine barriers like butter, it could cut space itself and had the ability to inject Yunan''s divine energy into anything it touches, as for hardness, there was no need to speak about it, it could withstand the death scythe without much trouble, and finally, it could act as a conduit for Yunan to syphon divine energy or other such energies as long as it was in contact with its target.


    this sword scared Death, after shing with Yunan a few rounds, he mumbled to himself as if having an argument, in the end, he made Yunan vow not to use that sword against him with malice, he could ept being killed by Yunan, what he refused was dying under that sword, as if he saw the true purpose this sword was made for, a sword with one reason for its existence, to kill.

 Chapter 404: Making the first ripple

    Chapter 404: Making the first ripple


    with his divine weapon made, Yunan''s ns advance a little bit, it was about time to y a prank or two, he has been idle for very long, and there were some powers that had very taught nerves at the moment, ying a little harmless prank would be a nice refresher for many who are waiting for him to act, and his target was the chaos.


    in the heart of the universe, there is a spot where the primal forces of creation still shed, that location is where Apophis used to spend his time, the chaos not only could promote some gods, it could also hide them and protect them, among the ones hiding in the chaos was one member of the over-gods.


    she was called Tasha, her rtionship with chaos was not as pronounced as Apophis, but she still found herself some respite in the chaos, she even prefered it to the table of the council, so much so, the council used her as an agent instead of a member due to how she estranged herself from them. Tasha was not the weakest nor was she the strongest, she had one thing that guaranteed her position in the council of the over-gods, she could use the chaos to sway the hearts of others, she already had a following of gods who would do her biddings from the exiles who hid in the chaos.


    due to this ability, the council could find some respite and leech the faith from this universe, she was providing faith to the entire council in return for the ability to act as she pleased, and that is why Yunan chose her, she was isted, with only her troops beside her.


    Yunan entering the chaos was a monumental event, he was hunted by half the gods in the universe and the other half waited to pounce on him when he showed weakness, and him walking to this ce without hiding the fact he was still mortal that yad yet to ascend, it was a direct insult to anyone who opposed the boy.


    if he had the courage to walk into the chaos, then he had enough to march into any realm he could get to, parading around like this was extremely taunting to so many gods. not to mention he came out as a mortal, basically telling anyone who cared to listen that he was offering his dream divinity to who could force it out of him, that alone made so many people hesitate to act, it was a trap, a very obvious one, the first to spring it would either die to give the rest a good understanding, or he would im Dreamscape and nevere out of there.


    Tasha, of course, chose to spring the trap, to her, an over-god, Yunan was just an ant that she could crush at will, and the ant that had been hiding under the tailcoats of Death has just left its safe space and walked straight into her hands. Tasha immediately ordered her subordinates to get her the dream divinity, the only divinity other than the chaos that could nourish her back to top form.


    Tasha looked like any human woman, but it was a mistake to see her as one, her true form was that of a subus-like fiend, beautiful and enchanting, but also repulsive and dirty, her true form looked like a nightmare, with her wings looking like torn sails, her smile was like the maw of the abyss, her skin dry and cracked, while her eyes were empty sockets that had nothing inside.


    Yunan floated in the void surrounded by the rumbling energies still in conflict and turmoil, his sword at hand and his form that of a Dragonborn, around him burned the soul mes of the Phoenix, and any god that came in reach would be sliced in half and consumed, their divinities devoured and their efforts absorbed, he masked this by sting out magic like a maniac, teleporting between foes and pumping out enough magic power and dream energy to obliterate any foe, but all that show was for nothing, the truth was that one swing of a sword and there would be no longer a god.


    it started as one against one, then two against him alone, by the time an hour had passed he was fighting hundreds of cannon fodder at any given moment, no one thought it was strange, the dream divinity alone could do much more, and with aid from Dreamscape, Yunan presumably needed no time to refill his mana and recharge his faith.


    what was imperative was to weaken his resolve, the dream divinity needed lots of will to operate, or so they thought, as long as they tire him mentally he will lose control, or so they thought, he would be overwhelmed and make mistakes, falling to some stray spell, or so they thought.


    never in their wildest thoughts did they think he was ying with them. since Dreamscape was an inheritance, it needed no will to operate, they never thought that even if he was mentally exhausted his body would continue to fight at this frightening efficiency due to his automated battle mode. they never thought that he was not baiting them to make fun of his enemies, in reality, he was feeding on them, growing stronger with each kill, each one of these cannon fodder was nurturing him, giving even more strength.


    even Tasha did not expect him to still be there, fighting hundreds of gods just to show a middle finger to the council, she even thought he was here to kill her subordinates and weaken her forces, eventually she could no longer escape the paranoid feeling that she was the target, if she attacked him personally before he attacked her, she was breaking the newest contract with Death and the four primordials, her forces depleting were his taunts to get her to act, or so she thought.

 Chapter 405: A prank

    Chapter 405: A prank


    Harvest, that was the only word that can describe what Yunan was going through at the moment, he had fought for more than 3 days, killed around 200 gods and was slowly killing more, he didn''t continue with the one move one kill, he needed more gods to sacrifice themselves, these rogue gods might have had a future if they just sat still, however, a life on the run from religious wars, from persecution and justice, has put a seed of chaos into these gods, they desired power regardless of its source. One must not neglect to mention that there were gods who simply wanted seclusion or tried to stay away from the fighting, those that wanted to preserve their lives were unmotivated by the seemingly free loot.


    Tasha was now stewing in a pot of anticipation, Yunan has been slowly losing his edge, even if he didn''t make any mistakes, he needed longer to kill, she thought he was losing steam, and he sold that to her as best as he could, sweat and steam rose in tandem with his spirit mes, there was some tear and wear on his armour and scales, the magic he cast started getting simpler and lower in level and power, he took more hits and showed more openings. The cluster of gods around him stopped growing past the 50th person, a system was created to tire Yunan out.


    On the fourth day, Yunan got fed up and made what would look like a desperate move, he cast a wide area instant kill move, using the divine soul bound weapon to execute the move and instantly kill all those around him, he then slowly dragged his body towards Tasha who was unable to sit at this moment, he got close enough to make sure of her thoughts and read her mood then said "go tell your council, the next time Ie out, I will kill one of you, please deliver post haste". He then stood there waiting to hear the answer.


    Tasha knew this was his provocation, he came, killed and delivered a message, and he would wait to hear an answer before returning safe and sound, this type of provocative humiliation would be intolerable for the council, and they would answer immediately by saying something about how they will kill him soon enough. In reality, Death had forbidden the council from touching Yunan''s family and not Yunan himself, it is the misconceptions of the council that led them to believe he too was included in the warning.


    Tasha ryed the message and gave the response of the council "attack any of us if you had the guts, your words are worth nothing when only backed by the strength of a mortal". Tasha did not even dream that Yunan was waiting for this message to attack her, he wanted to showcase impulse andck of control whenpared to greater beings, he wanted them to think he can be provoked as well, especially by the difference in power.


    His attack was not meant to kill Tasha, only to scare her, a burst of magic and mes to make her feel a tinge of fear, he wanted her to be scared of an ambush, he wanted her to convey that if the council did not act carefully, they may be assassinated. The premise of this was that the council did not know how easy it was for Yunan to use the dream divinity, using the normal way things work, Yunan could umte an amount of dream energy and use it at will, using his 4 day fight to show that he could carry a big reserve and the instant detonation of magic and divine power to convince Tasha and by proxy, the council, that Yunan had massive reserves that can be expended in long fights or instant explosive attacks.


    If Tasha was even startled by the sneak attack, those weaker than she would think that they would be injured or killed, and with this seed of fear, they would restrain their movements and flinch whenever they faced him. That was the second objective, the first was to umte divinity from the fallen gods.


    Unexpectedly, Tasha was injured in the burst, although Yunan did not stay to know the results of his attack, he could feel the amount of damage he had just dealt Tasha, she was so overconfident that she did not even bother shielding herself, now that she was injured, even mildly, both she and the council would think twice before doing anything to Yunan.


    The poor council spent the next 5 years trying to sniff him out and pick a fight with him but to no avail. Yunan only sat in Dreamscape and meditated, digesting the enormous amount of efforts he absorbed from the fallen gods, each of them had made enough effort to boost Yunan''s divinity by thrice its size, and including the divinities each god had condensed, the harvest was truly worth it. The effort divinity had expanded by a total of 50 times, while the rest of the energy was used to expand Yunan''s vessel, it got cramped so badly that Yunan had no choice but to use the divinities he collected.


    He could not sell them now, conversely, he now had a divinity that was stronger by a factor of 50, better prospects for the long term, as well as the undivided attention of the council and the rest of the avatars, Yunan has just shown his ability to kill any god under a certain threshold of power, minions were already hard to find and now they could not even be used casually. This act also served to take all eyes off of the creator and his prison to be, giving him a wider margin of error where he can be a bit reckless and expose snippets of what he is trying to aplish.


    By the end of the ten years promised by the creator, Yunan was sure he could seriously injure Tasha with his power-up, but instead of going out to try his luck, he instead assembled his divine friends for thest war meeting before the cataclysm that will turn this universe upside down.

 Chapter 406: Towards the unknown

    Chapter 406: Towards the unknown


    "We have sessfully crystallised luck, I lost some subordinate gods but none that can affect the operation, as you expected, the faith from the loss of luck has increased by many fold, with the help of Apophis we were able to create a type of container that stores certain amount of faith, our activities have not gone unnoticed, but who would care if we were hoarding faith instead of using it, this is the form and the denominators, we created different sizes, 100, 200, 500 and 1000 unit denominators, now we can use faith as currency, with the use of Dreamscape we have stored enough faith to create a new currency system" Fortuna gave her report diligently, the husband before he was not the one she could drool over and he would humour all her moods.


    Death then cleared his throat "the turmoil created from visible reapers gave me more death energy than I thought possible to umte in this universe, as you have instructed, i did the same and hoarded that energy as well as the faith that came with it, currently, I have enough death energy stored to recreate my scythe a few hundred times, what do you want me to do with it? As for the faith, it has been delivered as standard currency to Fortuna". Yunan nodded his head with a smile "give me the death energy, I am making a poison and an antidote out of it, we will sell it as an item when the wars start, I would appreciate it if you can make me some weapons with all that energy, some that can inflict necrotic wounds that would then spread death energy to the body, we need to sell more antidote than poison".


    Hephaestus almost gave an identical report, his hired gods and demigods have been processing faith and are performing outstandingly, ever since the heart of Tartarus was used as forging material, the efforts have been redoubled and the subordinate gods and demigods made so much progress in ascension as well as helping out as many people as possible to ascend to the ranks of gods or demigods. Meaning they could work as faith gatherers as long as there is a source of faith avable for them.


    Apophis was thest to report, he had to add in particr except the strange increase in the number of foreign gods that are migrating to the chaos, although they have yet to go on and initiate direct contact, the chaos has now as many as 5 times the number of gods before Yunan visited, most of these are newly exiled from others, these exiles formed factions and are looking for new grounds to try and spread their faith, Apophis assumed that some has seeded in interster travel and are coordinating with the exiled gods in an attempt to finds with shallow technology trees. ording to Apophis, it will take about a few years to even establish a stable connection between foreign gods, and by then it would be already toote, the n to cut off the rtionship between mortals and deities is about to be sprung upon the universe.


    Yunan took a few minutes to recalibrate his ns and calctions then he gave the new orders "the four of you need to merge your divine realms, or at least connect them in some way that allows free travel among the realms, also redo the contracts, all the affiliate gods must agree to confidentiality first and foremost, second, they must be capable of collecting faith outside of the realms, they will be rewarded for it,st but not least they must be able to work regardless of the task that is given to them". He waited for a moment to let the avatars take note and understand his n.


    "Those who refuse the change of the contract are to be huddled as far away from the core units, give them menial tasks and keep them from leaving the realms, I will also grant you four the ability to enter and authorize entry to Dreamscape, after the takes effect, it will possibly be the only ce to mine faith and energy, as for defending it, the dreams know how to keep outsiders at bay".


    Yunan took a deep breath before he continued "one more year and we start a miniature culling, therefore the tasks will change, as of now, it is toote for others to even react, I want Apophis to work as an ambassador, he will go to the chaos and find those deities who wish to be left in peace, they will be recruited to mine faith in Dreamscape, as long as they remain faithful, they will be protected and get cleansed from chaos, as well as get a portion of the gathered faith to advance their powers, Fortuna will be responsible for finding most of the deities without realms and recruiting them, as cannon fodder, Hephaestus will be in charge of nning the work schedules and the rest of paperwork needed to employ and manage the affiliate gods, finally, Death only has to hover over the council and let me know about the location of one of their feelers, I feel like making the council think our conflict just got personal".


    Not long after, all the gods left, leaving behind Yunan to think carefully about his next moves, he had his sword on hisp and was in half a daze as his mind worked at maximum capacity, he only noticed Ophelia when her hands started massaging him, he let himself go in her hands, it had been very long since he allowed himself to drop his guard. Soon enough, all his wives were around him, some talking, some singing and some just rubbing his hair, all in a bid to ease the tension in his heart, to Yunan, he was taking a step towards the unknown for the first time in his life, and that scared him, having an idea on the danger you will meet makes it easier to go adventuring, but this was something on a different scale, this is something that involved the fate of creation, not just the boy ying at conquering dungeons.

 Chapter 407: Mortal yet again

    Chapter 407: Mortal yet again


    A month passed with Yunan trying to limate himself to the new reality, he wished so much to return to the naive boy in love with a goddess and having the time of his life, fighting, loving, and having fun at all times, sure he was facing death with every step, but he never thought he would actually die, now, that possibility was frighteningly close and realistic.


    Death was very efficient, he found someone a bit weaker than Tasha, he had always fancied himself better than Tasha and chose to rece her to prove it. Tasha returned to the safety of the floating table and hunkered down, she knew the danger Yunan posed better than anyone, she was injured, even if she did not shield herself, a red g in and of itself. There were two points she didn''t miss, the speed of execution and the power of it. Tasha took two things for granted with Yunan, he was stronger than what he let her see, and the control he had over the dream divinity was much more than he pretended to show.


    She even realized that although Yunan was weaker than her, he came there to challenge her knowing he could escape without much danger, that in itself made her rey the 4 day fight she witnessed, in her mind again and again, but all she coulde up with was that he hid his strength deeply, none of the gods that surrounded him could retaliate, yet they somehow were able tost for so long, even when being reinforced, they lost over 500 gods just to inflict some wounds and not even deplete his energy reserves. Tasha was brilliant enough to know something was wrong, she would not be tasked to gather intelligence if her hubris won over her rational and power of observation, unfortunately, she was deemed to be trying hard to find an excuse for her injuries, a futile attempt at restoring her pride.


    When her recement took over the forces around the chaos, he did not even hide his attempts to contact all kinds of gods, the good, the bad and the ugly, all were his targets to be recruited or be sent fleeing to another corner of the universe. This one was much more vulnerable to his self-esteem and delusions of grandeur, fortunately, he was helping out Yunan and friends to recruit the ones who only wanted peace, thanks to him flushing out all the gods hiding here and there in the chaos, many gods of manys were startled and forced to flee once more. After each campaign, Apophis went ahead and recruited with impunity, even going as far as to poach from those who were forcefully recruited.


    This member of the council was chosen as the sacrificialmb, the council chose him to quickly replenish the troops, unfortunate for them, the poaching of Apophis and the attention of Yunan were exactly what they feared most, losing their already flimsy foundation, which would lead to so manyplications when it was time to feed on fate. Yunan, on the other hand, chose this one for one reason, making the feud with the council seem even more personal, both he and the council chose the outrageously pompous member for the same reason, to deliver a message.


    Yunan snuck to the chaos, he weaved between the defences and even disabled one or two traps he came across, it was an infiltration mission, fighting a horde of gods again would waste his precious time in the soon to be unleashed prison, and there was no need to be in a rush, most of these gods are going to be his pray sooner than they may even believe.


    It did not take long to find Ferdinand. [that is the only name that sounded right in my brain for 6 hours while typing this chapter] The man was by no means trying to hide and was basically broadcasting his location at all times, this man was a humanoid, a mix of fur, bone protrusions and an upright standing figure, he looked like a furry creature that had its bones snapped and squeezed out, he gave off the feeling of noble birth as well as a brutal personality, and from afar, he looked like something from an old wives'' tale.


    Since Ferdinand was sox about security, Yunan decided to just show up and walk like he owned the ce, sure enough, no one even gave him a second look, mostly because the godly aura he was emitting was that of a greater god, most thought he was just a new guying to swear allegiance, even Ferdinand thought so as well, he greeted the neer warmly from atop his throne "wee, our next addition, a great being with decent power, wee, what is it that you wish to gain as remuneration for serving the over-gods?"


    Ferdinand leaned forward, not even bothering to act suspicious, but what answered him was a de inserting itself between his eyebrows, through his brain, then smashing through his sea of consciousness, a soul bound de made solely to deal with gods invaded his mind and he lost the ability for coherent thought.


    Yunan used phase shift to move his de, an action that was easier to hide and faster to perform, then, as soon as he felt the de strike the consciousness he too phased to grab the hilt, to the audience, they only saw as the de materialized between the eyebrows of the tyrant, then, the de wielder showed himself as well, grabbing the pommel of the sword in an extremely familiar way, as if the de was an extension of his existence.


    Once Ferdinand was immobilized, Yunan used the power of dreams and put Ferdinand in a dreaming state, and took his time rummaging through memories and syphoning effort and divine power. Even the divinities weremandeered away, unable to even struggle under the pressure of the sun that is the effort divinity. By the time Ferdinand returned to his senses forcibly three secondster, he was a mortal, his divinities stolen, his power consumed and the de between his eyebrows still there, but this time, it was looming over his soul, if he was killed now, he would never be reborn again.


    "Send a message to the council, if you want to have a chance at reincarnation, tell them, trying to kill me was part of the course, but trying to kill me and take my family as coteral makes this feud personal, tell them that I still have the imprint of fate from back then, tell them, that I will kill all of them, slowly, just like this, with a weapon made to kill all that is divine".


    Surprisingly Ferdinand did as he was told, unfortunately, even if he followed the strong, he did forget something, once the soul-bound de left his body, he would lose Yunan''s support, he would be a mortal in the heart of the chaos, not to mention those that he had wronged before, he should have asked for death instead of being allowed to live.

 Chapter 408: Detatching away

    Chapter 408: Detatching away


    When the de was pulled away, Ferdinand noticed his predicament, he gasped for breath, iled to get control of his fading consciousness, but even Death was noting for him this time, someone with the kind of mentality of an over-god would generate so much death energy if kept at the edge of death.


    Ferdinand tried to evoke the loyalty of the subordinates he had cultivated for four years, but he forgot something, they were loyal to him out of fear and not respect, those who cared little about him just left the location to another corner of the chaos, those who had grudges to settle, took the remaining 8 months to slowly drive him to the edge of insanity. He smiled so brightly when suddenly all the gods disappeared from the vicinity, he smiled as his life wasted away in the chaos in mere moments.


    As for the council, they spent the same 8 months in a heated discussion, not about how Yunan was suddenly capable of killing a being as strong as Ferdinand, no they were more worried of the imprint of fate, the only time they tried killing him using fate was a long time ago, if they failed due to interference from fate itself, then that brand was going to be key.


    An imprint of fate was something only the creator of the universe should be capable of obtaining, it was an acknowledgement of fate, the holder of the imprint can wield fate as they wish. Yunan did not know it, he thought that he would lock them to their chairs if he mentioned fate, the mention of an imprint meant the lock on his memories, he had no idea how much his remark impacted the council.


    For the council, they were now losing ways to deal with Yunan, first, Death sheltered him, and now they found out he was able to manipte fate and could not be killed that way, furthermore, he was capable of making Ferdinand surrender and do his bidding, something that would be impossible if he did not show overpowering strength, something that stunned Ferdinand, they did not know how literally correct their conjecture was.


    As to exin this, fate was unable to kill Yunan because it had no ability to see his future, even when they forced it at that time, they did not even know they failed, they just felt they somehow needed to change their focus, that coincided with the arrival of the creator, therefore, they did not know about the prophesy Yunan received, as for Ferdinand, the guy was almost stunned without having the time to react because of his arrogance, not even recognizing the opponent for who he was.


    As for Yunan, he took the uing months to help his teachers, forcing them to stay mortal and never ascend, he exined that he needed them to look after his family, hisst order as the leader of the Debauchery party. He also passed down a bloodline to both Kaeser and Catelyn and then let them inherit his kingdom, he made onest change as the god-king of the Twilight Pearl kingdom, the kingdom''s men would be granted the bloodline of the dragon once they reached a certain power level, the women were given the phoenix bloodline.


    These bloodlines would bepletely under the control of the genie of the private dimension, who would use the union of the bloodlines to cleanse the world of Burkan from the taint of mana as the sources of the bloodlines, Ignis and Drogon would be left behind as the guardians of the bloodlines they would teach the control of the bloodlines and eventually reestablish a poption of dragons and phoenixes to keep the bnce of the world.


    When it came to his mortal wives, Yunan had no idea what to do, he was embarking on a path of no return, he woulde to visit now and then, but he could no longer just return home, when this ordeal of the prison is taken care of, he would be too strong to be in the same as them, it was, therefore, the hardest to just cut off their connection, but he did so with the blessings from the wives, they knew that they were his beloved, yet could not help but feel his sorrow, diverging paths tended to break people from each other and this was just another case.


    He was allowed to leave to never return but not to cut off their link through the master mark, they made the excuse that they would be lonely if they suddenly lost their connection. It was sweet and peaceful when Yunan left the private dimension and entered Dreamscape, that little dimension would always remain linked to Dreamscape if ever Yunan got nostalgic, he might send a clone or a wisp of his consciousness to take a look.


    One day while meditating, a sh of light enveloped the four gods meditating beside Yunan, they were transported to the new and Yunan with them, even if he didn''t ascend, the creator included him in the summons, this was his n, after all, every god was taken to their respective realm or the one they were contracted to, those who had neither, they were spread across the surface.


    Each realm was turned into a territory, a piece ofnd, marked with a forcefield and once anyone came into contact with the field they would learn of the owner and would be either allowed entry or repelled depending on the owner.


    "Wee everyone, this is the new location where all divine realms will exist from this point forward, no god shall leave this, you may contact your devotees from this, you can send reincarnations but no god will leave this ce, as for the allocation of faith, the more territory you own the more faith you receive, if you have no divine realm, it is toote to create one, unless the owner of a realm is killed, no more realms can be made, the rest of the rules can be discovered through conquering the, good luck everyone, let the best god win".

 Chapter 409: tempted devil

    Chapter 409: tempted devil


    The words spouted by the creator were exactly as nned, even the activation of the-sized trap was immediate, no one was able to react when the divine light of creation teleported every god to the rift and the newly created there.


    To the confused gods, the vague words of the creator sounded like they were forced into a contest, they felt like they werepeting for something, they only knew they could fight for it through getting a divine realm or associating with one, add in the fact that all gods from the entire universe were assembled on the same, millions of gods put against each other in a cage fight.


    After delivering his speech, the creator took himself to Dreamscape, he too, was trapped on this, he was fortunate enough to have ess to the safety of Dreamscape, otherwise, even he, the creator god, would be whittled down if attacked by millions of angry gods trying to escape his prison.


    "Well, now that we have them confused, I will be retiring in this garden, unless the council makes some big move, don''t bother me" these were the words the creator threw at Yunan before finding the old hammock andying on it, swinging gently back and forth.


    "Don''t get toofortable, you will be hunting avatars soon, it is time to start making alliances, see you soon!" Yunan promptly left Dreamscape and started wondering the new, he let himself get ambushed a few times and even managed to find some gods willing to ve for the safety of a divine realm. He did not recruit all of them though, many of them, he killed as soon as they expressed their desire to be his ves if he took them in, his dream divinity indicating the falsehood in their words and exposing their true intentions to him.


    His neighbours were from differents, they were so arrogant they did not even limit ess to their realms, it cost them their realms when Yunan passed by and was threatened into joining or perishing, most of the gods were directly absorbed in order to stabilize a connection to their worlds, the rest were forced to sign extremely harsh contracts of eternal subservience and servitude. After the realm owners died, Yunan chose to attach their divine realms to his Dreamscape, thinking that they may work asmodities to be soldter on or given away as rewards to the good workers.


    Soon enough, he found himself at the gates of hell, the only ce where everyone is wee but no one is stupid enough to step foot inside, even the over-gods would face harsh restrictions and face some hardships 8f they got inside, if they tried to take over hell, its denizens will protect it, just like Dreamscape, except that the denizens of hell are tortured souls and corruption incarnated into devils and ghouls and other monstrosities. Satan, the current lord of the 7 hells was a rather decent god, he can be considered awful evil character, a god with the brains and cunning to match his status.


    Taking a step inside hell, Yunan found himself in an isted room, he was not wee to stroll around hell, something hemended Satan for recognizing as dangerous, but this time, Yunan was in need of allies and not in the mood to conquer all 7 hells, that was just asking for a medium to big headache.


    Soon enough Satan arrived alone, unarmed but armoured, a clever god like him already knew what this was about, deducing what this was made for and what thepetition was all about, reducing the number of useless gods and possibly limiting the number of gods and spreading their worship across the universe.


    "Heard about Ferdinand, is it my turn now?" Satan asked directly, he would rather not y around with the guy who can manipte any being if given enough time, he didn''t n to give Yunan the time to use Dreamscape against him. Fortunately, Yunan wasn''t here to bring any harm to Satan and his hells, not yet anyway. "Nope, i like you, we work together nicely and you are clever enough to make a good subordinate, I want an alliance, mutual defending, you get to buy items from us at 30% price, and you gain 20% more rewards from tasks we give, you can ask for our help to attack for you once per decade, and if we conquer any divine realms, you have the right to bid first if we decide to sell them, how about it".


    To Satan, this deal was too good to be true, he knew that Yunan''s followers were recruiting before and had seen the contracts himself, this was different, Yunan was giving him some really good terms, there was no catch to fear, this was Yunan he was dealing with, if he wanted to screw him over, he would have just captured him the moment his foot stepped inside the chamber, besides, Yunan was still mortal, he could leave this at will, meaning that he had no need to ask for alliances, therefore Satan gave in to temptation and agreed to the verbal contract.


    "Hephaestus will send someone with the paperwork, I also n to give the same conditions to some other gods, make sure to forget old enmities, in this we need to be on the same side or opposite sides, there is no middle ground, you can start attaching your realms to Dreamscape, once everyone is assembled, we are going to start working on the next step". After that Yunan stood up and walked out of the room and kept wondering in the region, taking the opportunity to digest what he consumed and linking Dreamscape to the news he had juste into contact with.


    Satan did not sit still, he immediately started giving out orders and preparing to work himself half to death, this alliance was an opportunity and he was not letting it go. Even if he had to be allied with the lord of light or the demons of the abyss, he would grit through it, the gains from working with Yunan were worth sharing a bed with all his enemies, sitting with them on the same table was nothing much.

 Chapter 410: followed

    Chapter 410: followed


    The area around Dreamscape was randomly assigned, just like all other realms, the creator god didn''t feel like giving Yunan all the good neighbours, even if they were allies he didn''t like being used, therefore, Yunan didn''t begrudge him that, he knew too well how much he had been using the gods around him, he was lucky they liked him enough to allow him to use them as he saw fit. Even Yunan didn''t know how he did that.


    As he walked around, Yunan met some rather interesting gods, most of them were foreign to him, some he fought and some he recruited, the weirdest one was a female goddess who followed him around as soon as sheid eyes on him, she didn''t help or hinder, she followed him as he conquered realms and enved bandits, all the while he pretended not to notice her meagre attempts at stealth.


    By the time a year had passed the female goddess had grown bold enough to walk side by side with Yunan and have some small bits of conversation now and then, as for the it had stabilized, thanks to some direction from Yunan and his allies, now including a trigger happy shiva, a jittery Hermes and a very mncholic lord of light, and this new mysterious goddess.


    Yunan''s alliance introduced the concept of trade, he opened one of his conquered realms as a market, a ce where anyone could trade, divinities were the most used currency but the faith coins given out by Yunan and his group were very popr, armours and weapons were close seconds, third ce was taken by extraction of foreign divine energy, mostly done by Fortuna through her link with Yunan. Othermodities made a killing as well, most of these were defensive items or formations, the rarestmodity was enved gods, these were very costly and were worth the price most of the time.


    Once the had stabilized and divine realm wars were about to go from random attacks to organized and strategically nned battles, Yunan introduced the concept of trading for realms, since a conquered realm could be split and sold to minimum size bits, Yunan was offering faith coins to purchase any realm that was on the market.


    With the stability of the forces on the new came the calm before the storm, alliances were forming, extortion, intimidation, temptation and all kinds of paths were taken to get any kind of leverage, winning wars required cannon fodder as well as non-aggression treaties, it required faith to replenish forces and restore defences. As the only supplier of faith, Yunan was having a hard time supplying the market, keeping his faith from reaching his enemies was the hardest part, simply because the resale value of faith was high, even if Yunan was selling faith near the point it would be too expensive, there were always some who could resell for a profit.


    To satisfy the market to the point he was the only dealer in faith, he started making Dreamscape open connections to all thes capable of supporting faith and linking them to Yunan''s dream divinity. The n is to use the dreams of the poption to introduce himself, and the idea of a god of efforts and dreams to them, that way he could link both domains and effectively use Dreamscape as the divine realm where one can collect all the faith.


    With the absence of all deities, it would be easier to exert his power over the people, he did not forget to create followings fordy luck Death and chaos, Hephaestus was not willing to get any more followers, he was after all a creator god in waiting, he would be taken away by his primordial when he was ready to leave this universe. It did not take long for new religions to form around efforts and dreams, the concept itself was very appealing to many species capable of supporting society, a god that rewards efforts by fulfilment of dreams, that kind of religious concept would spread like wildfire, who would refuse a god that would reward one for their efforts by giving them what they desire.


    The third-year since the imprisonment of the gods. The regr alliance meeting was taking ce, all the gods who were there, were those directly involved in the decision making or the execution of orders, all but one. She was the shy follower Yunan unknowingly picked up, the only thing on her mind seemed to be tailing Yunan around, and staying by his side, something that pushed all of Fortuna''s buttons, she was the only wife her hubby had left and she was going to keep it that way.


    The two can be heard arguing as the gods arrived at the meeting room in Dreamscape, the most secure ce, anything like spying tools or methods could not work, the energy of dreams had a way with distortion, unless in very close proximity, words, intent, magic and everything else will be distorted if one was not close enough.


    "I told you to stand no less than 5 steps away from my man, are you dumb or do you want to die so vehemently, if it was not for hubby letting you live, I would have skinned you thrice already!". "I stand where I want to, unless he, himself, asked me to step away I ain''t moving, get that through your brain you old obsessive hag"...


    The two bickered until the table was full and everyone was present, Yunan raised his hand and the room turned silent, Fortuna took her seat beside Yunan while the new girl stood 5 steps behind the man, it was not often one gets to see Yunan going all seriousness and stern face.


    "Shiva, I need you to start working on the neighbourhood of Hephaestus, once it is cleaned out you will start working on the avatars. I know they don''t show off their status but you have Death to guide your arms, no need to destroy them or their realms, just make them suffer casualties, also, take the mechs and the floating fortress, use as many resources as you need, and don''t forget to bring back everything when you retreat, even nuts and bolts." Shiva nodded and left the table, shiva has never been patient, since she got her mission, there was nothing else to do.

 Chapter 411: you knew?

    Chapter 411: you knew?


    "Satan, buddy, you have been cking off on me, seriously, the abyss? When did we ever n to go against them, if they harass you, just defend, we have overwhelming advantage when defending, as for your own expansion, this alliance will not be going to war like it is now for very long, that is why i need you to focus, your special power is temptation, then start tempting the gods to buy our stuff and only sell divinity to us, we need you this period, especially the first 10 years, we need to be the only trading partner, everyone sells to us and buys only from us, as for the abyss, if you really want to invoke your once in a decade right and i will go deal with them, and give you about 10 years worth of peace".


    Yunan''s eyes did not linger on Satan, he moved to the lord of light next "sir, with all due respect, we are at war, and your only job is to collect souls from conquered realms, we all know it''s not easy to convince them to shift allegiances. But we don''t need them to pray for us, we need cannon fodder, as long as they fight for us, they can choose the realm they wish to reside in, if they resist, send them to reincarnation, forget about purification and absolution, we are at war, sometimes the correct thing to do is to not do the right thing, please ept my apologies for pushing you like this, but if our enemies are one thought faster than us, we are already loosing".


    Next on the list was Death. "Old man, you are stepping outside of thefort zone, if you involve yourself any more, we will be breaching contract, therefore, just stay around and harvest the energy of death, if you can y snitch a bit more, that would be helpful, it would be more so if you admit that to the council, I would love to see how they react when they know you stand on my side, Apophis you need to return to Hosana, use the secret path we have and collect some chaotic energies, I would be happy if you can Syphon up to 3% from the chaos, we need that to upgrade our war mechs, also, it would be best if you can do that by next year, things will be very unpredictable at the time.


    "Hephaestus, you go back to Burkan, from there use the information we collected to build more dungeons across the universe, I want your dungeons on every by the end of the next 3 months, once they are all functional, I will tell you something that might make your primordial happy" the 5 gods each nodded at their turn and noted down their tasks, although they knew, each task was aplishing much more than they knew, they did not ask questions, there was no need to.


    "You may leave, report to me once every month, otherwise deal with it at your discretion, unless it is about the over-gods, inform me immediately". With that, the 6 gods left the table leaving behind only Yunan and the two females.


    "Luna my dear, we talked about this, let her be, I need you in my bed for a few months so go warm it up for me". With a surprising spring in her step, Luna almost floated to Yunan''s bedroom with her radiating smile outshining the sun. After she left he turned his back to the chair and the goddess standing behind him, he sighed deeply and said: "so you ascended against my orders, I like this form better by the way".


    There was an annoyance on the face female, her shy demeanour evaporated like it was never there " you knew? I changed this much, how did you know, I was careful, I did not make any mistakes, how could you tell, not even she noticed and she is a goddess, god damn it spit out, what did I do wrong, say it or I will beat you!". Yunan did not even flinch, he simply waved his hand and said: "go get the others, it''s not safe out there, all of you need a beating for not following orders, also tell them it''s going to be flogging". The goddess stomped her feet on her way out like a child and left Yunan behind to his thoughts, soon enough he was in bed and sleeping soundly and peacefully.


    Luna was beside him, fully dressed and fuming, her man wanted to use her as a body pillow instead of a wife, but she could not help but feel satisfied regardless, ever since he left home almost 3 years ago, Yunan had not slept, and for her to be his first choice, she would brag about it to her fellow wives for an eternity.


    This man had truly captured her heart, she was old, she had yed at love and rtionships many times, she knew gods and mortals alike, but none of them made her feel like this. This amount of satisfaction from being chosen as a body pillow was weird for her personality, she would have left him that moment if he were any other man, but she never could, in thest century, she had enough fun to pay back for her long boring life many times over, all thanks to this little boy, a bad kisser, a hopeless romantic and a very unpredictable man. He alone could stand and say that she would grovel under his feet for eternity, and she would brag about how only she could do that, to Luna, Yunan wasn''t just a lover, he was far more than that, he was an open adventure, one that she could tap into at any time, but somewhere along the line, she had lost control over the rted and now, the adventure did with her as it wanted, along the way, Luna had truly fallen in love.

 Chapter 412: stumbled upon

    Chapter 412: stumbled upon


    After a good resting sleep, Yunan woke up to find Luna still beside him, drool shining on her lips as she looked at him, she was so engrossed in her imagination that she did not notice the waking Yunan, knowing what was on her mind, Yunan did not have to hold back, she was his wife after all.


    Sometimeter the two were interrupted in their peaceful bath by a band of strangers, although Fortuna did not recognize them, she was not too tense, this was the restricted part of the pce hidden inside the little garden in Dreamscape, infiltration was near impossible but the odds were still there, she trusted in Yunan''s calm, and he was smirking at the moment.


    "So, you guys dared to disobey my orders, do you think that you could beat me now that you have ascended? how disappointing, well, look at you guys now, your divine forms look like shit, what were you thinking when you built them? God! if you did not teach me so much I would have face-palmed right now".


    The party had really changed, Mary no longer looked like a divine maiden, she looked more like the girl-next-door, a simple face andfortable clothes, Lucian was literally a wolf pup nestled in the arms of Mary, Fae exchanged her smoking hot body with something you couldn''t even notice in line up, her face was full of freckles and her hair was short and gave her the look of wandering escort of a sort. Balin looked exactly what you expect a nouveau rich smith would, a golden hammer and dragon skin apron, muscles where none should be and a 5 o''clock shadow, no beard in sight. Dustan looked as muscled as Balin, only taller than a horse and broader than a fat ox, he looked like a mash of human, dwarven and orcish features, his grin even uglier and scarier somehow.


    As for Bai, he had no presence, almost as if he didn''t exist, Yunan had to focus just to stay on him, his mind was barely registering the sly rogue, a bad thing to do, he also looked much prettier in his new body, if one did not ignore him, he looked as amiable and lovely as your best friend. Thest member Anne, she waspletely different, she looked like a ten-year-old girl, even the cruellest and most evil of beings would have to look at her with adoration, she was too adorable and cite that Yunan found himself speechless.


    Punishing these guys now would serve nothing, it was not like they would be any more reckless, the worst part of instability was already over, thankfully, they survived that somehow. That was not very important to Yunan, he would have bet on them surviving the arrival of the new anyway. The true problem was whates next, how could they survive the order and stability. People who are less stressed can notice more things, rationalize much better and focus easier, this would spell doom for the weak Debauchery party.


    "Damn it, you can recognise us even like this? We taught you too well, now we have to kill you" Balin waved his hammer and charged but was unable toplete 3 steps before he fell face-first to the floor, he didn''t even notice that Yunan just took away all the effort that was put into the charge rendering Balin nothing more than a stumbling mess.


    "Get naked and hop in, I have no interest in beating you guys up anymore, now that you already came, you will be put to use, until then, do nothing, if I don''t tell you to do something, don''t do anything, there are many different ways to get yourselves mired in deep shit, for now just sit and collect faith, that would be all, now let me cuddle my wife in peace".


    If anyone else saw this exchange, they would think that Yunan and Debauchery party were having a strained rtionship, a weakness in the divine forces of Yunan. The truth is that the charge and the scolding were nothing but greetings, even if Yunan beat the crap out of the 7 people, it would mean nothing more than him being d to see them.


    Once he saw the new bodies of the Debauchery party, he immediately realized what was their reason foring, he needed chess pieces that can move on their own when needed. Yunan had enough subordinates, he had also helpers in the four friendly avatars, but that was all, he had to micro-manage the whole operation and nitpick every detail, what Yunan needed were subordinate who can be trusted to act on their own with just a bit of the n and a hint about what is expected.


    Debauchery party had the necessary experience to act alone with proficiency, they also knew Yunan for all his life, they knew what to do to advance his ns without needing to even be in the same ne of existence, and among many other qualifications, Debauchery party was loyal to Yunan in a stupid way, to them, he is the only member who could climb ranks, from student to friend and equal, right now apetent leader, to them, he was their lucky charm, they probably loved him more than anything, and dying for his cause did not feel too bad.


    The disgruntled Debauchery party jumped inside the bathing pool and did their best to make Yunan not enjoy the feeling of being hugged by a goddess. They would not allow him to have just after he lectured them about getting caught, he did not even thank them for acting for the sess of his ns, he had the gal to enjoy being with his wife.


    The gathering continued for some time, Yunan and Luna enjoyed their cuddling as they listened to the tales of how Debauchery survived the chaos, abination of lying, stealing, killing and some heresy sprinkled over, it was fun to listen to them going through an adventure, it continued until Fae literally stumbled unto Yunan who was spreading his reputation, killing his way through some group or the other.

 Chapter 413: Nifty

    Chapter 413: Nifty


    As to be expected, the newly ascended Debauchery left to explore their new world, these bunch could never sit still whilst there is an adventure to be had, especially if all they had to do was look around the perimeter, it was safe, Yunan did spend 3 years killing gods to secure the immediate vicinity of Dreamscape and the newly conjoined realms.


    Meanwhile Yunan was sifting through intel about the council, they did not seem to be very anxious to join the fray for a divine realm, either they had made suitable arrangements or were still debating about their course of action, either way, Tasha was having some really bad time going through contacts and trying her best to find the way out of this prison.


    It was no longer secret to the gods that some god was able to expand his influence from inside the prison, it was obvious that somehow, someone could open a path back to the universe, unshackled by the rules of the. The council were frantically looking for this god of efforts and dreams, tasking Tasha with this mission after Yunan proved her words to be true.


    The council seemed to ignore the fact that a mortal like Yunan was present in the divine, and the loophole that would create, as a mortal, and holder of both divinity and a realm, Yunan was free to enter the divine, since his divine realm was located there, and he could return to the Hosana universe at anytime, they forgot to think about this when Yunan never left tye divine, and since Yunan only showed them the dream divinity, they didn''t associate him with the god of efforts and dreams.


    Yunan rubbed the bridge of his nose, he stood up suddenly and flew to where Tasha was located in thetest report, he did some old fashion tracking and found her a weekter, she was literally fuming from anger, her prophet, seer and oracle were arguing like hen, all this fuss about which direction the god of efforts and dreams was hiding.


    No god worth their salt would forget to or miss the chance to learn phase shift, it was extremely easy to use and very easy to sense, and that is why no god used it inbat, except for Yunan who found it amazingly useful, it was near-instant movement, it had unlimited range and could be used ad nauseam, its weakness of being easy to sense could be ovee by simple creative means, like making a show of divine power that would jam the radar of any god.


    Tasha''s rage exploded when she felt the phase shift near her, but when she saw who arrived, she calmed down, took a look at how easy Yunan''s demeanour was, then she shuddered. The three gods were still arguing about his whereabouts and that brought a smile to his face.


    The other gods surrounding Tasha froze when they saw Yunan and how he smiled, to them, he was a being they could only bow to, especially after killing Ferdinand, they chose wisely, none of them even dared to breathe loudly, some even smartly got the three bickering gods to shut up before either Tasha or Yunan or both felt the sudden need to have silence.


    "You here to kill me?" Tasha asked for she knew a battle was useless, "no, just want to chat a bit, the old know-your-enemy thing, I brought wine" with that Yunan took out a table, two chairs and a bottle ofva wine, Tasha dismissed her court, to her, a meeting between equals should not be in the presence of goons and lowly dogs.


    "You know, I really hate your council to Death, my life was happy, simple and fun until you guys had to interfere with me, just because of some game you are ying, now, I have to do all of this just to screw you over, putting you in a prison, hunting down every single one of you and your hired dogs, that would have been fine by me, except that now, I forced every deity to face the end of the universe prematurely. You really made me go through all the stops, oh how I will enjoy killing the lot of you to relieve the headache you caused me"


    To Tasha, Yunan was simply stating facts, the suppressed rage and fluctuating killing intent as he poured and talked stung her like a thousand needles in the brain, she could not even notice him using the dream divinity on her.


    "Well, it was not like we could just ignore you, you are an enigma, even the primordial of fate can not see your future, that is a red g, even if you had nothing to do with fate, we could not ignore the possibility that you were linked to fate in some weird way that would screw over our n, it''s just your luck".


    Yunan felt like he shouldugh, his luck was always his best ally, maybe it waspensation for the trouble it was brewing for him, but the smile looked too hideous for Tasha who did not know that Yunan was thinking.


    "What the hell is this wine, there is no alcohol in it!" Tasha took a swig before snapping at Yunan then taking another swig she withdrew her remark, "nifty" she said, taking multiple gulps and mouthfuls, her eyes dazed as she focused on the mouthfuls she was taking in, one after the another.


    "So, what brought you to me?" she asked once the novelty of ever-changing taste of theva wine wore off, the answer frightened her "I want you to help me kill the council, and you have my word that you can live until the culling, at least you will not die under my hand or my orders, how about it, you already lost the chance to consume fate, as for leaving this ce, its near impossible to leave".


    Tasha did not move a single muscle for what felt like years, the sheer arrogance Yunan had just shown her was just that strong. It would nevere from someone who had a shred of doubt that he would be able to execute his words.

 Chapter 414: A link

    Chapter 414: A link


    "You speak of treason to my universe, the lives of an uncountable number of life-forms hangs in the bnce, it all depends on our sess in the devouring of fate, you know this and still wish for me to follow you?". Tasha has switched off her killing intent, she no longer saw Yunan in the scope of an enemy or an ally, to her, this youngster was suddenly too big to be seen with such a narrow view.


    "You may have focused on consuming fate to help your universe through the culling, however, is the rest the same? Is everyone in the council focusing on ascension, to be primordials, just to save a universe that would be unable to hold them? We both know that your universe is dead, losing its fate in the culling is a death sentence, how long do you think it would take to wither and die without a fate, do you think the number of lives capable of surviving such chaos can be even half the poption? You are an over-god, don''t y the small tricks with me, even if I am still a mortal".


    Yunan exposited that Tasha and the council, who had already forsaken their universe could no longer im the moral high ground, even drawing upon the empathy of others was a bit too much, but he didn''t try to put all members of the council in the same ce, some like Tasha, may believe that their universe could still be saved. After she spoke, Yunan was nearly certain that she was deceived long ago, but she can not admit that anymore.


    Using the dream divinity helped him confirm that assumption, she still dreamt about her world, about a little alcove that she loved to spend her time in. Yunan also knew for a fact that she could no longer look back, this has gone too far. As one of the strongest gods in her universe, she was introduced to the n of consuming fate before the culling started and using that power to ensure the survival of their universe, unfortunately, the culling came too fast, and when the other universes noticed the absence of the main powerhouses, they decided to end the weak ones first.


    An invasion from a few hundred hostile powers nearly brought the universe to its end, when the victors came to im fate, a primordial called foul, how could the victors take away the fate when it was being consumed, it was then that the fate was removed from the universe and the over-gods were given their super important experiment, in return their universe would be allowed to survive the culling, it was simply a trap, there was no universe that could sustain itself without a fate, and for a new one to be born would take too long, the council felt that it was toote to back away, especially those who were cheated in the first ce, they had the most to lose.


    Tasha knew this too, she knew that her universe could never be saved, it could be remade but it could never be reborn, it was therefore imperative to gain the power of a primordial, there were no fights between the primordials, they had deals and insured peace through a multitude of ways, only with the power of primordials could the broken universe find a chance at being reborn.


    Yunan did not even feel like telling Tasha that consuming fate had nothing to do with ascension, why would the primordials, beings who only care about being worshipped and consuming dead and dying universes let anyone join their ranks, ascension was something that can not be given, one had to take it, from mortal to divine and from divine to primordial, there was nothing to be gifted about reaching a higher state of being.


    Yunan now looked at Tasha with pity. She was stuck, unable to retrace her step and fall back, nor was she able to advance, now she was in a cage, losing the tiny sliver of hope she had used to trick herself into following a path that was not hers. The same was true for the rest of the council, no matter how strong they get, they are walking an oath with no destination, a dead-end would be weed by many in the council, Tasha among them. If she were to fail, she would return home to die.


    "What I want for you is to not do anything, feel free to share the conditions of our deal and bringing other on it, my offer stands as long as you stop working for the council, feel free to wage your wars and conquer thends of this trade with who you fancy and whatever else you want, I do not need information or help, just stay out of the way, not too hard to do right?". Yunan choose to give Tasha some leeway, he truly hade here on a whim, but when he read her dreams, he found himself thinking about that field outside of Damascus, the one full of moonflowers, that made him feel a vague connection with Tasha, he would still kill her but not on a whim.


    There were tears in the eyes of Tasha, she clearly understood what Yunan was giving her, a chance to make a stand, even if she did nor save her universe nor would she ever avenge it, but she could stop walking deeper into the same endless swamp, still, she had been drowning for thousands of millions of years, salvation might look worse to her than death.


    The silence was all the answer Yunan needed, even if Tasha still served in the council, the seed of redemption was nted inside her, sooner orter she would do exactly what Yunan needed, disruption of the council, he wanted her to do nothing, but she could do much more than just sitting around if she thought it was her initiative.

 Chapter 415: Task out of boredom

    Chapter 415: Task out of boredom


    Yunan and Tasha did not stay silent for long. The two talked about some mundane things, like their favourite things to, where to sit and meditate, which style of fighting, types of magic and so on, the vibe between them was no longer of enemies but that of equals, both had lost the killing intent when they were faced with the simrities they shared, Yunan almost fell from his chair when he learned that Tasha also had a thing against getting drunk, that she too liked to chase the skirts of her wives, even though she was hopeless when it came to romanticism, she too managed to make some good memories with her beloved ones, it was for their sake she wanted to keep the universe alive, she wanted thend they stepped on to remember them for another eternity.


    The meeting ended when Death chose to crash the party just when the two were starting to smile at each other, this prompted the two to separate on the promise that he would take her to see his favourite spot when they got to meet next time.


    Death looked like he was about to kill someone, a state of being that old man Death felt to be exactly what he did not want his "friends" to see, Yunan had seen various stages of anger and anxiety in the repertoire of emotions Death disyed, and taking life was never part of it.


    "Wanna go on a mortal harvesting tour to calm down?" Asked Yunan as he gently dragged Death behind him, away from Tasha and her minions, "pretty please! I need to vent, you would think it would be very hard to offend me, my age and upation wouldn''t make it any easier to get me riled up". Death was hyperventting at the moment, everything that he stepped on or touched withered to dust momentster.


    "You sat down with a bored Debauchery, I can only say you brought it unto yourself, now calm down, I think I just made Tasha turn her back to the council, further cooperation is not out of the table, oh, lucky you, a band of roving marauding gods of war, how about we strip away their stuff before sending them to the river Styx?". Death was listening to Yunan ramble but suddenly stopped walking and jerked Yunan to halt by doing so.


    "Did you just say, the Tasha, may work for you? Forget my tantrum, tell me everything!" Yunan wasn''t sure what to focus on but he found a solution "how about I tell you the details as we terrorize these war gods?" And with a swing, he sent Death flying face-first into the group of warrior gods and immediately followed behind him. The two talked about this meeting with Tasha and what Yunan found out, he did not tell Death about the more personal things, only the gist of how things went.


    ording to Death, he took a rare moment of free time to try and gently harass the Debauchery party members as they sat useless and bored, unfortunately, he encountered fierce retribution and counter-attacks from the party, enough for him to just snap and leave before he killed all of them under a blind rage.


    The unfortunate party of gods of war fell like hay straws to a raging inferno, Death was venting something that ate at him from the inside, as for Yunan, he was not killing at all, just handing the victims to the jaws of Death. The oue was written in stone, and the spoils were not too terrible, 5 divine realms, some artefacts of divine nature and all the efforts and divinities Yunan could take.


    This prison had pushed the gods into a corner, these idle gods now did useful things with their time, these divine artefacts are part of such constructive actions, especially with the open trade hub Yunan provided, divine weapons and armour be rampant, many other types of enhancing gear were also finding their way to the market in exchange for faith.


    Those productive gods were in high demand, the rest have all found divine realms to settle down in and started consolidating their power, found allies and made no aggression pacts, as for those raiding parties, these became the target of all organizations, because even if they never harmed you, they may turn you into their next target at any moment, that was the way bandits did their work, they would stay away until they have enough strength to take over.


    Death took a chance to go mortal harvesting when Yunan "berated" his teachers for turning on the old man, quoting things about old age and infirmity of the mind and mostly theck of expertise, Death did not care enough, there was a veritable smrgsbord of souls to harvest, since all death gods were imprisoned, only the reapers were there to collect souls and shepherd them.


    Yunan let the old man have his fun before calling everyone back to the prison, letting his friends loose on the mortal realm all the time may or may not cause some damage, but it also meant that his secret would be exposed if only his friends were able to convert on a multiary scale, as for his meeting with Tasha, he thought it would best to help her reach the tipping point, therefore he had the creator introduce something very unusual.


    Debauchery was getting too bored, they had nothing to do so they were given their first task under Yunan, one that made them think they should not have been grumbling so much. They were split into 3 teams, Leader, loli Anne and Lucian were sent to worm their way into a production alliance, Bai and Balin were sent to a war-like alliance, Dustan and Fae were sent into a pacifist alliance, madepletely of love gods and whatever hedonist god did not like to kill people as they fondled each other.


    These tasks were by no means easy, they were not supposed to provide information, nor were they supposed to break them from the inside, no no, Yunan was not that kind of guy, he wanted his people to make these alliances actually functional and workable, he just wanted them to rely on his hub for everything, you know, the good side of monopoly.

 Chapter 416: Absolutely nothing

    Chapter 416: Absolutely nothing


    Be careful about what you wish for, this idiom is exactly what Debauchery members were hammering into their brains as they left the Dreamscape, heading out to find their targets and start their strenuous jobs. None of them was very happy, but they did notin too much, grumbling beneath their noses as they made their ns to screw Yunan over, as royally as possible.


    After the youngsters left, the old-timers stiffened, there was a very easy smile on Yunan, too easy for someone who pissed off those who knew how to hurt him. Still, no matter how it looked, either Yunan nor his teachers would, or could, stoop low enough to deal irreparable damages. This kind of rtionship has intrigued the older gods to no end, things like that could not be quantified with words like love or friendship, it went far beyond that, probably even further than "sacrifice and selflessness". If Yunan had to describe the rtionships he kept around, he would have called it symbiosis, mutual dependence, or in simple "friends with benefits".


    "We are making nice progress, but taking monopoly is going to get harder from here on out, therefore, you are to sit tight and cultivate, all of you need to get to certain standards before you are to take any other tasks, Luna baby, you need to be able to steal luck and lock probability in a location, it is optional to thisst one but if you can go for it, I need you to be able to steal luck from fate itself"


    Yunan turned to Apophis: "I want you to be capable of plunging a ce into chaos and as easily take the chaos away, the optional goal is being able to briefly plunge fate into chaos, just long enough to obscure it for any readers, Hephaestus, you work on your creation, I want you to replicate this, but I want it to only imprison gods that do not have the imprint of universe Hosana, the optional goal is to create a fateless replica of this universe that can be ovepped with it and take damage instead, feel free to work with the Creator on this project. As for you Death, I have no idea if you are allowed to join our universe in the culling, considering your rank and experience, so you should be able to rip divinity out of any god that ranks lower than you, the optional goal is being able to inflict an aura of death on an entire universe, the point is weakening said universe and not kill it."


    It took a moment for the words to sink in, they had been used to wait for Yunan to finish rying his thoughts so as toprehend the whole picture and therefore, the ramifications of his words did not hit them until he finished speaking, a collective "ha?" then after some ear cleaningter they burst into a roar "say that again! I dare you!".


    Holding his hand up to calm the four down he said with a confident smile "I know that I am actually asking you to be over-gods, or maybe even on a higher level of control, this is your reward for helping me so far, it would be remiss of me to let you advance at the pace of normal gods, therefore, for 100 years, you four can tap into my effort divinity and directly absorb energy from it, in return I will take away your efforts and convert them into strength for all of us, any objections?"


    Without waiting for a reply he opened his vessel and allowed the four to reach in and connect with his effort divinity. Death nodded and started talking as he reached in, "how can one lone divinity support all of us to the level of over-gods, let m  " his voice trailed, Luna gasped and Apophis fell to the floor and Hephaestus just stood there like a statue. "Sonnavabitch, how are you still mortal with that thing inside you" Death no longer held his gentlemanly demeanour, there was nothing to me here, a divinity that was on cosmic proportions whenpared to ordinary divinities, how else would you react when you see it.


    "It''s still growing" muttered Hephaestus in an unbelieving tone. That was true, the thing about effort is that it could never stop growing. Yunan now had dozens of divine realms under his thumbs, all connected to Dreamscape, and all of the realms pumped effort energy ceaselessly into Yunan, he was cultivating without even trying, growing in power just by existing. Then Luna said "with all our efforts, that thing is going to double in size, wait, oh, oh god, you are aiming to syphon the efforts of our primordials? Fuck it, I''m in". Without hesitating anymore she linked herself to the effort divinity and flew over to the little garden to start cultivating her powers.


    The other three were not too far behind, they did not even question Yunan, it was a deal they would not get even from their patron primordials, who in their right mind would decline and energy reserve that was, for all intents and purposes, endless.


    The Creator felt the urgency on the four gods and stood up from his little hammock, he found Yunan still at the table trying hard not tough, he too sat down and tasted some of the items on the table.


    "Look at them, so giddy and in a rush to please their master, for the life of me, I can not see how you did it, even I, the creator, can not do that, so, tell me, what is the next step for me, if it was not because your war with the council, I would have left this ce long ago.".


    "Nothing" answered Yunan, "you need to do absolutely nothing; if you feel like it, then go and take a walk around the, it has changed notably, just keep in mind not to tangle with the avatars, they may already have orders to stir the pot as well, if anything happens, remind them they still have to touch me, make sure to pivot everything back to me, a mere mortal they could not even take down if they wanted to, that should set them on the correct path, as for the council, I would rmend chatting with them for a bit, ask about how they are doing and how is the food, make them feel like you already won the bet, be confident and don''t get provoked, if they attack, just phase back here, it would do so much for me if you did, as long as you take no action, we win, for now"

 Chapter 417: heaven

    Chapter 417: heaven


    The days inside the prison passed by rtively fast, Yunan kept harassing the council where ever he could, forcing them to expend precious faith on futile attempts at warding him off, he was slowly turning into a nightmare that should be exterminated. Yunan, however, never crossed that line, he just teetered on the edge, just annoying enough to irritate but not enough to draw ire, especially as he continued to illude them.


    Finding Yunan was not as easy as camping outside Dreamscape, especially since Yunan loved to phase shift around like a child with a new toy, the council had no choice but to wait for them, the other choice was to storm into Dreamscape, it was doable for the over-gods, but the loss of manpower and faith would leave them too vulnerable to defend against the Avatars and the Creator.


    They would risk it only if they werepletely certain they would acquire Dreamscape and without a doubt kill Yunan, and neither was something they could guarantee, Dreamscape was a self-sufficient realm, it did not need its god to sustain itself, that and the nightmare creatures living inside of it, one could literally meet their worst nightmare while perusing Dreamscape.


    As for killing Yunan, so far, even fate failed to kill him, it was, therefore, more of a problem than taking over Dreamscape. The council was getting fed up but had nothing to do but try to shield themselves against Yunan while trying not to reveal too much of a weak side to the other major powers.


    When gods fought they used two types of powers, mana and faith, mana would regenerate as long as there was enough time to rest, faith, on the other hand, needed worship to be restored, it was a finite resource that no god dared to waste haphazardly, when Yunan attacked the council, he used his mana, while other gods could use mana too, defending against Yunan with mana was idiotic, he had carved that truth into the minds of the council. For some reason, they could not deal with his mana with ordinary mana and had to use their divinity to even stand a chance.


    Mana and faith are both forms of energy, faith was an amalgamation of many types, for example, dream energy, luck energy, love energy, effort energy and so forth, but mana was just mana, it had different types but it was easy to counter mana if one new its type. On the other hand, faith could only be countered by another faith of equal power, making it too precious to use when defending against mana attacks.


    Yunan was different for two reasons, Effort energy did not diminish by using it, it increased instead, and it was the perfect augment to any type or form of energy, his mana was also a mixture of all the elemental energies, thanks to the guidance from Hephaestus, this stable mixture made Yunan''s mana above the elemental mana, thus was not possible to counter by ordinary man, if you fuel it with effort, it was basically impossible to block without using faith.


    It was not an attrition war, it was a one-sided depletion of resources, Yunan was still selling faith currency like it was ordinary metal, his reserves were only growing with the artefacts and divinities of other gods, he was able to trade anything a god needed in this prison as well as some luxuries.


    Why would anyone bring things that were considered luxuries even to gods to a war zone, the answer is why not? If it was in the market, there will be someone to buy it, that was how things went, all Yunan had to do was provide it and wait for someone to buy it, if no one did, he gave it away as a payment for a quest, and then there will definitely be gods wanting more after they witness the effects.


    Yunan was satisfied with his progress with the council, therefore, he shifted his sights onto the avatars. They should be feeling protected due to their identities andck of any action against them, it was time to shake them a bit, just enough to make them dread walking out in the light, but not enough to let them join hands with the council.


    His harassment came in the form of attacks on their realms, he would force his way inside then just explode with all his mana, dealing more shock than damage and then lead the chasing party into a wild goose chase, one that ends with their members perishing under mysterious circumstances.


    Yunan did not attack the avatars themselves, he went instead for the proverbial limbs, as long as any gods were affiliated with an avatar, they would suffer some peril or the other, this made the avatars even more wary of a true fight, Yunan could just let them deal with the natural defences of Dreamscape, blindside them and destroy whatever it is they left behind, with enough time to return and help Dreamscape kill them, add all that to the fact that Yunan did nothing more than annoyingly use his mana, the avatars would just suck it up and wait for Yunan to make a mistake.


    For the most part, things have be monotonous and stable in the prison, gods were finally epting the fact that they would never leave this ce, they took to a new life of struggle for survival. Most have begun working to create a haven, effecting the in some spectacr ways. Farms and animal husbandry spread, forests of special fruit trees, vast nes filled with treasured herbs, factories stood tall and imposing, cities were built and automatons worked endlessly, it was a ce made by the gods. A paradise of sorts.


    If one forgot about the asional territory war and the appropriation of goods and items, the prison was more of heaven then the divine realms, with many creation gods even daring to spread their creation to roam thisnd built by the gods.


    Amidst all this, Yunan slowly made himself a household name, a trader of great capacity, a warlord of great might and a leader with terrifying insight and nning, a mortal who made the gods treat him with respect earned, no one in the prison would dare to say that Yunan was a lesser being, not even his enemies.

 Chapter 418: Fusion

    Chapter 418: Fusion


    Things in paradise went almost as nned by Yunan, not many deviations and nothing that would result in anything too damaging, he thought he should return home to take a look at how things were going.


    With the dungeon gone and the world plunged back in mana, change was bound to strike the, and since the lock on mana usage was lifted to some extent, anyone could now use mana, making the possibility of another mana infection a very high possibility.


    When he stepped into the private home he was stunned by the change, the once-private garden has now be a full, a moon was already forming in the heavens above, seas and continents filled with all kinds of life, it was prosperous beyond belief.


    The mansion was weirdly aged and empty, therefore, Yunan took himself through the established portal to the bright pce, when he walked out of the royal chambers, he understood what happened. Time in the prison was different, the five years on the were 500 in Burkan.


    The pce was filled with peopleing and going, no one paid him any attention, children passed underfoot and skittled away giggling about, this ce was no longer a pce, it was now a museum, from what he heard, it was a monument and temple for the god-king and his descendants.


    Scanning the capital, he found that his wives near the cliff edge, some sort of a shrine with lines of worshipers, extending back to the city. He turned his invisibility on then flew to the cliff, extending the range of his scan to cover most of the continent.


    The mana corruption seemed to be held at bay at a certain level, just enough to power up formations and natural locations that would function as recements for the dungeon. Since mana has returned to the world, almost everyone was born with the ability to manipte it.


    Thanks to the system established by the cooperation of the church, the guild and the god-king, there was no ss system, even the meritocracy waster abolished to amodate the new circumstances, for once, the whole continent stood together to survive.


    The monsters were concentrated in pockets, each with a certain power level ranging from high, medium, low, or mediocre, each pocket was used to train the corresponding adventurers, and was guarded by people who were near divinity.


    Although the gains from the killing of the monsters were no longer as lucrative nor as rewarding, the guild took upon itself to guard the numbers of monsters so as to provide for the whole continent, ever since the dungeon disappeared one day, a fear sprung in the residents of Burkan, that one day the monsters would vanish too.


    umting this much information from the scan, Yunan knew that the return of the gods will be a weed event, but that was something he would not care about, Burkan no longer meant much to him, if it was not for his family still residing in it, he would never return here again, he also thought the time difference was a mercy of sort, for him and his wives, time turned everything to sand, even emotions.


    The shrine was thest ce any traces of the god-king could be found, mainly his queens and pets, as for the royal bloodline, it has been more than 10 generations and since none of them had seen Yunan, or he, them, they did not matter to him, he hoped that his 500 year absence would have dulled his existence in the eyes of those who truly loved him.


    The shrine was warded with too many formations and shields, some even cut off faith, something that probably came from Fortuna when she got her chance to leave the prison, therefore, other than knowing where they were, Yunan could not glean any more information.


    Inside the shrine he found a sealed location, it looked like the inner sanctum of a pagoda, people worshipped at the door and no one dared toe closer than 30 paces. Undoing his invisibility, Yunan walked to the door in the shrine and used the giant rings to knock. No one moved, even the guards stood still, no one was allowed anywhere within 5 meters from the door, not even the cleaners or the guards, even the royals had to use their mana to ask for permission to visit the inner sanctum.


    The door opened up mere momentster, clearly, an automated response to Yunan himself, once Yunan stepped in the door closed behind him to reveal a small pocket dimension. As for the outside, some bells began to chime in loud melodious tones as they rang themselves to announce the retune of the god-king.


    Inside the small pocket dimension, Yunan could now clearly feel those present, his wives, two children and 3 pets, along with some others who were disciples or bloodline holders. The disciples were there to learn the art of mitigating the mana corruption and control it, both Drogon and Ignis had done well in that regard.


    The bloodline holders were the offspring of Cat and Kaeser, there were many of them listening to the teachings of the cat Sapphira, who seemed to have gotten much use from the golden library he left behind. Drogon was the first to arrive at the entrance of the pocket dimension, it directly merged into Yunan''s body and roamed inside, followed by Ignis who did the same, the two then fused themselves with his bloodline bing a part of him for eternity, even their souls were forcibly merged with his own.


    "They were dying", said a sweet aged voice to Yunan who could not believe this turn of events, "You heartlessly left them here to die, I would have done the same if I could, s, you left me to die too". Reina looked majestic now, nine ming red tails, an aura of a queen and the body of a goddess, 500 years only gave her more charm and sophistication.

 Chapter 419: Ascension

    Chapter 419: Ascension


    "I did not know" said Yunan apologetically as he took Reina in his embrace, she then led him to the heart of the pocket dimension, there he found the rest of his wives, each sitting with a golden book in hand, they seemed to be trying hard to ignore his presence, but he could tell they missed him so much it hurt, if even Kitty did not tackle him the moment he got in, things were pretty much bad for him.


    Without wait or permission, he teleported everyone to the baths in the old home, he gave them a smiling "this is the only way I can get you to forgive me" before giving each a hug and a fewforting words. Truth be told, even Yunan was tearing up, their overflowing emotions affected him through their connection, and he could not help but respond in kind, this kind of sincerity cultivated over a period of a hundred years, this was not something fragile.


    Words were exchanged, some coquettish violence, some feelings and bodily fluids, what else do you expect me to tell you about a man and his wives, private things should remain private.


    Yunan, Reina and Ophelia talked at length about the 500 years, while the other 3 chose to each hold onto a body part of Yunan and cuddle themselves to sleep.


    ording to Reina, after the gods left, the old ones also took to hiding, most of them chose to hide and cultivate, so as to not disturb the world, anyone who lived long enough to see 4 generations, would also leave the public view, most of these people were hiding on the awakened ind, while the awakened have been brought to the continent, the only reason they could stay was the amount of knowledge they had to depart to the continent.


    The bloodlines of the dragon and phoenix have been passed down, but as true dragon and phoenix, Drogon and Ignis suffered from the bite of mana corruption more than anything else, they made sure to leave the art of mana purification behind, as well as pass enough knowledge about the bloodlines to keep them from watering down and dying out, mainly consuming creatures with said bloodlines.


    Even as the two suffered endlessly, they did not find it in them to disobey their master''s orders, so they waited patiently for Yunan to return, using that time to find out ways to force him into never leaving them behind, they seeded.


    As for the wives, Cat and Kaeser, they each took some disciples to teach, keeping the golden library a secret, only taking out copies of small sections of the library, and teaching those arts, making sure that only the trustworthy schrs holding the bloodlines had ess to the library, and from there, spent their time spreading the knowledge about true power and finally ascension to the world.


    The wives were not so happy to hear about how short of a time Yunan had spent to gain another potential wife, especially one that came from another universe, but that was all forgotten when he offered to take them on a tour of the prison.


    After Yunan spent time educating his children and providing them with some insights, he took his wives and returned to the prison, where he showed them around the ce and introduced a few of his newest allies in the, then he sent them back a few dayster, after all, this was the next phase for Yunan, not them, and they had understood that very well.


    After the wives left, Yunan took the initiative to start cultivating too, he was preparing to ascend into godhood, he feared that if he waited any longer, his ascension would be impossible, his divinity has grown to be the size of aary system, and since no one knew what would happen if he waited for it to grow any longer, he decided it was time to ascend, the back door to the was established and allowed ess to and fro the Hosana universe, it was thus needless for Yunan to still be a mortal any longer.


    Leaving Dreamscape just in case something went wrong, he found a quiet spot near a teau filled with flowers and sat down to start meditating, once he was ready, he sent his intent to his effort divinity, he could not help but gasp when he felt how utterly massive it was, his consciousness felt like it would never reach the core of the divinity, that would not stop him, not him, not after all he went through to get to this point.


    He sent his intent hurtling into the divinity, it felt like wading through concrete, the resistance was substantial, but Yunan persisted, he took his time and pushed in, inch by inch, meter by meter until suddenly there was no restriction, Yunan found himself standing before a mirror copy of him, they were at the core of the effort divinity, both staring at each other.


    "Why do you wish to ascend? as a mortal, you are strong enough, what is there for you in eternal life?" said the copy "I can give you whatever you seek, for I am Effort, and whatever you see as impossible is a mere thought away". The mirror copy turned out to be the effort divinity Yunan had painstakingly cultivated.


    "There is nothing you can give me that I can not get on my own, whether I am mortal or god, it makes no difference, what I seek is another dungeon to conquer, and that is something you can never give me, only I can prowl dungeons, you, you are part of me, you are the proof of my path, whether I seed or not, is entirely,pletely and ultimately, up to me."


    Yunan then stretched his hand for a handshake "together, you and me, as one, we have a path to walk, your will is a mirror of mine,e, we have so little time".


    The mirror copy smiled and shook hands with Yunan, then melted into a stream of energy that ran through Yunan like his blood, it was not painful when it started demolishing him to dust motes, it felt only like he just found a whole new world, he was the world, thews of the universe owed to his will, the river Styx halted at his feet asking for permission to carry on, and fate yfully flowed around him.

 Chapter 420: One

    Chapter 420: One


    A strange state of being, bing one with the world, not part of it, but truly being the world itself, that state of existence is mystical, to say the least, iprehensible to mortal minds, and while Yunan was still trying to parse his new enlightening state of being, the prison turned upside down.


    Chaos sprung out like a flood when every god on the felt the ascension of Yunan, some ran aimlessly, some slumped on the ground trembling with fear and most just knelt and begged whoever it was to spare their lives, even the creator was rmed at the idea of someone so great he could project his aura to be everywhere.


    The really strong ones took some time to understand that there was no maliciousness in the aura surrounding them, those who knew Yunan did not know what to do, while the rest just waited patiently, beings of this calibre had no interest of gods as lowly as they were, they were bound to leave once they satisfy their curiosity.


    Meanwhile, Yunan slowly shifted his mind back to reality, and used the power of his divinity to create his body anew, although it would be madepletely from faith, he still incorporated his bloodlines, he even had the audacity to take a bit from each of the forces that bowed down to him, he attached a bit ofw to his fingertips, he sshed a drop from the Styx on his mana core and took a snippet of fate to meld into his sea of consciousness.


    He took his mortal look, but still incorporated his bloodlines into his body, his skin was made of tiny imperceptible dragon scales, to rece the outer skin cells, he used the phoenix mes to make his body a spiritual one, allowing him all the advantages of intangible spirits.


    As Yunan slowly withdrew himself into his new body, the chaos throughout the prison died down, by the time he fully contained himself, the rest of the gods had started looking for what that supreme entity thought so intriguing to pass by the and made itself known in such a fashion.


    No one knew that event was a mere ascension, usually, when gods ascended, they would only cast their minds into their immediate surroundings, nothing as epassing as what they felt no, it was usually a private matter, one would know about it when the event ended, usually through the faith, as a newborn god would greedily absorb as much of it as possible, causing other gods to find out.


    As for Yunan, he had no need to absorb faith, his effort divinity had too much power stored in it, that he had no need to absorb faith to stabilise his new body and consciousness, the effort divinity supplied that power willingly, and thanks to the familiarity and mutual eptance that Yunan had with his divinity, he immediately stabilised and got using his body as if it was just natural.


    When Yunan returned to Dreamscape, he found five pissed off gods, one was wanting to know what in the bloody hells did Yunan do, the other four were angry at being interrupted while they were cultivating their power, it took them a few silent moments to realise the changes in Yunan, especially the absence of mortality, something that has been their way to remember that Yunan was mortal.


    Stepping closer cautiously, they all took their time to ascertain that this person before them was truly Yunan, but when they finally confirmed that they grabbed Yunan and sat him down, demanding an exnation, why did he suddenly ascend, he could have said something before going about doing it, if he was attacked during his initial moments, he would have lost more than just his life and divinity.


    "Well, I just felt like it was time to do so, that, and I was afraid of what would happen if I dyed any longer, my divinity is already beyond anything that is known about divinities, I feared it would be near impossible to ascend if I was overpowered by my divinity. Turns out I was right, the effort did resist me, it even tried to sway me from advancing, I still believe that if I waited any longer, I would have no chance to ascend using effort, if it let me ascend at all".


    "A curious thing indeed, who would have that divinities grew conscious when they grew strong enough, well that matters not, can we still link ourselves back to it?"


    "Linking back to effort is not the problem here, what if we link to it and find our divinities under its sway".


    "Worse is, if it could influence us, we can be extensions of it, that would be worse than being dead, being trapped inside our bodies, watching as a foreign will takes over for us".


    "No need for all the theories, yes, you can still link to the effort, and no, it is not dangerous by any means, you can be certain of that unless I will it, no one will be harmed by using the power of my effort"


    Without wasting time, Yunan relinked his followers to his divinity, allowing them to resume their training and him to look deeper into the kind of connection that he formed with his divinity, even the creator wanted to analyse that connection, it was not every day that one could link to a divinity that can cause such phenomena.


    The link that the effort divinity was very different from any other divinity. Yunan had shared the divinity of dreams before and neither Satan nor Shiva reported such an incredible and strange situation. With Yunan now being a deity, he understood the fundamental difference between the effort and the dream divinities, one was dependant on outside circumstances, the other depended on the user himself.

 Chapter 421: Gaze

    Chapter 421: Gaze


    To illustrate the way that the effort divinity worked when aiding cultivation, let me use a dumbbell weight as an analogy, a magical dumbbell that has two functions: first if it would set its weight to the maximum its user can lift. if the user lifts it, the user is immediately able to double the maximum weight they can lift.


    In simpler terms, let''s say that person A can only carry a weight of one kilogram before his body breaks down. when person A lifts the magical dumbbell, he will increase his capability immediately, he will be capable of lifting two kilograms, after one single lift, the magical dumbbell would then weigh two kilograms and if person A lifts it again, he would be capable of lifting four kilograms, the dumbbell would increase its weight to four kilograms and the cycle continues.


    That is how cultivating divine power felt when one was linked to the effort divinity. And that was why the four gods got angry at Yunan for cutting off their link. When working with the divinity of effort, the gain was proportional to how much youmit, the more you pour in, the more you gain in return.


    This type of training aid was very suitable for rushed power-ups, just like the ones Yunan and his friends required, and that made the effort divinity all the more valuable. Deciding to take things a bit faster due to the time dtion, he linked Debauchery party to the effort divinity as well, giving them an easier time with their assignments.


    While he was meditating on the effort divinity, Yunan understood why he had never heard of a god who imed the domain of effort, the road there was not easy, to grow a divinity from the ordinary size to that of a was no easy feat, and that was the minimum size that is required to allow ascension, the effort divinity was a path with no end, either you are good enough to push long enough to take step after step, or you fall midway and never reach even godhood.


    Calling effort tiresome was an understatement, it demanded that one had enough will to go through anything ande out alive. if one evencked that much will, they were unworthy of control over the domain of effort. As for Yunan, he had his will tempered through facing death daily, he even had the gall to face off against the main god of death in this universe when he was no more than an ant to the god, but he still swung his de as if he would never sumb, not to death, never to death.


    As he let his consciousness drown in the domain of effort to power up his control over it, he sent a message to all his subordinates in the prison, "10 years, if you are not ready by then, then be left behind" and just like that, his presence vanished from the universe, he was now fully focused on his divinity, the one that could be unmatched in all of creation. Not even the primordial of the limitless wouldpare when effort grew beyond the scope of what was identified as primordial.


    Yunan had already understood why the effort domain was the strongest, as long as creation existed, the effort would exist, there was nothing to do to stop it from being born, unlike limitless, all, null and the rest of the basic concepts, effort itself was not born as part of the process of creation, it was a product of it, an offspring of creation.


    If the primordials feared something that was on a level higher than creation, Yunan had nothing to fear, for the act of killing him from this moment forward, one would have to terminate all creation, a feat that should not be possible for anything that had an existence. Now, this is what being overpowered means, no matter how strong his opponent is, they have no chance but to suffer him until he is capable of killing them.


    When the message Yunan sent arrived with the link to the effort divinity, not one subordinate dared to take it easy, ten years was no longer than a blink of an eye to most gods, but to those blessed with the aid of the divinity of effort, ten years was an eternity of struggle, one could grow to heights they would have thought impossible before, and unbeknownst to them, they will push Yunan forward in his path as much as they pushed themselves.


    Not only will Yunan receive all the efforts of his subordinates to power up, but he would also gain ess to enlightenment and insight into their domains, he might not have the same delicate control because hecked the rted divinity, yet that did not mean anything, from now on, as long as any god used the effort divinity to advance even one step, Yunan would benefit just as much, he would grow able to control as many domains as he had subordinate gods.


    This, in turn, meant as long as Yunan was attacked by any god who used any domain from Yunan''s arsenal, Yunan would be nearly immune to their powers, meaning that Yunan would never be damaged by any god who had less control than him in the same domain. Think to be an unkible immortal was overpowered, well guess again, being an unkible immortal who is immune or resistant to almost everything, including the power of death, well now you have a truly overpowering character.


    Far above universe Hosana, an eye suddenly open in the void; where myriad universes roamed, each rotating like small moons around an entity or another, those entities shuddered and shrieked, the eye that looked down on them all was bigger than the void they upied, they feared it, hated it and desired it, yet all they could do was cower in fear and shiver like scared mice, they were mighty beings, but not mighty enough.


    The eye scanned the great entities with little interest, it was awakened by a threat it felt, it scanned the universes and their owners, it found nothing, itbed every thread of fate across all universes, still nothing, it then closed in again, as if wondering how long has it since itst awakened, maybe that was a dream? Was it infected by the little mice and their meagre existence? Heh, it found the idea funny, it has been too long since anything funny happened under the gaze of the giant eye.

 Chapter 422: Awake

    Chapter 422: Awake


    10 years passed like an eternity to Yunan, if his mind was not anchored with the help of the dream divinity, he may have stayed focused inside his Effort divinity forever, he liked it there, it was warm and weing, strangely, it felt like home.


    As the years passed, the subordinate gods under Yunan wasted no time, either cultivating or spreading their faith, some time was allocated to working on the overarching n, turn every worthy god into an ally and force everyone else to either surrender or join the council and the avatars.


    Those two powers were still at odds, but they could not help but join hands to stand against the alliance Yunan made. Faith was abundant and they traded for it, divinity shards, enlightenment, special types of energy, weapons and armour as well as many more things. The two factions were running low on things to offer Yunan and his trading partners in return for faith, they even resorted to seeling out other members, in thest year especially, the alliance Yunan made had no interest in anything that was not over-god level, other than information, they bought nothing that they already had.


    With the help of the work team of Hephaestus, all divinity shards were analysed and integrated into a database ready for any alliance member, the hows, ins and outs of making divine items were all figured out, and the alliance was now capable of creating better things, as for special energy, it was given directly to Yunan to absorb, the aides would find Yunan''s still body and open those containers of special energy to let him inhale and digest them.


    It was determined by Death that special energies required too much time and resources, therefore instead of wasting anything on such lengthy and barely useful process, they should just give the containers to Yunan and let him consume them, his consume ability allowed him to take in anything and making it part of him, even if Yunan gained nothing from these special energies, he would be resistant or immune to them, and since no other god in this universe except a certain someone, no one could use these energies, there was no point in making any moves regarding them.


    The desperation for faith started in the council, being able to once again use faith, the council members went into a frenzy, offering anything they got their hands on, even their types of energy for sale just to get another coin made of faith, the avatars were a bitte in the race, only sensing the iing disaster as the council members started gaining strength rapidly.


    This fervent movement helped empty the coffers of both factions, even leading to many defections to Yunan''s side, the only side who was benefiting from the race to power by the factions who should have been a pir of stability in Universe Hosana. Especially when both sides took to selling out secrets for faith, they were happy, to know that as long s they gotten detailed reports about any god, they could gain faith for it, no matter how lowly the god was, the catch is, they got paid much more for important secrets than daily reports, but even the legs of a mosquito had meat, as the eastern idiom says.


    When Yunan woke up, ten years had passed in the prison, equivalent to a Millenium in the rest of the universe, he found the creator sitting beside him, looking like apletely new person, he was ready, the two nodded at each other, and Yunan stood up, his joints did not crack nor did his muscles tense, as if he only sat there just a few moments ago, but his aura was something else, although he managed to contain it once he stood up, he felt the enormous eye gazing at him, it looked, then closed back again, he wanted to ask the creator about it, but then did not.


    A being so strong that the creation god did not feel a thing had just taken a look at him, sniggered and then looked away, either unimpressed or finding something interesting, either way, such being was no threat, to Yunan anyone who was capable of killing you but did not even think about was not a threat, those kinds of beings were so strong, they would look at him like an ant climbing a stalk of grass on a windy day, trying to hold on for dear life, to those beings, life and death of those beneath them were not impactful enough, not enough to waste a neuron or two to think about it.


    As soon as he stretched his limbs, Death, Fortuna, Apophis and Hephaestus made their presence known, they looked visibly different, each of their domains visible around them, a degree of control that would grant them much more than what Yunan wanted them to achieve, he nodded his head to them, acknowledging the amount of effort they made to progress this far, he greeted them and made some small talk, finally dismissing the five by saying: "we will have our meetingter on today, I will take a moment to look around at how things went all this long".


    The had now be something else, it pulsed with divine power, everything from grains of dirt to the most towering flora and fauna, everything was infected with divine power, the effect of having so many gods letting their aura''s go, there was nothing to be harmed if they did, not in this anyway. As he looked around, he found the collection of so much divine knowledge, he also found an entire medium-sized realm filled to the brim with everything a god could ask for, from materials to faith to weapons and armour, a veritable treasury of the gods,stly he found the room where data was collected and information about the two opposing factions were stored.


    He sent word to Debauchery to return home, he knew they were already sessful when he saw the godly treasury, that made things easy for him, now all he had to do was just face off against the council and the avatars, he was not capable of killing them all in a short time, not alone, but he had a host of gods that have trained under the effect of the effort divinity as well as the other abundant resources only he could provide, Yunan estimated that if he did not care about casualties, the workers under Hephaestus alone would be sufficient to take on half of the council members, but that was too much of a price, especially when the culling was still looming over them like the sword of Damocles.

 Chapter 423: GIVE IT TO ME

    Chapter 423: GIVE IT TO ME


    "The time hase," said Yunan to those sitting on his table, they were the major yers in the alliance, those who had the true authority, and he was the one to lead them. Although the meeting room seemed full, it was small, just enough to seat the three dozen gods, give or take a few.


    Most of these were first-timers, they knew who he was, but couldn''t see through him, some wanted to issue challenges, some wanted to watch a good show by instigation and whispering taunts, the rest knew not to poke a bear, even if it looked docile and wless.


    "War ising, call it glory, horror, evil and whatever else you may think it is, we are fighting it and no one can prevent this war, it is not about supremacy nor about control, it is about survival for us, for our families, our worshippers and our entire universe. In this room, gods from all corners of the universe stand side by side, that is the true purpose for this prison, and we have achieved it as best as possible".


    Yunan then ushered to Death asking him to exin a few points just to bring these gods up to date.


    "You should all know who I am, Death, the guardian of the council, well, that is bullcrap, I am not a guardian, I am their monitor, they are here to perform a mission on behalf of beings you shall know about soon enough, these councilmen and women are not from this universe, neither am I, we are the same as the creator, all came from other universes and we''re chosen by these mighty entities, you may also have heard about avatars, those are native gods who are chosen by the great beings."


    Death did not look at the faces and sat silent for a moment, letting the gravity of the situation sink in, just before anyone could say anything, he continued, his voice steady and blocking anyone from interrupting him.


    "These great and mighty beings chose the universes that provide them with faith through a battle between newly matured universes, it is called the culling, and each culling witnesses the end of many universes, thankfully, this universe is still juvenile and we have some time left, this prison was created to deal with the council and hinder their mission orpletely stop it, prepare for the culling by eliminating all those who may cause harm to this universe"


    "As for those great beings, well, they seem to enjoy the situation and have decided to not interfere, the council must aplish their goals, the avatars must spread the faith of their overlords, and this kid, he gets to ruin everything as best as he could.''''


    Death then leaned back quietly in his chair and left the details to his fellows to exin, eventually, the hall calmed down, the gods got all the information they needed to have and let the rest be. When the restlessness settled, Yunan continued his talk.


    "All of you here are burdened with the weight of an entire universe, if you have no power to fight, then you have the power to build, if you have neither, then you can help with organisation, there are ces that need every single one of you, the universe needs you, if you, your subordinates, or anyone rted to you wish to step out from under this burden then please leave us immediately, our mission is too big to carry the weight of others, therefore you have one week, chose to stay or leave, there will be no consequences for this instance and this one only."


    Yunan stood up soon after, he left the gods to debate among themselves, they would provide more desirable results if he and his retinue were not around, of course, Debauchery, unknown to most gods, were ying the part of instigators, pulling on any string that was required to get as many gods to stick with the alliance.


    Yunan was ready to disband the alliance after the war was over, it would exist in name only. When every living god in the universe had killed to achieve a modicum of serenity, they will be easier to control, especially if they thought they were free, even the grand speech from the meeting was just another rope to tie them with, the ego of a god would not allow them to ept the idea of being manipted, they would ept being forced to do something, because strength signified authority, maniption was beyond gods, it was tactics to be used on mortals.


    It did not take long before Leader came with the news, not a single god chose to leave, some asked for different assignments and positions to better suit their skills rather than divinity, the report was followed by a very bitter "well yed".


    "You guys know the drill by now, keep busy, I think it is time to go poke the council out of their holes". Those were the words he left behind before he left Dreamscape, he was sure that the council and the avatars had spies infiltrate his domain in thest ten years, he would deal with those when the timees, for now, he wanted both factions to prepare forrge scale war.


    His footsteps took him to where the council had erected their domain, ording to the information obtained, this was the heart of the influence of the council of over-gods. Tasha was floating gently above ground, she seemed to be waiting for him, these ten years should have been enough to sway her, so he only smiled at her and stood before her, he was standing on the ground, and she floated before him, looking down on him, through her scowl he could see mncholy and heartbreak.


    "Took you long enough,'''' she said, "are the terms still valid?" She slowly got down to ground level, looking Yunan in the eye this time "you were right, it is dead, a husk, nothing but dirt and rubble, you win, as long as you don''t kill me, I will do anything you ask for, it no longer matters, you hold the key to my revenge, give me my revenge and whatever you ask for is yours".

 Chapter 424: Catastrophe Inbound

    Chapter 424: Catastrophe Inbound


    "The terms have changed a bit since then, I have grown ambitious, but the gist of it is still the same, therefore, there is no need to worry" Yunan extended his hand and a ball of light condensed and floated above his palm, surprisingly Tasha sped her hand on Yunan''s without as much as a hint of consideration, she didn''t even know what the terms were, but she was ready to move on, even if it was as a puppet who can only look out whilst her soul was shackled.


    "Generous terms!" The surprise in Tasha overwhelmed her previous mncholy and rage, she didn''t expect Yunan to give her a new life altogether, her gamble paid off more than she thought was possible.


    "Since you have agreed to the terms, go to Dreamscape, use it and the link I just gave you to start absorbing faith from this universe, as per the contract, you will renounce your old divinity and take on a new one, I rmend something pure, like assistance or secrets for example, but you can choose whatever you feel like, henceforth, you''re my ally and will assist me in my future endeavours, for now, go get yourself sorted, the wars of this universe are not your problem anymore, even if you feel like helping, I refuse".


    Tasha then turned around and opened a path for Yunan to enter the divine realm of the council of over-gods "this is to satisfy my own defiance, I have a big grudge to quench, at least let me have this little bit". She asked with a hint of pleading.


    Yunan nodded and walked through, this wasn''t nned but since when did Yunan ever shy away from anything, just because he had no ns? he could make a few thousand ns with a single thought, therefore, he went ahead with it, after he entered, Tasha blinked her eyes, wondering if she had just caused a catastrophe, then she grinned and made her way to Dreamscape, her new life was ready for her, as for her old life, it no longer mattered anymore.


    rms rang across the divine realm, Yunan slowly walked to the heart of the realm, not forgetting to consume anything that caught his sight, from energy to souls, if he felt good about it, he consumed it, even bits of the divine realm were consumed, as some gods came to face the intruder, chaos hit the realm. Gods were screaming and running some dying and some escaping, Yunan wasn''t here to start a war. He was just swatting away some buzzing flies.


    The council members rose from their table in rm, all of their forms changed from normal men and women to their true forms, beasts, monstrosities, chimeras, and nebulous clouds seething with energy, furious at the thought of being invaded, who dared encroach on them, gods with untold power on a mission from the primordials, maybe the avatars have gone mad and decided to end things in one fell swoop, now that Yunan was nning to wage war, they should stand side by side, not allow Yunan to gain any respite, they should stop him while he was still preparing for war, otherwise, they might be stuck on this forever.


    This line of thought was only in the minds of the council, they were too proud and too blind to understand what was going on, even with their spies and their massive knowledge, somehow, they could not understand why their ns have been breaking apart for no apparent reason. It was fascinating to Tasha to watch the council trade me between themselves when they faced setback after setback, even when Yunan was nowhere to be found and not even directing his minions, he still came up as the winner.


    From her new vantage point, Tasha could see the truth of the council, she could see why Yunan was so sure he could defeat them, and why was it that even as a mortal, they couldn''t deal with him, the problem was the council itself, a bunch of nitwits, arguing without end, each n they make is to fix a n that went awry, always stuck on what they could do to fix a situation rather than solve it, even as their overarching n was slowly going down the drain, they somehow managed to ignore it and focus on potential threats, making mistakes that only caused the original n to be even more unreachable with each mess up.


    For ten years, Tasha resented herself for being part of the council, how could she demean herself to be like this, this council reeked of greed and delusion, how could she fall so low, she must have blindfolded herself somewhere along the line, to think that she even had felt loyalty for them. She resented Yunan even more for opening the veil on her eyes, now that she could see, she couldn''t help but know that he was correct, reaching the same conclusions he reached without even meeting these people.


    If Yunan could see it, then she could too, and since she was part of the whole thing, she gleaned much more information than Yunan, but she wouldn''t tell him, he didn''t need to know all that to bring her the revenge she now sought.


    Tasha realised she was lucky, if Yunan had decided to chat and met another from the council, she may have been still blind and not noticing she was on the chopping board waiting for her death, if he did note to chat that day, today she may not have had her chance at a new life.


    When the council members surrounded Yunan and finally got him to stop moving, he did not even bring out his aura to contend with their power, he did not need to, suffering the pressure was a form of training for his effort divinity, not that he even needed his aura to repel the hostility targeted at him, he could handle that much, and it would also strike some doubt in their hearts about his true power.

 Chapter 425: Subdued

    Chapter 425: Subdued


    "Came to die, brat?" Asked a rather gigantic looking lion with a human head, a cheap imitation of the sphinx, all the look but none of the nobility. To his words, Yunan just shaved off his mane with his soul bound divine sword. He waved his hand the sword returned to his side, he smiled properly and used his most diplomatic voice: " I came here to dere war, anyone; who is not the head of the council or the person who can speak for the entire council, will be killed, I have no time to talk to inferiors".


    The sphinx imitation roared andunched a fury of attacks at Yunan who stood there and took them, sneakily consuming some of the energy in them to better understand it, the barrage of attacks died out a minuteter with Yunan now looking like a metallic dragonborn, although his armour was no longer sufficient for defending, Yunan needed to hide his defences with something like an armour, he needed the council to underestimate him and think he was relying on tools.


    In reality, Yunan had adapted to the attack moments after it started, the energy he digested guided his own mana on how to defend and avoid damage, he changed his form and used his armour to make it seem as if he had to put some effort into defending.


    Once the sphinx imitation was spent, the attacks stopped, revealing the uninjured Yunan, there was a gasp and then a sword shed. The human head separated from the lion body, and before it could exim it was consumed by Yunan, not a trace left of it. Yunan made a burping sound, before taking his armour off.


    "So, who here can speak for the council and who among you has a death wish?". This was Yunan telling them that annihting the whole council may be out of reach, but he can certainly kill a few and escape with his life and that his war deration had some unknown purpose behind it, he was merely enacting his n out, it was strategic for him to make them overthink all of his actions, he was going to do the same to the avatars, he just chose the council because of their tendency to underestimate others.


    "The head of the council is in secluded meditation, I can speak for him and the council, please ry your message or get to fighting, we don''t have the patience to do both" the calm voice indicated the position and strength of the speaker, he too liked to speak in a way to make the listener believe he was stating facts, except that he always put others underneath him in terms of power or nobility, making his words sound only arrogant and filled with envy.


    "Just wanted to let you know, I am going for the avatars beforeing for you, I n to subdue them and bring them here as part of my force, therefore, please wash your necks, my de ising for each and every one of you, just to be fair, if you wish to hinder me a bit, feel free to kill the avatars for me, or maybe ally with them. That would help me a lot, that is all."


    After saying his piece, Yunan pushed his way through the gods surrounding him, not forgetting to consume some of the ambient energy surrounding those who he touched and pushed away. He had learned early on to not show off his power, intimidating others with your leaking energy was only valid on weaker opponents, the ones who are equally strong or even stronger can use that bit of leaking energy to utterly decimate you.


    Leaving the divine realm of the council, Yunan went to the avatars and did the same, making sure to emphasize that he was going to use the subdued power of one side on the other, both sides knew that a scheme was already in motion, but they did not know what Yunan would do, he was crazy enough to make all the gods prisoners, what else won''t he dare to do?.


    To their dismay, Yunan usually did not lie, or exaggerate, if he said he would subdue one side to deal with the other, he was going to do it, and the only way to stop him was to due the same thing, subdue or enved each other, they could have united, but neither the over-gods nor the avatars were prepared to risk betrayal from within their own ranks.


    Since Yunan was nning to use something on them, then they can destroy it, as it stood now, neither Yunan, nor the other two factions could kill each other outright, they had to weaken one side or absorbed a faction, Yunan was out of the question because Dreamscape was literally and where nightmares dwell, thus he could just turtle inside and let them dry out as he shipped at them slowly but surely.


    Since that only left one other faction to be absorbed, both the over-gods and the avatars turned to each other and started a full-scale war, meanwhile, Yunan was slowly converting their divine realms, making them empower his forces instead of their owners.


    The entire reason for this deration of war was to sneakily nt a seed inside each realm and hide that with his wanton destruction and killing, the seed contained some of the essence of Dreamscape, these seeds would grow in power by absorbing the dream energy of the gods upying the realm, and as they grew, they would infect the realm with dream energy, merging the realm with Dreamscape and finally giving Yunan control over the realms.


    Once both realms were under his control, he could simply teleport members of the council to the realm of the avatars and vice-versa, effective making his words true, each side would think that they were being infiltrated, even if they decided to stop fighting, he could use the dream energy to influence their moods and direct their thoughts, effectively subduing both and forcing them to deal with each other.


    Yunan waited patiently for years to enact this strategy, he never used it before so that no one can predict it or think of a counter, as for them discovering the dream energy inside their realms, none of them had ever been to Dreamscape or survived attacks from Yunan while he was using the dream divinity.

 Chapter 426: End

    Chapter 426: End


    With Yunan''s help, it took less than a year for the avatars and the council to decimate each other, leaving behind only the main gods, their numbers only maintained by their immense power, s, such expenditure was not sustainable, the drain on both sides was massive, coupled with the fact that Yunan stopped all supplies of faith, a year was already too long to reach the stalemate, finally, Yunan decided to show the cards in his hand and end the war once and for all.


    He immediately took control of the divine realms and fused them into Dreamscape, effectively imprisoning the two forces and forcing them into a corner, using the most powerful nightmare creatures in Dreamscape to mount a siege.


    He visited the avatars first, they were given a two-choice ultimatum given to them, submit or die.


    It went as follows: Yunan first stopped the siege warfare just long enough to show himself, a representative of the avatars left the crude fortification made by the gods, as they tried to survive long enough to know what has just happened.


    "Submit to me, sign a soul contract with me, and live, refuse and perish, as you can already tell, offending your masters is of little consequence, they won''t aid failures like you who failed to even survive a small civil war". Yunan rubbed the salt on the already festering wounds, he didn''t try to be diplomatic, what he was offering was their lives for their servitude, the cruellest of all the things Yunan could have offered, but the situation asked for such extreme behaviour.


    "The contents of the contract are simple, you will swear loyalty to me, that you will follow all my orders and work to preserve and improve all that is mine, you will live and die for me, in exchange, I will preserve your lives today and make sure you don''t go wanting, your status as avatars will be revoked, but if your primordials wish to keep your services, I have no objection, as long as my orders are priority number one, the other choice is death".


    Most avatars surrendered, some choose to fight to the death, and die they did, the rest all epted the contract, strangely, none of the primordials renounced any of their avatars, some even took to using them to ask questions or send messages to Yunan.


    The destruction of the council was much more eventful, the army of nightmares held the over-gods down, when Yunan arrived with his army of gods, the stench of despair filled the area. To their credit, the over-gods were no slouches, they fought for their lives with matchless ferocity. For once, there was no need to argue endlessly to reach a consensus, because the only choice they had left is dying with a fight or dying without a fight, thus, they chose to resist as best as they could.


    Even if Yunan thought their final resolve was impressive, he would never allow them to live, there may have been people who were in the same position as Tasha, s, their luck was not as good as hers, and he didn''t want to even think about sorting them out, for they have received his invitation more than ten years ago, Tasha had shared his message, even if she was unwilling to ept it herself at the time, anyone could have taken the liberty to approach his faction in order to join.


    Since no one took his invitation, Yunan was not going to pull back his punches, all excuses would be moot when it was time for war.


    Yunan went all out for the first time since he ascended, his spells were amplified to the point of absurdity, a small field of mes turned the ground into roiling mess of hell mes, an ice spear froze three gods who were in the vicinity of its trajectory, the actual target turned into a shower of ice particles at impact, Yunan ended up causing more damage in friendly fire than to his targets.


    Seeing things going this way, he ordered everyone to step back and went into a melee fight, he had no idea how much damage he could do, and there would never be another chance to fight at full power in the near future.


    The dozen over-gods still alive attacked all at once, and Yunan countered with his soul de, it went through weapons, spells and body parts as if cutting through water, hardly any resistance, councilmen and women were definitely powerful, the attacks thatnded dealt considerable damage to Yunan, but those he could retaliate against were either severely injured or outright absorbed through the soul bound de.


    Swipe, cut, stab, poke, flick, parry, stab, swipe, block, dodge, cut, stab, absorb. That was what could be found Yunan''s mind, he used all his mental capacity to sort all the data ande up with simple actions, each action was made the exact moment it was needed, at the moment, the overwhelming power of a dozen over-gods gave Yunan no space to add spells into calction, not until he halved their numbers was he capable of shifting mental capacity to other things, for example, things like noticing that he couldn''t sustainably continue to fight with the frightening injuries he had taken.


    Feeling satisfaction from familiarity with his limits, Yunan pulled back and left his army to deal with the leftover over-gods, he did not leave the battlefield, instead he worked as support to buff his army and heal them, he let his natural healing take care of his injuries, once he was fully healed, he would dive again into battle, either using spells or weapons, this fightsted for three days, with only the council head and his second inmand left standing, the fighting gradually came to a lull, the damage sustained by both parties was terrible, a price too heavy by any recount.


    Feeling like there was no way out from this ursed universe, the two looked at each other and detonated their divinities.


    The explosion was enough to cover an entire tenth of Dreamscape, wiping out many of its residents, including a number of gods who were unable to resist the st wave, even under the protection of many forcefields, some gods could not resist and they too exploded, when the whole ordeal was done, only a third of the gods that resided in universe Hosana was still alive.

 Chapter 427: New Heaven

    Chapter 427: New Heaven


    "We won!" Eximed some god in the army, as if he could not believe that they had survived a war with beings older than their universe, cheers followed and praises for Yunan filled every mouth and took the lion''s share of every conversation.


    As the gods celebrated, Yunan opened Dreamscape to the prison, allowing the gods who stayed inside for all this while, to finally have a look at the of the gods, veritable heaven, now that only one faction ruled the ce, the suddenly seemed to be thrumming with life force.


    Sometimeter, Yunan sat down with the creator and the two talked for nearly a week before they allowed anyone toe close. Their conversation was one that happened between allies who lost theirmon enemy.


    "So, now that you, won, what do you n to do with my universe?". The creator was looking sharpers than ever, this was by no means a friendly talk, this was an opportunity to dere intentions and them maybe work out something that is in line with the interest of all parties.


    "Nothing", said Yunan as he downed his cup "this universe will now follow its natural evolution, I will no longer interfere after I set up a few rules to keep this universe prosperous". Giving the creator a knowing look he continued "do you n to sit around and watch or do you have some other things to do? I always felt that a inside a rift made so little sense".


    There was a slight twitch in the face of the creator, he really was starting to hate this brat, even if his insight was remarkable, he should not unt his ability so in-your-face, this brat was an anomaly, in all his years and from all the oddities and weird things he knew about, Yunan was the oddest of them all.


    "So you want out? It can be arranged, assuming you have the strength  " he was interrupted by Yunan "I don''t want out, I want a bridge to hop into other universes, my mission to screw up everything is not over yet, the primordials are still out thereughing at my shenanigans". There was obvious aggression in Yunan''s tone and not just a hint of it.


    "I don''t want to know, as long as you have no intention to destroy my universe, then you can do whatever you feel like" waved te creator, he truly did not like knowing things that might bring him danger.


    The two talked about a great many things, mostly about what to expect when leaving the universe and intruding upon others, how to tread in the void and such things, most of this information waspiled by the creator during hisst walk, and Yunan absorbed all of it greedily.


    "Right, I never asked, what did you think I made that for?" the creator asked towards the end of their week-long conversation, Yunan was really good at picking on small clues, he thought that since he had spent some time with Yunan, the brat should have picked a thing or two.


    "At first, I thought you wanted to start a new universe, but then, Death told me about the council and some other things, at the time I thought you were looking to make yourself a base to defend fate inside, but now I know for certain, the time flow gave it away, you wanted this ce to be a tform for invaders , you nned it to be what holds the worst of the culling giving time for the universe to fight back, if even Death did not pick on the timepression, then it should have been used to hold something temporarily, I assumed you knew that the over-gods would fail at consuming fate, leaving the universe a bit fragile, vulnerable to invasion, thus the was to give the universe a chance to fight back by holding the invaders on the, a great war tactic".


    The creator nodded slightly "well, not entirely true, I also wanted it to be a springboard to help the local gods invade other universes, but since you came around, things have changed, I suppose, we should find another use for it before you depart, that way it won''t be wasted".


    "Agreed" responded Yunan, "maybe we should restore its time and make it true heaven, currently it houses enough realms to restart most divine kingdoms, Dreamscape is going with me, so there is no need to fear the loss of control, we make so that all gods are to reside in it, other than training and spreading faith, all gods are to be on the all the time, that way when new gods ascend, they can find a ce ready for them, we can also forget about many conflicts due to all gods being on the same side".


    The creator listened intently and took a moment to think it through, the changes Yunan asked for were not particrly hard or took very long to do, so he agreed. "Fine, since you helped my first universe, I''ll give you at least that much, you can hammer out the details with your friends, it is they who will reside in there, no go on, I need some time with myself". Yunan promptly left, leaving the creator toying with fate between his finger, he suddenly looked up and as if answering some question, he said with confidence "you''ll see!"


    Yunan returned to his friends, the party seemed to have yet to stop, many gods were having as much fun as they could, for a moment Yunan though that they would neverugh again if they stopped now, he shook his head and found the four friends sitting in an open field away from the hubbub and whispering something to each other, as soon as Yunan arrived they turned to wee him.


    "I got you a to live in, now is the time to start makingws", Luna dropped a few tears when she heard those words, the rest sighed too. "You guys are no fun at all," said Yunan, "we can party after we get all the work out of the way, I promise it won''t take long, I will even take everyone back to the private dimension to have fun, that way you can be sure there will be no work for a very long time".

 Chapter 428: Bathing

    Chapter 428: Bathing


    It was decided that day that the prison shall be under the supervision of Fortuna and Hephaestus, the two would be the leaders of the faction after Yunan leaves, all god must reside in the new heaven, all gods of the same domain will be sharing amon divine realm, each domain will be under the leadership of the god with the most control.


    If any god refused to hand over leadership to a god who was superior in control will be executed, all gods who refuse to reside in heaven will be executed, barring training and the asional spreading of the faith.


    All conflicts must be brought to a civil court presided over by Hephaestus and Fortuna, any violence inside the new heaven will be cause for execution, for gods who prospered on fighting and war, they were allowed to fight under certain rules and in specified locations.


    The leaders of the divine realms shall be named after the names of their domains, that way, they can gather faith for everyone in the realm and not individually, any religion found to be dedicated to a named god will be abolished and the offending god will be executed.


    Other rules that promoted unity and peaceful coexistence were inforced as well, Yunan wanted his universe of birth to stay strong andst for a long while, even if the price he had to pay was being a dictator, it was not oo bad, besides, he had been promoting meritocracy for so long, it would be impossible to break these rules after the next generation of gods, those who grew up under a certain regime, even if it was hell, they would prefer to continue living with what they already know, that applied for both gods and men, even if something like a revolution came about, Yunan was sure that his rules would be reinstated not long after, freedom to act as one wishes does not matter when someone stronger is free to restrict that freedom.


    If all people were truly free, then anarchy would rule thend, but if something like "freedom ends where the rights of others begin", was imposed, then the order will be much easier to achieve. Yunan was using this as his basis, he was only making sure that the gods took just enough liberties to not step out of line.


    Still, Yunan felt that turning this into a true prison for gods was a bad decision, he wanted the universe to be free from the gods so that mortals can find it in them to look beyond the sky, if one day mortals made it to this, they would have deserved to meet the gods.


    After establishing these rules and letting everyone know about them, there was some dissent, it was quelled when Yunan said that all those who witnessed the war were given one hundred years of faith spreadinging up, everyone immediately knew what faith spreading meant. It was a time where they could go to the mortal world to enjoy it and show off some power, spreading faith did not require gods to even exist, people will always find something to have faith in, showing them gods was just a way to do it faster.


    Back at the private dimension, the family had gathered once again, drinks flowed like rivers and food was as abundant as air, all kinds of delicacies and luxuries from the mortal world were spread everywhere the family went, the ce was positively glittering like a jewel from all the precious things strewn all over it.


    The bath was expanded to be ten times bigger, filled with a sort of special solution developed by Ophelia who spent her time studying medicine and the alchemy of life toe up with all kinds of cures and balms, all based around theva wine and aided with the cleansing stone.


    Inside the bath one could hear people sighing and moaning from theforting effects of the solution, dubbed as lover touch by someone, one had no choice but to rx and forget the stresses of life when bathing in this solution.


    It has been a while since the war had ended, Yunan was positively incensed with his teachers and their new looks, one day he just rebuilt their bodies to look like they used to, he told them he liked them better that way, they were more honest to themselves.


    "Ha, this is luxury, who would have known that a bath could get this good", said a certain elf, she too floated on the surface like the rest, thick honey-like liquid washing over her nakedness. "I could stay here for eternity", she continued as she bumped into someone.


    "That is that, then, let me lop off your head before you get killed by others then, to think my student would force his rules on me, I am both proud and furious, anyway where did the brat go? I thought he was here to have some fun".


    "Who knows, probably shagging his harem like a proper husband, what do you need him for?". "Nothing much, I just wanted to ask if he will take us along", there was a depressed sighing from Mary, "things are going to get boring without him around".


    "You think we will meet him again? To think that little brat we picked up just the other day is seriously going to leave outside, somewhere we can not even reach with this power" Lucian was poked for saying that in such a defeated manner. He was told to just listen to the optimists: "if we get to that power level, we can go find him, that brat will be so happy he might impregnate us all"ughter rang in the bathhouse as the unprincipled bunch kept throwing jokes at each other.


    They were having their deserved fun after working so hard for a thousand years, it was that long in the universe, even if it was only ten in the prison, a thousand years it was by their reckoning.

 Chapter 429: Prophecy unveiled

    Chapter 429: Prophecy unveiled


    While the teachers were having their deserved holiday, Yunan was in the bedroom, taking his time to talk sweet nothings to his wives, it has been very long since they have been together, and as a proper husband, Yunan would never miss the chance to pamper his wives when he had the time and ability to do so.


    "Do we have to?", Sarrah was not very happy, Yunan had just told them they were to ascend before the next one hundred years ended, she thought it was a bit too short, she was the mortal queen with a god for a husband and not just any god, her husband was the god that subdued the rest of the gods to follow his orders.


    Of course, she still wanted to enjoy that status for a few thousand more years toe, her body has just reached true female maturity, she still did not have enough of it yet, her husband who should have been enjoying it all this while was gone on some mission. The rest of the girls though the same as well, and all of them tried to kiss and cuddle their way out of ascension for a bit more.


    Yunan could do nothing but entertain his wives for a few years, he was not in a hurry, there was enough time to be had, and his travellingpanions were still not ready, therefore a decade or two of wife pleasing was not all that bad, was it.


    Although Yunan had agreed to take it slowly, he had to exin himself to them. "Darling, I know how you think", he pulled Lili to sit on hisp, "I have every intention of running away with a new wife who is actually a goddess, but since this is going to be just an escapade, I need you all to be alive when Ie back and don''t even suggest I bring her in, it won''t be an escapade that way".


    "Okay", said Lili as she pummeled him with all she got " go on and cheat on us as long as you wish, but when youe back, you will be a ve for ten thousand years, got it?" she said through clenched teeth.


    "Yes, I will, as many years as you want, just let me off now, alright? You know men need to cheat at least once in life right? ouch, ouch, not the face, not the face". The mood turned yfull soon enough and stayed like that for a few years.


    It was now clear that Yunan could not be kept in this universe, he was too big of a fish in this little pond, him urging them to ascend was in the vain that they may grow strong enough and find him, he did not want to wait till he finished his adventure, how great would he feel if he woke up one day to find himself surrounded by those he loved, all of them equals to him, that way he would never leave anyone behind.


    Yunan had thought it through and leaving this universe was the next step he should take, to protect the home he built here, he had to start the culling earlier, then with the adversity, he would conquer those universes, turning himself into a primordial, and then face the being that looked at him with bemusement.


    This way, he can forcefully stomp the entirety of existence under the soles of his feet, effectively raising himself and loved ones above danger, only then he could live happily ever after, with eternity as the only measurement of time that mattered.


    Maybe unlike many other protagonists, Yunan''s motives were not pure, he was selfishly projecting his will onto the world, he has started equating more power with more safety, he also stated equating his rise to supreme power with the only method to protect his loved ones.


    In his heart, Yunan knew he had what it takes to survive the culling, he also knew the primordials could not be bothered with him, that left only insider threats, and those were also nil, especially since he was the strongest being in his universe, however, maybe it was when the council first tried to kill him using fate and him receiving that prophecy, his path had changed.


    Yunan was probably aware of all the above, but he still had to turn both eyes blind and stuff his ears with cotton, he did want to continue the path, and if lying to himself and loved ones could allow that, then he would do it. This was the subconscious reasoning going inside Yunan''s soul.


    One night, Yunan opened his eyes, the snippet of fate in his sea of consciousness was acting out, to him it felt like it was rummaging deeper and deeper, trying to find something, and it did, the prophecy was etched in the deepest depths of Yunan''s mind, once it was in touch with the bit of fate, the etching glowed gently, revealing to Yunan the prophecy he looked for all those years ago.


    "The fateless shall touch the fabric of creation, the fateless shall be reborn, and only for the fateless shall the great rivers bend and halt. Upon rebirth the Styx shall wash the feet, the rivers ofw shall serve at the tips of the fingers, the grand river of fate shall cleanse the soul, fateless no more, the reborn shall stand above the gods, one with creation, equal to the power that is beyond".


    Yunan studied the unfamiliar etchings, they were written in anguage that was beyond time, it flowed like water, it felt like even time was part of thisnguage, it had no words or sound tomunicate it, it would flow between souls to exchange information.


    After studying the etchings, Yunan turned his attention to the prophecy trying to decipher its meanings, he understood that it was about him, he already has fulfilled one-third of it, and two-thirds were still hanging, he wondered what would happen to the prophecy if he renounced his divinity and then died, he chuckled at the thought, as if he would renounce what he built from nothing, not a chance, none what-so-ever.

 Chapter 430: For old times sake

    Chapter 430: For old times sake


    "Why do I have toe to pick you up, your wives are already giving me the death re, enough people hate me as it is, I have no need for more" Death felt like he was being set up and pranked out of the few friendships he made. The day to leave hade, too fast for everyone''s liking, but it still came nheless.


    Let''s return to a few months before, the following happened back at the new heaven.


    "The gods have started returning already, only a few are left out there the coalitions have been set up and each divine realm is taking shape as we speak, most unaffiliated gods have signed up either under me or Fortuna, Tasha has finished her tasks and is ready for further orders, she chose the divinity of secrets, and has reached her previous level of control presently".


    Hephaestus gave hisst report, soon he would be the lord of heaven alongside Fortuna and he would be the one asking for reports, thisst one was one of the shortest he ever gave to Yunan and probably the most impactful on a personal level.


    Yunan nodded and gave Hephaestus a hug, he then left the old man and found Tasha, for some reason, when she renounced her divinity, her appearance changed, she no longer looked as demonic as before, her true physical body has shown its true look to Yunan; who saw her for the first time in almost a century, she looked to be from a fair folk, a strange race that gave off the feeling that one was watching a butterfly, grace and serenity were her clothes and the winds were her friends, stunning to behold.


    "What would you think if I told you that I am leaving this universe and that you will be going to be mypanion in my conquest, we shall roam the void and slowly carve a portion of it to be my property, how about it?". To answer Yunan''s question, Tasha bowed her head and vowed to herself, just loud enough for him to hear, "wherever master goes, I shall follow, be it to a flowery field or a battlefield, I vow to dedicate my all to the master", she was about to kneel when Yunan held her by the shoulder. "Your sentiment is enough, besides, if you insist on calling me master, I may get tempted to take you in".


    The two shared a smile before Yunan told Tasha to finish her preparations by the end of the year, he wanted to start a new year in a new ce.


    Yunan returned home to his wives, each of them was sitting and getting used to her divinity, Kaeser and Catelyn were there as well, Yunan had triggered their ascension himself a few days ago, he manually found their true divinity and fed it until they ascended without his help, although it sounds like hard work, it was nothing fancy, the truly hard work was turning the mechs into items strong enough to be used in divine wars.


    For some reason, everyone around him practically nagged him to death to upgrade the weapons of mass destruction, he was told that having tools to use would save lots of time if he was nning to jumpstart the culling. He could not refute the reasoning, it would make his life much easier if he could just let his mech march instead of him to destroy the weaker gods.


    Home, it was so peaceful and serene, Yunan really thought he might hesitate to continue with his journey, but his resolve was just that firm, he decided to go visit Death, cuddling was out of the question, and he had no patience to suffer his teachers for some reason.


    " since your mission has beenpleted, how about you follow me out there, I could use your help if you are up for it, having you by my side will make things far easier, how about it? Wanna partner up?". Death shook his head, he had a bit of regret in his eyes, even his mood seemed to be a bit low.


    "Sorry about that, at most I can escort you on my out, my primordial is calling me back, afraid he will lose me to you, can''t say I fault him, raising me took a very long time, but as promised, I''ll be around to help the other three out if anyone invaded". Death then plopped a poison lotus fruit in his mouth muttering about how much he will miss the tastes of this little things.


    Yunan offered to give him a vat of poisonva wine and some fermentation stone but Death declined, something about how it will break his heart, even more, when his primordial destroys it, ording to the null, it was stupid for the representatives of death and decay to have things they like or were emotional, Death had never hated corporate policy as he did this day.


    Yunan left Death to gorge himself and entered Burkan, his target was The dungeon, it has been re-established after the war was ended and divine realms were no longer restricted, he wanted to take a walk inside for the sake of old days, it was here that he truly grew, from a brat into a god, into a man, and most importantly, he grew to be a one-man army.


    Without much effort, he unfurled his wings and slowly floated a few inches above the ground, he hid his aura and advanced ording to the mental map he had made so long ago, he sted away at anything that stood in his way, he took the time to pass through every ce that marked an event in his life, from the pleasure houses on the early floors, to the restaurant of old Roe, the hanging pce in the fortieth floor, the forest of the silver mice, the frozennd of the Yuki, the 80th floor trading post, and then the 100th floor, each of these ces had left a mark in him as much as he left his marks on them.

 Chapter 431: SCALE

    Chapter 431: SCALE


    Leaving the dungeon, Yunan took a look at the heart of the Hosana universe, Fate was slowly shifting, flow upon flow interweaving and winding about.


    Inside his sea of consciousness, the fragment of Fate squirmed a little, linking Yunan to Fate, he looked inside it, only fog and clouds existed inside, it made Yunan smile, Fate was no longer written, in this universe, Destiny had no grasp on anyone.


    Yunan beat his wings to arrive a few momentster at the new heaven, he chose to say very few words as goodbye, giving hugs and sayingforting words, before standing with Tasha and Death away from the family he had made along the way, he waved onest time and left a few words as Death brought the two of them along.


    "Come find me, don''t make me wait for too long"


    Leaving those words behind was him letting his sentiments loosen a little bit, he would be so happy if his family came to find him, he would prove that things were not so lonely at the summit of power.


    When he opened his eyes, a tear dropped from the corner, and before him, was a sight that he deemed to be thend he must conquer next.


    Death didn''t say anything before he too left to meet his Primordial, Yunan and Tasha looked for the first time at the void, universes were scattered like stars, some were clustered, some were loose and some were alone, the clustered ones were undergoing a culling, the loose ones were still maturing, the lonely ones must have been failures.


    From this scale, the void looked to be endless, but Yunan knew otherwise, there was no such thing as infinity, everything must have a limit.


    "So, where do we go from here, I find it a bit hard to believe, the scale of everything is just...wrong!" Tasha was looking everywhere, fair as a butterfly, a butterfly with no wind to support her or flowers to perch on.


    "Find the nearest universe and feed on it, start from there, I suppose. scale is subjective to how you view it, to us the universes are enormous, to the Primordials, they are probably no bigger than dust motes, look over there, that is why they get to look down on us, because they are so fat, a universe is not enough to fill between their teeth".


    Tasha looked at where Yunan pointed, she took a moment to understand what she was looking at, and then she looked more, her breathing shorter each time, not that she was actually breathing, but the heaving chest made the undting action nheless.


    What Yunan pointed at could only be described as a behemoth, it was too big for any other words, scale no longer applied to it, among the sea of stars, it existed as if to ridicule creation.


    We are going to be fighting those? The thought scared Tasha out of her wits, she almost felt her soul drifting away from her body, just in time, a hand gently but firmly held her shoulder, bringing her back to reality, as if tofort her, the words hit her ears in a very invigorating voice.


    "They are weaker than you think, those big blobs of fat are not the things to fear, my mission is something else,e now, we have so many universes to invade".


    Without much dy, the two flew hand in hand to intercept the nearest universe, leaving behind them a ce they nned to never return to. When they finished their mission, their conquest, they would be too strong for such a fragile little universe, maybe even the void would not hold them.


    On their way, both Yunan and Tasha exchanged their enlightenment about the void and the universes within, The power of thews was what Yunan talked about most, his insights in them were still shallow, but having thews at his fingertips, he could keep understanding them without hinder. As long as he was willing to continue.


    As for Tasha, she was more interested Yunan rather than the conversation, the way he learned from abstract concepts, turning that knowledge into something feasible made her heart skip and throb, his way of gaining insight felt instinctive to her, having nothing but spection never hindered him froming up with something that can be proved or disproved, he moved on without giving a thought about what he had just found out, to him it was just that, a little bit more knowledge.


    To Tasha what Yunan consider simple knowledge was the fruit of aeons of research, things no god would willingly share, and Yunan spoke of such things as if they did not matter.


    When she asked him why was he so nonchnt about the secrets of creations and thews that existence itself had to follow, his answer made her think he was as dumb as a brick. "So what if I hoard it, sharing it with another may give us both a bit more rity on the next step, who knows, maybe even figure out a neww or something".


    All her life, she was taught that gods should be lonely creature''s, having to figure out how the world worked through their own efforts, advancing the road to bing a Primordial step by step, it was her first time ever, feeling that maybe it should not be so lonely, maybe if gods worked together, thews of the universe, and the coveted power of Primordials would not be so hard to achieve.


    A few decades of drifting through the void made Tasha truly appreciatepany, even if Yunan was meditating or practising the majority of his time, he still had time to keep a conversation going with her, even if the conversation was mostly about how to maximize the benefits of training and efficacy of their powers, it was still appreciated.


    She had lived for a few millions of years, but none felt as fulfilling as thest few decades, she never felt that she was as godly as she did now, the secrets that she thought beyond her were unveiled, her errors and mistakes corrected, she path had never been so obvious to her before today.


    As for Yunan, his path had never changed, he had to step ahead one step after the other, making the effort to keep going, his goal was too far, but not far enough to make him despair, he would reach it one day, as long as he kept walking ahead, he would arrive.

 Chapter 432: WHY SO ANXIOUS

    Chapter 432: WHY SO ANXIOUS


    "To think it took us decades to travel to the closest universe" Tasha was tired, really tired "can we rest a little bit when we get inside?" She asked with a hopeful voice.


    Yunan just smiled at her, measuring travel time by the decades was the same as measuring time by the seconds for mortals, however, it wasn''t as consuming.


    "Sure, let''s take a few days of sunshine when we get inside, now get into Dreamscape, we are breaking in!". Producing the realm he brought with him along, made a small portal for them to walk inside and set the realm on a collision course. Dreamscape would be their gate into this foreign universe.


    Taking Dreamscape on this journey was due to the uniqueness of the dream realm, it was not a true divine realm, as it couldn''t house the souls of the believers, Yunan had recently discovered that when they were in the prison.


    Dreamscape only housed the dreams, nightmares or not, everything born in a dream was housed inside of it, this unique property made the decision for Yunan, to put it simply, Dreamscape would work the same anywhere in the void, as long as dreams existed, it would too.


    Dreamscape is neutral, as long as sentient beings existed, they would dream, it was a matter rted to the existence of a soul, if Yunan was asked about it, he would say that dreams are the unintended consequence of making the soul capable of emotion.


    Being neutral, No universe with dream energy will reject the intrusion of the Dreamscape, naturally, it would also be able to immediately start absorbing those dream energies, making Dreamscape the best way to infiltrate any universe.


    Tasha was not aware of the above, to her, and many more gods who have cultivated in Dreamscape, the monsters and beings inside it were the manifestation of the believers. Only Yunan knew that all those that believed in him and worshipped him were all sent to the river Styx upon death, their faith and life long experiences bing food for his Effort divinity.


    Thus, with the help of Dreamscape, they found themselves inside the foreign universe.


    It looked the same as their own, stars and gxies,s both dead and life-bearing, time fluid and Fate''s tendrils almost touching everything, this was a mature universe, it was on route to the nearest culling event.


    This was apparent to Yunan the moment the Fate of this universe made contact with him, it seemed to sense the fragment of Fate in his sea of consciousness, it tried to embrace it but Yunan did not allow that to happen, this bit of Fate was his own, something that can be called a manifestation of himself, he only allowed the two fates to be acquainted.


    Still, that was enough to rouse the creator and the major gods of this universe. They thought that the culling was already starting, they gathered their armies and arms as they tried to locate the foreigners.


    Unfortunately for those gods, they were unable to do so, Yunan and Tasha were inside Dreamscape, something that was basically undetectable, all dream energy was the same, any god who could differentiate between the dream energies of different universes was qualified to be called a Primordial.


    Since Dreamscape could connect them with the energies of the universe, both Yunan and Tasha had no need to leave, they chose to sit still and try to connect with this universe, at least they would not face rejection from the universe itself when they started working in earnest.


    Within one year. Yunan had already established himself as the god of efforts and dreams, using the power of Dreamscape to spread his glory, as well as the all-consuming nature of Effort, to make the faith and other energies of this universe part of him.


    Tasha also established herself, thanks to the link she had with effort, she was able to integrate with the new universe and be recognised as part of it, and then spread her religion through Dreamscape as well, the mistress of the night is what she called herself, as long as it was something that would be kept secret, it was part of her domain.


    The two new gods were not very overt. One rted himself to the ambitious and hard-working, the other rted herself with secrets and hidden things, both domains were easily misinterpreted and no one even expected to be conquered from the inside.


    The culling was a violent event, gods died like they weremon mortals, bloodshed and forceful acquisition of resources was the theme, and Fate was the final resource. If a universe''s Fate was taken, there was no longer need to struggle.


    Yunan did the opposite, he wanted to gently take over the rivers of Fate and merge the conquered universes with his home, the amalgamation of two universes might not be as strong as bothbined, but it would certainly be better than just one.


    Yunan also chose this way to increase the number of efforts he could consume with his Effort divinity, it needed so much food to grow, something Yunan was not willing to let go of, all efforts in his original universe were immediately used to empower him.


    He preferred the little umtion through time, he preferred to have a near-permanent source of ie for eternity than to have a one time boost.


    Three yearster, Tasha had gleaned enough secrets to allow Yunan a smooth take over.


    "Boss, I found the location of the creator of this universe, he hid very well, are you sure this is the way to go? I could bring him here and it would be much safer." Tasha stooped low to look at the cross-legged Yunan. She continued to talk as if he was not listening to her.


    "Boss, why are you so rxed like this all the time, it makes me really nervous when you just sit there, seriously, you are too rxed, we are heading to the private realm of a creator, as outsiders, that is the worst move to make, period."


    Yunan just searched through her face before shrugging and standing up, pulling her straight too, by the shoulders, he then touched her cheek tenderly "rx, you must learn that being in a rxed state is the best possible thing you can do, the more rxed you are, the easier it will be for you to face trouble."


    He waved his hand and a few bottles ofva wine popped out of nowhere "this anxious behaviour of yours is why you and your fellows got mired, we are bringing gifts, great promises and salvation, why would I have to feel anxious about facing trouble".

 Chapter 433: RELAXING IS BEST

    Chapter 433: RELAXING IS BEST


    The moment Yunan stepped out of Dreamscape and in front of the private realm of the creator, he faced pressure from the universe, but he did not act out in any way, forcibly keeping Tasha in line.


    It felt like the entire universe was trying to kill him, but the pressure was not too bad, nothing he couldn''t handle, thest few years worth of integration with the new universe was not just for show.


    Sensing there was no hostility from Yunan, nothing more than rxed curiosity at the works of the universe, the creator was dumbfounded, he had never heard of an invader knocking on the door of the person who could harm him the most, especially not with bottles of wine and what looked like an antsy assistant.


    The door to the private realm was opened and Yunan strode inside leisurely, he was literally making it easy for the creator god of this universe to just kill him, such disregard for danger, especially under the being who controls the entire universe to his whim, this was more of a reason to let such a man meet him.


    At the centre of the realm, Yunan and Tasha found the creator sitting on a throne, a variety of constructs wereing and going, however, none of them counted as fighters, it showed that this creator was reasonable enough, there would have been god killing soldiers filling the ce had Yunan allowed Tasha to struggle earlier on.


    Presenting his gifts, Yunan made Tashag a step behind him, he sat down in the middle of the court, and put the bottles ofva wine before him, Tasha was very reluctant but sat down too, his only word was "greetings".


    Any person with a brain capable of thinking would understand this gesture as an invitation of an equal, if he walked closer to the throne, it was admitting inferiority, if he waited to be invited at the threshold of the court, it was tant disregard to the owner of the court.


    Coming to the middle showed both sincerity and capability, willing to walk into the domain of your enemy without showing hostility was a sign of respect. Meanwhile waiting at the halfway point was giving the opponent a way to show sincerity, what happens next depends entirely on the actions of the creator.


    As a sensible man, the creator walked down from the throne and caused a table to grow out of the ground, empty cups and a te full of fruits showed a willingness to converse, even if there was no intent to cease the hostility.


    "My name is Yunan, Ie with an offer, my reasons are my own, but you may find my solution eptable, will you drink with me?".


    "You may refer to me as creator Bahn", the man said, taking one of the bottles ofva wine and starting to pour in the three cups, he downed his cup before Yunan could, he was showing his trust, if anything untoward happened to him, Yunan would be proven as the inferior being, resorting to poison to deal with an enemy.


    "Here is my proposal, You do not need to go through a culling, there will be no consequences, other than some loss of Fate and the adjoining of our universes" Yunan bit on peach-looking fruit, waiting for the response of creator Bahn.


    "Your words seem to imply that no harm wille to my universe, other than having to follow your rules, we would be safe with nothing to lose, that is unbelievable" Bahn wanted to hear Yunan''s response, but the youngster seemed to want to listen to Bahn a bit more.


    "You will take away some of our Fate, fuse our universes, and leave us alone, you would gain more if our universes adjoin peacefully, the retaliation of the Primordials do not scare you, or is something already eliminated, anything else?" Bahn talked about his understanding of the deal, drawing a smile on Yunan.


    "Due to some reasons I wish to keep secret, you may also confirm this with your Primordial, I have some leeway, that leeway includes interfering with too many things, now, as promised, as long as you agree to join my universe, nothing will happen to harm either universe. True, I will take some of your Fate but nothing too serious, all that is required from your universe is to swear allegiance, follow the rules in ce and cultivate happily, if you find anything wrong with this, then I wille back with a war, even if my power is not enough to take over as fast as talking this out, I will burn this ce to ashes if I have to"


    Bahn looked at Yunan and wanted to say something but could not, he opened and closed his mouth a few times before sighing and giving up. He saw nothing from Yunan that suggested he was talking nonsense, even Tasha who was nervous before turned excited at the mention of war.


    "I am not unreasonable, go talk with the rest of the gods, I will be sitting in my realm, if anyone wants to find me, they cane, but you only have one year to decide, If you take too long I will just take over Fate and subjugate this ce, Time is precious to me". After finishing his drink, Yunan left with Tasha and allowed creator Bahn to think to himself for a moment.


    " A year?" Tasha screeched at Yunan as soon as Dreamscape closed behind them. "We can start the take over any second now, why wait? are you epting challenges? You can''t be giving them time to really think it through?" she only stopped her screeching when Yunan startedughing hard, she could only pout and growl a "what?" at him.


    "This year is our vacation, did you not want to rx a little bit? Well, this is your chance to have some free time, let them stress out, let them send people to try and invade, let them break their noses facing their worst nightmares, all we have to do, is just rx and wait, once the year is over, my Fate fragment can convert theirs into somethingpatible with the one at home, by then, willing or not, they would join us, that is why being rxed is the best".


    Tasha helplessly followed Yunan to the little garden, cursing under her breath, her boss was far too unique of a snowke.

 Chapter 434: Surrender

    Chapter 434: Surrender


    "Bahn, do you believe him?" the one asking Bahn was young and vigorous, he seemed to be an influential god, because even though he spoke slowly and in a low voice, everyone else in the ce quieted down and listened.


    "I do", Bahn nodded, his gaze stopped at the end of the room, a god was clenching his fist and gritting his teeth like mil stones, the god''splexion grew increasing purple and vicious. Bahn knew the god was going to fight as soon as the meeting adjourned, he pitied that god, wrath and pride were very bad among thebination of sins.


    "Then we should test him once, talk to him some more and see if he has what it takes", said some god of wisdom, who immediately red at Bahn, Bahn had shaken his head immediately, most of these gods had not noticed that they have already lost the fight.


    "Break the board, if the chess match is lost, break the chessboard before he can deliver the fatal strike" surprisingly the wrathful god had noticed as well.


    "Then you go test him, War, if you kill him, we win, if you fail to get close enough,e back" the influential quiet god spoke, his voice as gentle and steady as ever.


    "Presumably he came out because he already won, no need to talk about that, if we can not even get close, then let us follow him, there is nothing bad about it, following some rules is not as bad as being wiped out or enved", Bahn agreed, "we have been preparing for the culling and the chance to lose it all, I would prefer to save this universe, it is only some rules, our Fate will still be ours, we just have to join up with others. If the culling came anyway, having allies is good enough, if it never came, we have already won more than we lost"


    "What does he get from just our allegiance, there must be more to this", some god asked suddenly. The answer came from a devilish looking god.


    "It matters not, his gains are not rted to us, our survival is the question, the deal he gave us is very eptable, presumably his gains are aligned with our well being, if that is true, then we have no reason to reject, even the fight is not worth it, I agree to join him, if the year ends without a consensus my devils will join him regardless, if the consensus is to fight back, we will stick with the majority, just reach a decision before then"


    There were some nods and murmurs, these leaders among the gods were not easily persuaded, then a bailiff announced " through the agreement of the majority of divine leader, if no consensus was formed before the period of a year, any faction can freely choose to join the invader or not, secondly, War and his faction will wage war on the invader while trying to avoid any loss, if the campaign is a loss he would retreat as soon as possible"


    The gods dispersed soon after, leaving behind only Bahn and the quiet god.


    "Mir, what do you think?" Bahn had not heard this god speak of his true thoughts in the meeting, thus he decided to ask when they were alone.


    "We should join him, he invaded us and we could not even find him before he showed himself to us, he is expecting us to fight back, and he also has some power to actually invade us with nothing but an assistant and a realm, if we could even get past his realm, I would consider it a victory".


    Bahn sighed and stood up from his chair, passed a bottle of strange-looking wine to Mir. "d to see you are still as smart as before, he brought gifts, I will go prepare the surrender of control to him, let''s meet again soon".


    Mir was almost stunned but still looked away, after he was left alone, he opened the gifted bottle of wine and drank alone, with a hint of mncholy tainting the serene atmosphere.


    War walked in after making sure Mir was alone, he too sat and drank with him, the two seemed to be more in tune then they let the world see, especially the eternally, wrathful War.


    "It hurts to know that I will lose even before the battle is started, makes me feel worthless" there was a hint of frailty that War would never let show in the words he spoke. The words Bahn had left were enough for him to understand how unattainable that victory was.


    Mir looked at his drinking friend and smiled, his voice still low and dignified "you will fight as best as you can, if you can reach him, we can get better terms, your next battle is not about if we surrender, that is already preordained, it is about gaining a bit of an advantage, if he alone coulde by and invade us, we surely should not meet up with the full force".


    "These invaders are also trying to prevent their universe from entering the culling, maybe he wants to do something to force the hands of the primordials, anyway, even if he came seeking an alliance instead of allegiance, we would have fought as well, the less we lose now, the more we can spareter on, this invader knows that and that is why he came to talk instead of barging in with his weapons drawn".


    Mir nodded, War was smart enough to strategise otherwise he would not have been named after something that can never be won without strategic thinking.


    "When you go against him, don''t fret about losing men just fight as if it is the culling we are facing, do your best, get us a better deal, at least we want the privilege to separate when we feel like it, otherwise, hopefully, he won''t pose harsher terms if we could do nothing".


    The words Mir left behind were extremely discouraging to many, but to War, they were enough to ignite his battle spirit, if not fighting for the right to live free, then what did they be gods for? To be ves? NEVER!

 Chapter 435: FIGHT!

    Chapter 435: FIGHT!


    With a resounding roar, War dered the start of the attack, many deities raised their weapons and cast their spells, all of them intending to open a path through the foreign divine realm.


    As they charged forward, they almost stumbled upon each other a secondter, There was a wide-open gate, as of waiting for them, it opened as soon as they got close enough to detonate their powers and deal damage.


    The dumbfounded gods took less than a moment to charge through the gate, with their leader, War, as the head of the charge.


    The charge did not slow down as the gods tried to find something, anything that could take their battle rage.


    Just as they wondered what was wrong with this divine realm, they witnessed their worst nightmares converging on them, some did not even belong to them, but none the less, they felt fear and trepidations.


    Gods could trample divine warriors, that was how it usually went, but then again, they were looking at monstrosities that were capable of shrugging off the immense power.


    The enemies did not belong to a specific domain, angels brighter than the sun fought side by side with demons from the darkest abyss, devils, humans, chimaeras and animals as if this was the overactive imagination of a child.


    There was one more problem, the size and power of the creatures in the foreign divine realm were absolutely random, something the size of an ant could but heads with any god as of it was nothing much, and something the size of a mountain could be killed by a pinprick.


    The absolute randomness inside the foreign divine realm made the fighting even harder, there was no telling how strong the creature before you is until you attacked, and if you held back, well, you better pray for your lucky stars you did not just annoy a being that could wipe you out with a re.


    Outside of the raging war, Bahn was standing outside, he had already foreseen the capability of the invader calling himself Yunan, but he never expected to find that his realm was such a strange thing, a ce where the sweetest dreams came true, and the worst nightmares.


    Gods who were fleeing injured were considered lucky, some had to be carried out, and no one had died, those who have felt the re of the reaper were magically transported outside of the foreign divine realm, Bahn was sure it was Yunan''s doing, it was pure humiliation.


    All the gods that got out told him the same thing, they were still at the outskirts of the realm, as gods, they knew how vast it was, the unfathomable part was that the little garden where the invader should be, was unreachable, it had very little to do with the beings inside.


    ording to some god, Bahn understood the situation, unless they could break into the little garden, they would have to face the residents of the divine realm for an eternity, the shield was not powered by spell or faith, it was made of pure dream energy.


    Many dream gods were sent in to take a look, all of them returned with nothing except knowing for sure, that whoever controlled the realm, had better control on dream energy than they did, it was on a different level altogether.


    A fortnightter, War was ejected from Dreamscape, he was fuming as usual, but there was a faint sense of loss and defeating from him, War had failed, Bahn knew that the moment heid eyes on War.


    "We need to get that invader out, inside his realm, he is beyond us, we arecking too much if this was the level of an average universe, we are done for".


    War has changed the target of his wrath to their seeming inability to deal with a single invader.


    Bahn, as a creator, knew otherwise, this wad beyond the level needed to survive a culling, as a creator who had done this a few times before, he was certain that Yunan was the freak, the gods from his universe were average.


    "Forget about it", Bahnforted War. He did not dare to tell the god before him that he was average, he knew much about the culling and was certain that freaks like Yunan were too few and too far in between, unfortunately, or fortunately, such a being decided toe by and acquire their universe.


    Bahn had thoughts about leaving this universe, as it has matured, and start on another project, he did not need to stay, as long as the Fate of the universe matured, it would find the nearest culling, his job was already done, and his primordial would say nothing, it was inconsequential.


    To the great surprise of the host of gods in the location, as soon as thest god left Dreamscape, Yunan too appeared, he made his way to Bahn who was trying tofort War, thetter immediately lunged at Yunan when he got close enough andunched strike after strike at Yunan, War was determined to obliterate the man, his soul and divinity.


    Yunan yed along, he took the fight seriously, taking up his Dragonborn form immediately, he took out his soul-bound sword and faced the war god.


    Although it was not an easy time, Yunan started losing ground when other gods started attacking him as well, but he fought back as best as he could, and hested for an entire week.


    When Yunan decided that things have gone out of control and killing was needed, things immediately shifted, after three gods were killed, the arena emptied around him and War.


    It was apparent that he held back for a week, every god knew it the moment he killed the first god, the way Yunan killed was too easy, it felt that Yunan struggled harder to keep his opponent alive than to kill them.


    Three swings and three divinities were no longer! that kind of killing power was nothing short of heresy to these people, fighting this invader was lethal, he could truly invade a universe on his own.

 Chapter 436: GIVING IN

    Chapter 436: GIVING IN


    Nothing was worse than being in a melee with a being who was capable of killing as easy as breathing, thus, the arena opening-up for Yunan and War.


    "Seriously, You guys forced me to waste three treasure troves, who do I have to kill next? Let''s do this once and be done with it, anyone who cares to fight to the death cane closer, otherwise, I will just proceed to im your universe and make you all my ves".


    War was about to charge again but found Mir stopping him. Mir had a very terrifying look, there was death ring from behind his pupils. It was something Yunan knew very well, something had touched Mir''s bottom line.


    "You said you requested surrender, you said we had a year, you even went as far as fighting for this long without killing, but very can never be allowed, we would rather all die than be ves, I would die first, what say you, invader?"


    "True, true, my mistake, I got a little bit bloodthirsty, fighting for so long and resorting to killing was taxing on my mentality, I thought that you may want to end it earlier since you guys attacked me as soon as I stepped out, usually after retreates negotiation, maybe wars are different in you universe". Yunan was feeling bad about crossing a line too early, he did promise them after all.


    Yunan lowered his sword and returned to his human form, changed his clothes and waved away the grime of battle from his face. He stood still, if nothing wasing out of him leaving Dreamscape he would just return.


    Mir moved forward, War and Bahn nking him, Mir still looked pissed off but Yunan knew it was a faade, nothing more, he was trying to make it so that he had a chip to negotiate with.


    "Other than swearing allegiance, we arepletely free to do as we wish in thebined universe, you may only call upon us to defend the ce from an external invasion, nothing else, these are our terms" the seething hatred that Mir used to speak was the only genuine thing he let out of his moth.


    "My terms were already generous, to begin with, I have no need for your willingness, but I prefer to have willing followers than disgruntled and unwilling ves, you are free to do as you like as long as you follow the rules of the first universe, all you have to do is follow the rules, you can even choose to not defend if and when invaders came, if you be strong enough, you can leave, but as long as you reside in my universe, you follow the rules, if following some rules for the benefit of all is not good enough, then we can see each other in a year."


    Yunan turned his back and made his way to Dreamscape, the bitterness in Mir and War was almost tangible, but it was Bahn who stopped him.


    "What does swearing allegiance to you require? Although I would fight to the death if it is something uneptable". The silence was too deep, it felt as if the entire universe was holding its breath.


    Yunan stopped and turned around, he took a look at all those who surrounded him then lifted his free hand so that the palm was facing upwards he then drew a tiny bit from the Effort divinity and let it show.


    "You swear upon this, that you would take me as your lord, you would follow my rules and if you are willing, you can safeguard what is mine, that is all, if you break the oath, you will lose your divinity and fall, if I do anything to break my side of the oath, I would be rejected by my divinity and die painfully, is that eptable for you?"


    Binding someone through an oath made on divinity was stronger than any kind of bind, the contract was equally merciless on both sides, anything untoward happens, losing divinity was inevitable.


    "If I swore your oath but then left to build another universe, would it be affected as well?" there was slight nervousness in Bahn as he spoke but Yunan''s following words reassured him.


    "Only if you will it, this contract can coexist alongside the one from your primordial, as long as you will it, you may extend the contract to any new universe you make, as for if you chose to leave, the contract bes invalid until you decided to return".


    "Fine then, we submit as long as you swear to treat us the same way you do those of your own universe" Mir was the one to take the first step, Bahn was a creator, if he took the oath first it would make the surrender look forced, well more forced than it actually was.


    One by one, god after god, each one of them pledged to the fragment of Effort divinity, then each returned to their homes and divine realms, after knowing the rules Yunan set up for them, they felt a bit foolish.


    Some still wanted to reject Yunan and his invasion, but as a united universe, they could not betray everything just for the sake of something worthless.


    True to his word, Yunan still waited for the entire year in case new gods ascended and give thete gods to think things through, during that year, he would ept pledges daily, meanwhile he fused his fragment of Fate with the Fate of the universe, turned it murky and foggy, utterly unpredictable, then he took a fragment and changed the course of the universe, it was now headed for universe Hossana to merge with it.


    Tasha was having the time of her life chasing skirts, all over the universe, while Yunan was busying himself with the aftermath of his sessful invasion when he recalled her, she was as radiant as a star and seemed to have regenerated her batteries. His order was delivered and they headed to the next target.

 Chapter 437: PROBING

    Chapter 437: PROBING


    For the next few decades, Yunan and Tasha apanied each other as they digested their gains, the oddly peaceful take over gave each of them the chance to improve their control, further their domain and a bit more insight about creation.


    In the void, as Yunan and Tasha meditated, there was a hubbub among the Primordials, they were ecstatic, but for different reasons, namely two major camps among the Primordials, worry and fun.


    The Primordial of Fate was having a fit, he was slowly losing his grip on his domain, he could feel iting, although the effect from only two corrupted Fates was negligible, as a Primordial who could see into endless timelines, the end did not look very good if Yunan kept tuning the Fates of universes murky and unreadable.


    The rest of the Primordials in the worried camp were all talking about the Effort divinity and how it took in everything, they were worried they would be absorbed as soon as Yunan ascended once more.


    The second major camp was the one filled with Primordials excitedly watching Yunan and his next move, they viewed the actions of Yunan as a fresh breath in the still void, they imed that even if Yunan came after themter on, it was better than the unmoving lives they had led so far, even if he did not ascend, his disruption of the rules was kinda cute.


    To them, once Yunan became a Primordial, he would be mired in the need for endless amounts of Faith, therefore, even if he started a war, he would just sit quietly after exhausting his reserves in a battle or two.


    The rest of the Primordials were either unconcerned, sleeping or just did not feel like they should bother themselves, no matter what happened, the big guy above was still suppressing everything beneath, therefore, unless something could shake that guy, they would not care.


    ''The guy above'' was what they called the enormous eye that looked down upon them once in a while, none of the Primordials knew what it was, by the time they were capable of reaching into the void it was there, the rules about no fighting and how the selection of the universes should go, they were already established, the oldest Primordials refused to talk about those times, saying that only death and suffering were what awaited any who dug into the past.


    For the primordials, they were amassing Faith trying to reach higher levels, although it has been aeons upon aeons, the strongest among them was nothing close to the giant eye, the oldest Primordials who were umting Faith the fastest, they were silent and spent their time digesting Faith or sleeping to conserve power, they were old and decrepit and abhorred the idea of death.


    If Yunan knew what was going on in the void, he would chuckle to himself, conquest was the only solution. if one could not reach those above, why wait, just grab them by the ankles and drag them down, even a swarm of ants could kill an elephant if they numbered enough and had enough strength to inflict minor injuries.


    Tasha and Yunan flew forward to their next target, Yunan was taking in the enormous amounts of efforts in the new universe, an untapped reserve that has been umting for too long, and then the control from multiple domains, that, was a great harvest.


    The new fragment of Fate also helped Yunan link with the efforts of the entire universe, causing the alreadyrge divinity to swell up, even more so, it was growing sorge Yunan was doubting if he could control it, every time he connected to the divinity, his mirror image inside it smiled at him, it always allowed Yunan to ess exactly as much Effort he needed, no more no less, and when probed, the mirror image showedplete subservience.


    Seeing the mirror image still existing, Yunan decided maybe he should focus more on the divinity, even if he had perfect control of it, it was all thanks to the mirror image, if it decided to rebel, Yunan was sure he would lose his divinity so fast, he would not know what happened.


    Therefore, Tasha was the one tasked with their primary defence and alertness, she did not have as much to digest and therefore had more time on her hands, meanwhile, Yunan spent the time during the journey to the next target in deep meditation.


    For her gains, Tasha branched on to two new domains, concealment and desire, concealment was linked through her secrets domain and desire was granted through her newest identity as thedy of the night, as it turned out, people are more adept at making secrets of their desires than anything else, out of ten secrets, nine would have something to do with desires.


    Those two domains were inherently linked to secrets but were also very minor, both considered as either evil or neutral, this association came from the tendency that evil gods would always be concealed well and would use desires to bait in more worshipers.


    Tasha was not too busy, she was mostly was bored because she had no one to converse with, she had grown used to Yunan and his talks, and now that he silently sat there in deep meditation, she was so bored that she decided to pry into his secrets.


    To Tasha, Yunan was the biggest secret of all, he had so many ways to do things and so many hidden cards up his sleeves that it was nearly maddening, she thought that looking into his secrets would be the challenge of her godhood, and since Yunan had never expressly forbidden her from prying into him, she only debated for a bit before her boredom took over, then with great enthusiasm started looking into the most superficial secrets.


    She could not risk diving too deep and waking Yunan up, he was a good boss and would understand she told herself, but she feared that she might have to be the lonely guard for all their travels if he gains nothing due to her probing, therefore she decided to go with the little things first, the thing that he would not mind being found out.

 Chapter 438: DREAM CITY

    Chapter 438: DREAM CITY


    Tasha steeled her heart and then ced her palm on Yunan''s forehead, her sweaty palms and short breaths did nothing tofort her, but she activated her divinity none-the-less.


    Soon her vision darkened and she entered a dream-like state, she had lost all her powers here, all she could do was chose when to end the dream.


    In the dream world, she saw Yunan sitting and conversing with a copy of himself, both noticed her and then returned to their conversation, she could not hear anything no matter how she focused her hearing, even their lips did not conform to anynguage she knew.


    She was startled from her focus by a tug at her sleeve, a ten-year-old, naive looking child was tugging on her shirt when she looked down she immediately recognized the child as the young Yunan.


    "You should not disturb them", said youngster Yunan, pointing at a city that was behind her, "all you need to find is in there", the youngster then started walking before turning around and hurrying Tasha e, I will be your guide, just this once" and then continued to step into the city.


    Tasha almost followed the boy with instinct, she did not even realise there was a city behind her, let alone understand what was going on, usually, she would watch something like a rey of the secret incident in the dream-like state, never has she been in interaction with the consciousness of her target, not until today.


    The city was full of Yunan, versions of him were everywhere, from the soldier guarding the gate to the kids ying around, the females in this city were all versions of his wives at various ages, from old and wrinkled to young and enchanting, there were some of those who made impressions on him among the passers-by or the shop keepers, she wondered if she would see herself, she did not like the idea of having an entire life inside someone''s brain.


    The boy Yunan was slowly walking through the streets, he was letting Tasha take in the scenery, everything here came from Yunan''s memory and recognition of the world, it was how he viewed the worldpressed in the form of a city.


    Eventually, they arrived near a theatre, it was notbelled, like the other shops and there was no oneing or leaving.


    "This is the library, here you can find everything, feel free to browse around, once you are done just leave, that is all, bye-bye" the boy waved at Tasha and was about to dash into a group of children ying around, Tasha almost screamed at him to stop.


    "Ask him if you have any question, I am only a guide" Tasha watched the child sprint around with his friends and turn unaware of her like the rest of the residents of the city.


    Looking behind her, she saw someone standing at the door and waiting for her so she entered the theatre, the one keeping the theatre was an adult Yunan, she did not dare to be careless but could not help ogle at the man, the rxed look on his face was very recognizable, hiszy smile was veryforting, somehow.


    "I am the archive master, please direct all inquiries to me, touche nothing, change nothing and leave when satisfied, those are the rules". The archive master gave her the feeling she would do better to follow the rules or else.


    " I am not sure what to ask for, I only wanted to glean some secrets, this is too much for me to take in at once" the archive master conjured a chair and sat on it, allowing Tasha time to think.


    Not a momentter she asked, "what is this ce, I have never seen anything like this". That question has been bothering her and she could not help but ask after failing to understand anything.


    "This city is Yunan''s subconscious, everything you see is a figment of it, including myself, it was created with the help of the dream divinity. It allows the main consciousness to interact with us on a more intimate level, and allow us to express ourselves, and this building is rted to memories and experiences, it is made the culmination of all the information that is Yunan".


    "Then, that mirror image was how Yunan sees himself subconsciously? But if that exists, why the redundancy of building this city, it seems to be a very unusual way of expressing the subconsciousness". Tasha murmured to herself as she took in the information but then looked at the archive master, he should have the answer.


    He shook his head as if expressing disagreement, "that one is not part of us, he is Effort, the divinity Yunan chose to ascend with, they don''t usually talk in here, that one is not allowed inside the city, Yunan usually visits him when there is a need tomunicate, oh for the sake of your well being, try not to get in touch with Effort, he only recognises Yunan as master".


    Tasha was dumbfounded once more. since when did divinity get the capability to achieve sentience. She did not dare think of the implications of sentient divinity, what was more disturbing to her was that she was directly interacting with Yunan''s subconscious, any god who was fluent in mental domains would know not to do that.


    She was fine, she guessed that Yunan himself does not see her act as aggressive, not even remotely, otherwise the entire city would be trying to destroy her, subconsciousness did not like intruders. She was now very happy that Yunan did not deem her to be threatening, not at all, if he did, she would not have made it so far.


    "Say, What kind of secrets does Yunan not mind sharing " she was interrupted by the archive master, raising his hand and looking at something beyond walls.


    "Don''t linger too much, you do not have enough power to stay here any longer, short visits, today, I will send you out, just this once".


    The archive master waved goodbye and Tasha opened her eyes, she was drenched in sweat, running empty on both mana and Faith, and starving, no more than an hour inside the city was capable of draining her, too short, the time frame was too short.

 Chapter 439: Dreamless

    Chapter 439: Dreamless


    Third time inside the city, Tasha was still taking in the sights of the city, she was able to chat to some shopkeepers while buying some items, wine, jewellery, moonstones, bread, fruit and monster cores.


    She seemed to enjoy the interactions, even with the eagle eyes of the archive master stered on her back, she tried not to give away any knowledge of the outside world, tainting the subconscious was a death wish and a big no-no.


    Walking side by side, Tasha and archive master were conversing along the way, they discussed things that Tasha thought was peculiar, especially with her knowledge about Yunan from her days with him.


    "You mean that Yunan has a lover-mentor-student-friend and also a therapist with some of his teachers? That is so messed up on so many levels!" Tasha had already seen how Yunan and his teachers acted when they were together, she just did not know how deep was the rabbit hole.


    "Indeed, strange but also predictable, from our perspective, hat rtionship is to be expected, Yunan has always been a member of the party, he was given a voice, chances to lead and strategise, even if his ideas were strange and maybe even childish, he was always given just the right amount of correction, therefore, having such aplicated rtionship is expected"


    The words of the archive master made Tasha think a bit more and understand a little bit about the apparentpatibility between Yunan and his teachers, in some strange ways, Yunan was toopatible with Debauchery party, thus he had the multitude of roles attached to him.


    "Then I should assume that any party who can bepatible with Yunan have a multiyered rtionship with him, does that include me?" she asked the archive master, who seemed a little bit distracted again today.


    "You should get to that part on your own, realising how your connection works will affect how you work together, therefore, I decline to answer your question, even if we the subconscious, we would like to refrain from affecting anyone but Yunan, I hope you understand" the archive master then started walking towards the theatre while Tasha prepared to leave, she was already running low.


    Across their journey, Tasha and Yunan did not meet anything dangerous, some creature roaming the void came to investigate but most creatures left them alone, the void was a dangerous ce and if in doubt, fleeing was the rule.


    Most of these creatures came from broken universes, the result of the culling going to an extreme, some universes were very strange, they would destroy their rivals instead of just taking over the Fate of the prey universe, they would tear it to shreds, sometimes releasing along with the dead bodies some creature or another that can survive in the void.


    These creatures were on the level of gods, they were smart and cunning. if they found prey, they hunted, if they had the slightest bit of doubt, they would flee, very few chose to investigate first.


    Yunan was still meditating when they came close to the next target, and Tasha chose not to wake him up, she did as she saw him dost time, and used Dreamscape to infiltrate the universe, unfortunately, this universe had no concept of dreams, therefore, Dreamscape was found immediately, and it was attacked relentlessly.


    Tasha opened Dreamscape and allowed the gods to die inside of it, in an effort to preserve their efforts and divinity for Yunan, having no other choice after seeing Yunan was still in deep meditation, Tasha decided to wake him up herself.


    Putting her palm on Yunan''s forehead, Tasha risked her death and entered the dream city, she was still exhausted from thest time she came, it always took her a few years to recover, but today she was only on half power, thus, she would run out much faster.


    In the Dream city, Tasha ran as fast as she could, she knew time was ticking, there was a chance they would be killed before they woke up, so she did her best to reach Yunan as fast as possible, thankfully, the noise she made in this city had attracted Yunan and Effort.


    The two met her at the city gate, Effort was giving Tasha a hard re, while Yunan was waiting for her to exin.


    "We have reached our next target, they have no dream energy, I have opened Dreamscape to stop them from destroying the realm, you need toe back, these guys have no emotions, Dreamscape has no effect on them, their forward force is capable of destroying too much, I need you out there". Tasha gasped but still tried to articte the situation carefully and inly.


    Yunan brought them out of dream city just to see his realm residents being torn to shreds, the emotional effect of Dreamscape was not present at all, and the raiding party did not seem to care about casualties, they just fought with all they got.


    Since things turned out this way, Yunan expelled the aborigins of this dreamless universe from Dreamscape, Tasha was spat out as well, he then took the realm inside of him and took out his soul-bound sword, and without much of a pause, he started killing.


    Tasha was flustered for a moment before she armed herself and dove into the fight.


    She knew better than try to cover Yunan''s back, she did her best to stay hidden and only injure her opponents before sending them to Yunan to finish off.


    Tasha had been with Yunan long enough to know that; even if she killed the gods of this universe, she would gain far less than if her boss killed them himself, she had seen Yunanpletely absorb entire gods, not wasting a shred of energy, therefore, she decided to get what he gave her.


    To Tasha, nothing these gods had were even close to the concentrated energy that Effort could give her, Effort was much more helpful to her growth than some divinity from a strange universe, those were her thoughts until the universe started rejecting them.

 Chapter 440: ENRAGED!

    Chapter 440: ENRAGED!


    The rejection from the universe was painful, Tasha felt her body being squeezed by every single atom it came into contact with, she looked at Yunan saw that the rejection he received was getting stronger by the second.


    Being restrained, Tasha could only ept her fate, she was no longer helpful, so she hid in Dreamscape, waiting for what happens next.


    Yunan allowed Tasha to hide, it would be very inconvenient if he lost his assistant this early in the journey, he continued to resist the universe, facing harsher rejection with each passing moment, he unleashed the full power of his Effort divinity, allowing it to consume every energy in reach, gods, and divinities we digested fast and the energy was used to power up the divinity.


    The rejection of the universe was followed by a tide of figures flooding towards Yunan, all led by their creator, this one seemed to want to use this universe as a stepping stone to reach higher levels, he was very confident with his creation, a universe full of soldier gods.


    "You have some guts invading even before the culling started, but you chose the wrong universe, submit and serve me, or die, your choice" as the voice of the creator of this militarized universe echoed, Yunan could feel the Fate of the universe trying to devour his two little fragments.


    Yunan scoffed, and kept killing left and right, he did not give an answer but just kept absorbing the energies of this universe, each god he absorbed was a portion of thews of the universe, as long as he began to understand these bits, he would no longer fear the creator''s influence, nor would the universe reject him as much.


    The automated battle mode was engaged, Yunan had be a god of killing, he evaded and defended with the narrowest of margins, each swing brought him more energy to replenish his reserves, and with each divinity he absorbed, the rejection of the universe got weaker.


    As for the mental power not used for battle, it was focused on analysing thews of this strange universe, to Yunan, a dreamless universe was nearly iprehensible, he would ept it if the universe was only home to mechanical life forms, but this universe was entirely biological.


    Yunan suddenly felt like he understood something, this universe had no technology that the creator did not deem to be useful, thus theck of mechanical constructs, speaking of mechanicals, this universe was as good as any to try out the improved mechs.


    Yunan summoned the battle fortress and gave the artificial intelligence and the genie one order, "evolve", the two did not waste a single moment, they immediatelyunched the smaller mechs and let the fortress start bombardingrge swathes of gods that were surrounding Yunan.


    Neither the genie nor the A.I were concerned about the wasted energy, they were using the dead gods and the harvested divinities as research materials, the order was to evolve, hence the seemingly irresponsible way of attack.


    The creator of the militarized universe was having a hard time believing what he was seeing, the invader did not seem to run out of energy, as for the fortress and the metal golems that were killing his soldiers, he assumed they would run out of steam soon, he very much looked forward to incorporate their technology into his army.


    To outsiders, the way Yunan absorbed everyst piece of his foes was strange, even divinities that were rted to consumption were not as capable as Effort in refining energy, it was known that absorbing too much would harm the person, maybe even cause a change in their divinity.


    The creator also thought so, it was a desperate way to regain energy when fighting a horde, but the side effects were not worth it.


    From within Dreamscape, Tasha was suddenly flooded with the understanding of strangews, she did not reject the forced enlightenment, it was Yunan telling her toe out and fight, she would now face only half the rejection from the universe as of this moment, so she came out from hiding.


    To her surprise, a few years had already passed, most of the cannon fodder gods were dead, the creator was fighting Yunan head-on. On his back was a legion of gods, all of them on the level of over-gods, all of them focused on fighting Yunan and supporting their creator, meanwhile the fortress and the mechs were nowhere to be seen.


    Tasha knew better than to join the fight, her job was to infiltrate the universe and try to get a grasp on the location of its Fate, her divinities were just enough to let her move away unseen, especially with Yunan making a sudden show of power to the enemy.


    "Do you still wish to have me serve you?" Yunan threw a taunt at his enemy, he did not forget to sidestep him and harvest a few more gods, he made it sound like he was having fun, he was having far less pressure since the creator had joined the fight, and he made sure it was known.


    Being swarmed by suicidal soldiers was one thing, but fighting someone who had ambition was entirely another, even with an army as numerous as the sands, an ambitious man would still fight below his capacity in fear of death.


    "I.WANT.YOU.TO.DIE!" the enraged creator was doing his best to harm Yunan, syphoning the power of the universe to fuel himself, unbeknownst to him, each strike and spell he cast was absorbed by Effort instead of dispersing naturally, as for his followers, it was about time for them to take over, he was getting ready to retreat to safe distance to rest and change his ns.


    Yunan felt very lucky, there was an enormous amount of fooding to his mouth each moment, he could also digest it all of it fast enough thanks to the constant battle, although Yunan was in a martial realm that was nearing the limits, he still found that it felt good to progress under duress.

 Chapter 441: Stalemate

    Chapter 441: Stalemate


    "How weak!" Yunan swung his de and another soldier was absorbedpletely, he was feeling the gradually increasing strength course through his limbs, he was not very tired, he had been fighting in his sleep every now and then.


    His main goal was to distract the residents of this hostile universe, especially the creator who was extremely irritable, he had gone berserk a few times already, dealing and taking enough damage to kill ordinary gods a few hundred times over.


    Yunan was even more proud of and reliant on his regeneration, his body was smelted through endless trials, and this was just some more tempering, although he was starting to feel the toll of it, he was not very concerned, his Effort divinity had the ability to absorb the resulting injuries, it was now prioritizing the absorbed energies and divinities and converting them into strength.


    "What are you?" The frustration of the creator; who has gone far and beyond just to fail in killing Yunan, over and over; was very apparent. Nothing he did was enough to slow this abominable enemy, even when he was almost ground to bits, he would just absorb another god and regenerate to be as good as new.


    His legion of soldier gods was starting to dwindle, if he sent them away he would die to Yunan or would have to escape outside of the universe, and unless he was rescued by his Primordial, he would be killed by Yunan sooner thanter, if he kept them around, Yunan would just use them as health potions, turning the fight into some kind of stiff draw, it would only end when the legion of gods died out and the creator had to beg for help from his Primordial to escape alive.


    The creator did not know that Yunan was now more than capable of ending the stalemate, routing the army and pinning down the creator, unfortunately, Yunan was not strong enough to kill the creator before the Primordial intervention.


    The n was already underway, Tasha was working herself to death, literally, she was digging around for the river of Fate while enduring the endless torture brought about by the rejection of the universe.


    Yunan was responsible for guiding her and giving her enlightenment about thews of this universe, she did not even try to do it on her own, she focused on finding Fate through the guidance of Yunan.


    The creator was smart enough to make sure Fate moved around, Yunan could sense its location through his own fragments, but since it was hostile, finding the actual river was much better than trying to consume Fate through his fragment.


    Although Tasha had failed to reach the river of Fate too many times, she still persisted, she only needed to reach it only once, thankfully, the creator was so focused on Yunan, he had yet to discover Tasha sneaking about in his universe.


    "I am your worst nightmare, your path to death, the one to tear down all that you have built, why don''t you surrender to me? I can guarantee your life, you can return to your Primordial, you can end this whole thing, live to build another universe, how about it". Yunan didn''t forget to add some persuasion to his words.


    Although mental maniption was too weak to work on a creator and greater gods in general, Yunan never stopped using his spells just because they were ineffective, at worst he would waste a bit of mana, at best it may contain the enemy for a heartbeat, long enough to try something different.


    "Never!" Screamed the creator, he went on for another attack with his legion, his attacks were getting more and more desperate, him watching Yunan grow and have easier time each passing day, he was unwilling to ept this oue, it almost broke his psyche.


    How many years did he invest in this universe, how much time did he spend moulding it, eachw, each creature, each nt? All that time was about to be characterized as wasted. unless he could kill the Intruder, this was a setback, but not a deadly one.


    As long as he could kill Yunan before he reached the next culling, he had time to foster a new generation of soldiers, as long as he could get rid of this scourge, it was enough to survive and thrive once more.


    The taunting back and forth never stopped, it only got more sinister by the day, the legion of gods was drying up, not even half as many as the year before, the strikes of the creator dealt less and less damage, Yunan was now disguising his true state after each attack.


    He did not risk killing the creator and let the legion of gods live, as soldiers, they were good at breaking oaths and Yunan did not wish to trust them before he forcefully took control over their Fate.


    Thus, the sneaky Tasha was the only one making progress in this stalemate, she was getting closer, the universe was not hindering her as much and Fate was not running away as fast as before, maybe she got better at predicting it''s location, she did not know.


    What she knew was that she was moving better out of instinct, Yunan had linked her to his Fate fragment, that link was her guide. since the Fate of the universe tried to take over Yunan''s fragment, it was easier for her to find it.


    Through her link with Yunan, she was enjoying the feeling of overwhelming power, Effort had been giving her power boosts when she needed them most, as Yunan gets stronger so would she, that was the benefit of being linked to her boss in every way possible.


    Her boss could do anything to her without repercussions, she could die at a thought, but the other side of the coin was getting to see sights, the sights that can only be seen from standing on the shoulder of giants.

 Chapter 442: Dead

    Chapter 442: Dead


    "Why won''t you die?". There was only despair in the voice of the creator, the rage was gone, he has been fighting for three years, three entire years, failing to kill someone for three bloody years really cracked something inside of him.


    The creator was getting really afraid now, his soldiers'' numbers were now below thefort zone, Yunan was still as energetic and resilient as ever, finally, the thought of the stalemate being forced sprouted, and the creator found himself beginning to doubt his chances of even running away.


    Suddenly, the rejection of the universe on Yunan ceased, he had yet to fully integrate thews of the universe, it was very unlikely that the universe recognized him as a resident, it was the smile on Yunan''s face that tipped the creator off.


    "What have you done!?" a screech that should have held rage only carried fear and trepidation. Things started to make sense in his mind as gears began to roll and click with each other, rity dawned on him, and everything was confirmed when he heard Yunan gleefully say him: "figured it out finally? For a creator, you are pretty blind and full of crap".


    The creator knew it was time to run away, he tried to contact his Primordial but found himself unable to, he tried to get out and run away in the void, yet his own universe stopped him from leaving, atst, he broke down and dropped to his knees, there was no fight left in him.


    Yunan knew the creator was broken, this one will never make another creation, abandoned by his own faith and betrayed with his creation, there was nothing left of him, out of pity, Yunan decided to end it very quickly.


    One sh and that was it, the creator was absorbed and went into digestion, making Yunan feel bloated.


    The soldier gods stood there and did nothing, they did not even defend when Yunan decided to try them out, they were machines with no direction, Yunan could not even stand to be in the same space with them.


    Tasha returned not long after, she too was feeling very disturbed about the universe they had intruded into, she had seen it with her own eyes, everything in the universe was directed to act in this way or that, even golems had more freedom than the beings of this universe.


    Yunan guessed that this was the reason for the Primordial did not answer his creator, faith lost through work and ambition was not rare, what was rare was the creator not realising his faith shift away.


    Creating a universe that only works when ordered to is beyond deranged, Yunan wondered what kind of Fate it had, this kind of creation was terrible to behold and Yunan really wanted to get out of here as soon as possible.


    Tasha shared the same thought, at the moment she touched Fate and captured it, she saw how dead the universe was, and it almost made her throw up. Fate was supposed to be a river, but what she found was a crystal, predetermined, everything was going ording to a grand n.


    From a certain point of view, this universe was a great case to study, the creation of faith capable automatons was truly genius, except that to any sentient being, it was off-putting, definitely in the deepest part of the uncanny valley, genius but deranged none-the-less.


    Tasha brought out the crystalised Fate, it had a strange gleam to it, barely any mysticism or energy at all, it felt wrong to Yunan, who decided to just scrap the entire universe and make sure no one would stumble upon it.


    He fed the crystalised Fate to his fragments and then made the entire universe dissolve, he had his Effort divinity capture the resulting energy and the loose divinities, he would digest those slowly,ter on, it was too much energy to digest at once.


    "Are you sure about killing every life in there? You don''t strike me as the kind of guy who just takes lives without reason", Tasha really wanted to hear a voice, even asking dumb questions did not deter her, she had done many things even she frowned upon, but nothing ever made her want to feel that she was the only person who hates the situation.


    "Nothing lives in this ce, nothing at all, even machines have fixed Fate, there is no life in this universe, it is just a factory to build automatons since nothing lives in this universe, I prefer to let it all end here today", even Yunan who was open to many things could not take it anymore, and even talking about it made him feel wrong.


    The two of them entered Dreamscape and waited for it to store the energy of the dead universe, they sat down and talked about anything and nothing, they wanted to get this strange experience out of their minds, most of their discussion was about Yunan''s subconscious, it was very interesting to Tasha who found herself entranced by it.


    "Balin would have loved to see this ce, he would have pummeled the creator to a pulp but he would still dig into his memory to see he did it, most likely he would make something and get beaten for making it".


    "There are people who would want to know about this shit?" asked Tasha, she almost did not believe Yunan.


    "Seriously, that guy likes to make things, as long as he has an idea he would try to make it true, I have seen him make stuff that had no use or purpose, you can make that guy your best friend if you just give him stupid ideas, the more ludicrous, the better!"


    The two talked for a long time, seeing the truth of the dead universe took a hefty toll on them, thus they decided to take a moment of respite and rest for some time, they could also digest their gains before moving forward.

 Chapter 443: Dance again

    Chapter 443: Dance again


    The two decided to travel using Dreamscape this time, they needed a universe with the energy of dreams, therefore, they allowed the realm to proceed to the nearest universe with abundant dream energy.


    Inside Yunan''s dream city, Yunan, Tasha and Effort were having a luxurious lunch under the ever-watching gaze of the archive master who stood a few steps away in an emptied out restaurantsmon room.


    Two of them tried very hard not to notice the very enthusiastic Mary in a skimpy maid outfit, the girl used every known subtle gesture in the book to show her interest in Yunan.


    "So? Is she like in your harem or not? There is definitely a lot of thoughts behind the outfit and the hints" Tasha made this casual remark while stuffing her face, she never thought food tasted so good before, and this food helped her stay longer in the dream city.


    "Both yes and no" answered Yunan after sneaking a few peaks under the fluttering skirt of maid Mary, "she is in my harem because I could just bed her whenever I please, and she is not because that has a very low chance of happening with mutual consent, I''d be the unwilling party if it happened". Yunan took another look before Sighing and shovelling more food into his face.


    "What kind of crap are you spouting?" Tasha was not amused "things don''t work that way". As an avid skirt chaser herself, she didn''t pass the chance to gently harass the maid and helo her flush be more pronounced.


    "Well, in Debauchery party, it is always thatplicated, for some reason, things are alwaysplicated in Debauchery party, except for three straight forward things; loyalty to a fault, no effort wasted and no effort spared,stly always love Leader, that is pretty much all that can be simple". Yunan began to lose interest in the maid and focused again on the conversation.


    "But this is your own brain! surely it would not be wrong to make advances, or are you scared of being found out by the original one?" Teasing the boss was not something she could do often so she jumped the chance.


    "Very funny, you see, this is my dream city, anything I ept is made here, therefore, there must be a few versions of me who must have bedded this maid, hence the show of affection, as for why I don''t involve myself, it has to do with the nature of this ce, if I take it as a reality, it would be so, thanks to the dream divinity, this city will be born in Dreamscape if I acknowledge anything inside to be anything more than my subconscious thought".


    Yunan was more aware of how things worked than he let on, especially how Tasha saw him behave, she always thought he had no idea what was going on, his rxed attitude made it hard to picture him otherwise.


    "You guys all have issues!", said Tasha between bites, "all the harmony you guys had was just a front. if the things in your dream city mirror reality sigh ... it is too much to wrap my head around, just imagining the brute ugly orc as a cry baby makes my brain hurt, let alone the rest of the guys, your party doesn''t look the type, you just don''t", Tasha almost frustrated by her own thoughts.


    "You two speak too many nonsensical things, the point of using here is to get closer to my master, now you made it about a maid". Effort finally had enough.


    "Sounds about right, let''s go dance!" Responded Yunan, then brought the two still feeding with him to a fancy looking vi, there was a ball already happening, and the music had just shifted to the dance portion of the ball.


    "Dance? Seriously? You think dancing will help you get along better with your divinity?!". Both Tasha and Effort were sceptical, how was Yunan even thinking about such things out of nowhere.


    "Not outright, more like slowly and painfully. think about it my way, it has to do with rhythm, if we dance, we can make our rhythms closer, each time we make progress we will be able to integrate with each other for longer andmunicate better, let me prove it".


    Yunan took a pose and drew Effort by the hand to lead a simple slow dance, Effort followed in a very amateurish way, stepping on toes and moving the wrong limbs, but as the two got used to dancing with each other, things changed.


    Unbeknownst to both dancers, Tasha witnessed their hands merge ever so slightly, it was not much, but to her, it was obvious, just before the dance started, those two could barely touch each other, now they were merging!


    It didn''tst long though, as both Yunan and Tasha were thrown out of dream city and back to reality, Tasha could believe it if she was the one thrown out, she would be exhausted and wouldn''t know it, she was too engrossed in the dance.


    Yunan also being thrown out was too strange, she was about to ask but saw Yunan grinning from ear to ear, so she waited for him to exin.


    "That was too taxing, I suppose I still haven''t got enough power and Effort has too little control, well we should n to solve that". Yunan was still grinning from ear to ear, he didn''t look too bothered by his pale face and powerless body.


    "I admit, you were right, dancing is a good way into initial synchronization between you and Effort, but how did you dry up faster than me and why does Effort require control, isn''t that is your job as a god?". Tasha was right to ask this question, all gods had perfect control over their divinity, and there is no record of a god with sentient divinity, making the situation all the more iprehensible.


    "I told you before, Effort gives me perfect control, it is his choice, if he someday stopped recognizing me as his master, I would lose all control over the divinity of effort, thankfully, he too is eager to be integrated with me, seems like the divinity dislikes being unconnected to something. As we were dancing, he was pushing himself to reach a minimum of mutual understanding, that was the most consuming part, he was too eagre and I couldn''t just let him force it, these things need time".


    Tasha didn''t seem to get it but still appreciated the exnation, not every day could one be exposed to such things, she decided not to dig too much into it.

 Chapter 444: Hierarchy of power

    Chapter 444: Hierarchy of power


    Although Effort was itching to be liked to Yunan, Yunan did not have enough power to amodate such an aggressive approach. dancing was meant to allow the master and divinity to slowly understand each other but since Effort was too eagre, Yunan needed to teach him to control the raging power first, otherwise, it might just kill Yunan while they were merging.


    Thus dancing lessons started in Yunan''s Dream city, as Effort neede to learn control as well as understand the rhythm of Yunan, they decided on the strange way to exercise, battle and dancing at the same time.


    Two people who battle repeatedly are more likely to get a draw when fighting or win alternatively, the longer they battle for, the harder it is to achieve a win for both of them, at some point, it would be impossible for the battle to end in anything but a draw.


    This intimate knowledgeing from the battle was not something any fighter would admit, knowing your rival so well, to the point that fights between the two of you can never be won without outside interference, that is something that not even lovers can achieve.


    Yunan was looking forward to this result, thus, the training was divided as such, dancing in a ce with random gravity, forcing both of them to adapt to each other faster, the other was just in fighting, they would set their stats to level 5 and fight using all kinds of different rules each day.


    Some of these rules were focused on the type of weapon or techniques, for example only shing type moves and only using polearms, or maybe daggers only with stabbing techniques.


    This was a way for Effort to learn control, it had to focus on the next action as much as it did the current one, and so one and so forth, this type of unusual training forced Effort to respond with a limited "vocabry" of sorts, the restriction would allow him to learn timing and proper reaction.


    In the meantime, Tasha was focused on herself, she now had threeplete sets ofws and had no idea what to do with them, Yunan suggested that she start creating her ownws, but that was beyond her, although she had thews, she did not make the enlightenment on her own, as it was gifted to her by Yunan.


    Seeing that Yunan was advancing in a direction she could no longer look into, she decided to study thews at hand and see if she can merge them, she did not need to think too much, unlike Yunan who hadws at his fingertips, she had to work hard, she knew her limits best.


    The two worked silently side by side as Dreamscape drifted in the void, both were advancing far too quickly and did not notice it, they were too lucky on their path to find such easy pickings.


    At this time, the primordials were having their talks, recently they started talking more and more, and each time more Primordials joined the discussion. As of now, only the oldest Primordials were still silent as before.


    "The brat is getting really arrogant, that was the second universe in less than a century, why are we still letting him do as he pleases? If he wishes to join us he must make a new addition, what if he challenges one of us and then starts taking us down, one by one!"


    "It happened before, we all have seen it, no Primordial could sustain two domains, even if he kills his way through the void, he would fall under the elders, it has always been like that"


    "This one is special, I am intuition and I feel nothing about him, that is impossible unless there are two conditions, he is too week to even be present on my radar, or he is too strong, you know which one I personally lean towards"


    "Let it be, the old fogies are letting him do as he wishes, some kind of deal was made, if you truly wish to strike, make sure you don''t get killed because you did not ask for permission"


    "Those elders are really going too far, we allow them to rule just because they survived and not..."


    "SHUT UP, do you want to kill us all? they did that once, you know it, we all know it, so shut up andin about anything but that".


    "We are too week to even resist if they decided to go after us, just one of them can annihte us without batting an eyelid, so get off your high horse, being a Primordial is nothing but being a bit stronger than mortals, we all have reced someone who has been killed by the elders, when was thest time you saw a Primordial die naturally? Unless you can reach their level, grumble to yourself and do not get close to the forbidden things, those old guys are unreasonable and too bored, if they said he can do as he pleases, unless you can take on all the elders, he can bloody do as he pleases!"


    Dissent was apparent but courage wascking, there may have been a reckless Primordial or two, but none of them was reckless enough to die now, it took so long to reach this position and stabilize in it, and unless things turnedpletely chaotic, no one would dare to disobey the elders, even though the elders have never given an order to the rest of the Primordials, their deal with Yunan was enough protection for him.


    Yunan was blissfully unaware of the things happening in the void, he focused on the coboration with Effort and Tasha, he was getting stronger each passing moment, it was tangible enough to feel gratified about it, maybe by the time they reached the next universe, he would be capable of killing a creator on the level of the maniac from thest one, he did not know the level of Bahn and did not dare specte.

 Chapter 445: Self

    Chapter 445: Self


    Coordination, forethought and patience, these were things Yunan had to learn by nearly dying daily, and it is thanks to these three that he can support his career as a dungeon prowler, all other traits he developed along the years were rted to those three.


    Teaching such profound principles to a teenager was a feat worth celebrating Debauchery party as genius teachers, and Yunan was finding the harder part about imparting the same principles to Effort.


    The problem was not the limited capability of Effort, as a sentient divinity, he was still not free from the binding of his previous phase of existence, reliance on a master.


    As long as Effort received orders or found Yunan in need, he would do as told or help out with all his power, theck of a "self" made the sentience iplete, thus the dependency on a master still.


    As a student of the one and only Debauchery party, it would besmirch the name of his teachers if he did things without challenge or half-assed it in any way.


    The training thus changed its purpose to something else, giving Effort a sense of self, then help him get in tune with Yunan and if possible meld together willingly.


    This had the added risk of Effort rejecting the previous idea of following a master, but it was worth it for Yunan, the Effort divinity was made by him and as such will always be linked to him, unless Effort recognised another god that has effort as his domain, there was no separating Yunan from his divinity.


    Instilling a sense of self came through near-death experiences, also known as the short but hard way, Effort would fight Yunan to the brink of death, neither of them would use power beyond a certain amount, these near-death experiences always resulted in momentary conjoining between god and divinity, but since it was too early, the event did notst longer than a few breaths.


    To his credit, As Effort expended more efforts in fighting, it grew and ego and self-awareness, and not long after, a sense of self and self-preservation.


    On that day, the fight ended with the first draw, it was enough for the two to stop and rest, after all, it took some years of daily fighting to reach this point. But the two mad partners kept at it, fighting endlessly until they could, using only will, join and separate, they were still examining the conjoined state when the rms of Dreamscape started ringing.


    50 years, that was how long it took for Dreamscape to reach a universe abundant with dream energy. And those 50 years of travel provided just enough time for both Yunan and Tasha to power up.


    What Dreamscape found was not just a universe with a higher signature of dream energy, when Yunan examined it, he could hardly think for a moment. Dreamscape had found a dream universe, basically a universe version of Dreamscape.


    Yunan assumed that Dreamscape found its way here because the dream energy that passively left this universe was like a beacon, the starved Dreamscape locked on it due to its abundance.


    Yunan and Tasha wisely agreed to let Dreamscape feed on the errant energy before deciding whether to enter or not.


    Dreamscape was dangerous enough to hold out against an invasion of an entire universe, anything that can be an amplified version of Dreamscape is, by definition, dangerous.


    Yunan was debating about trying to go in alone first, having a dream divinity made himpatible with dream energy and thought the universe would not reject him, as technically, his effort divinity was a huge amalgamation of different divinities.


    Even if he had the idea, he would do nothing yet, Dreamscape has yet to start digesting the energy, and before Yunan had a primary grasp of the energy, taking any action would be extremely foolish.


    Tasha, on the other hand, was rearing to get into action, a new universe, a new set ofws and a new challenge.


    Although she had not fully understood all thews she had ess to, she had a basic primary understanding of them all and had focused on thews rting to her domain, for most of thest 50 years, and she was hoping to get a new set.


    She had some insight on why Yunan was focused on grasping allws and assimting them, although it was only some insight, she knew that for those who umtews, there will be some benefits that can eclipse the use of a single set ofws.

 Chapter 446: watched

    Chapter 446: watched


    As the lord of Dreamscape, Yunan felt everything as the divine realm grew invigorated, it was on the correct path to its past glory, recovering from the immense losses of dream energy and dream creatures, now, all it had to do was absorb this dream energy of unmatchable purity.


    Yunan knew for certain that even the Primordial of dreams wouldn''t have such pure energy, why? Because the energy was actively reinforcing Dreamscape even before it was absorbed.


    There was a tiny resonance between the dream energies, that little bit of resonance made the purer dream energy strengthen that of Dreamscape. Leading the already wonderful divine realm to be something more, something better, something new.


    While Yunan was still relishing in the possible awesomeness of the under-improvement Dreamscape, it was all of a sudden that he felt someone watching him, moving his eyes to the source, he found a ball of inconspicuous light, it looked like it was part of the dream energy surrounding the strange dream universe, Yunan would havepletely missed it if he was not super sensitive to being watched.


    Being hunted by Bai and Lucian was enough to make him feel it when someone was observing him, even casually, add in the fact that Yunan had the skill Lucky cover, being focused on by anything was nearly impossible, even the over-gods failed to find him when he was not even activating the skill, therefore, being noticed when he was not deliberately showing himself was very unusual.


    The ball of light seemed to be merely observing Yunan, Tasha did not even realise anything, making him sure he was the target, especially since the gaze was capable of seeing through the border of a divine realm like Dreamscape.


    If it was any other day, Yunan would assume the ball of light to be merely a curious creature that was attuned to dream energy, but not today, his karmic luck has been sitting unused for so long and today, he had this intuition that it was about taking action.


    The ball of light yed the role of the curious creature very well, Yunan knew this because no curious creature would simply watch with intent in its gaze, less than sentient beings would usually watch for the sake of watching when curious about something, the intent in its gaze betrayed the light ball as a sentient being, one that was ning on something strong enough to trigger the long-dormant karmic luck, whether good or bad, Yunan had to wait and see.


    A preemptive strike was possible but Yunan did not want to antagonize anyone, unless they acted against him first, otherwise, he would be triggering his own karmic luck against himself, at best there will be only some loss of luck, at worst, a full-blown retaliation, Yunan knew better than to risk his karmic luck.


    Thinking about the things he did recently, he did not know how much luck and karma he had umted, just the amount of lives he spared through peaceful negotiation with a universe and the annihtion of another was already beyond count, how many generations of people get to be born and live decently thanks to his actions, the answer may shock you, so I will keep it a secret, hehe.


    The ball of light had no trouble infiltrating Dreamscape, there was no rm nor was there any reaction, Dreamscape must have deemed the creature with superior dream energy as an ally or a beneficial guest, even so, Yunan did not disregard the possibility that Dreamscape was not even aware it was being infiltrated. As a divine realm, failing to witness an intrusion was extremely worrisome.


    Yunan took off his eyes and spiritual awareness from the ball of light, this being was too strong, no matter how things went, Yunan could only escape at best, he would have to sacrifice Dreamscape and Tasha for even that to happen.


    Seeing that Yunan pulled his monitoring away, the light ball shivered for a few seconds before it resumed a wless spherical look, it made a few revolutions around Yunan then audibly began to mutter to itself, startling Tasha out of her thoughts.


    "Interesting, very interesting, hohoho, to think such a little miracle could exist, hmm hmm, oh, what is this, a mission that armies would refrain from is taken by a single man, how marvellous, this is the best, so much to read, so intriguing"


    The ball of light was using dream energy tomunicate, not themonnguage, although it sounded like a voice, it was more like a projection of thought, whoever was taking the form of the light ball was just thinking loudly.


    Tasha looked at Yunan as if asking for permission to attack but he shook his head, being this powerful were better not poked in the nose, being in that situation himself more than once, Yunan was aware how it felt to be looked down upon.


    he was very aware of hepared to the ball of light, Yunan was only sure of escape because this kind of being would be restricted to an environment rich in pure dream energy, that was how the being was closely rted to the dream energy.


    "Since you have made it to my doorstep why note inside, your little shuttle will benefit so much, how about it, we can have tea and biscuits, and we can talk about so many interesting and new things, it has been too long, too long, nowe, don''t be shy, you are my dearest guests, I won''t be bored for a few million years with you kids around, hehehe."


    The ball of light did not even expect an answer, it immediately shepherded the two and their realm into the dream universe, willing or not, did not seem to be a problem, Yunan was so sure he could escape before, but not anymore, after a few futile tries, he could only bide his time.


    The force applied on the Yunan and Tasha was very gentle but irresistible none the less, Yunan knew he could not run away now, but there must be a moment for himter on, he decided that if things turned sour, he would burn as much luck and karma as he could, even inviting bad luck and karma was not out of the realm of possibility, as long as he could leave the ce alive.

 Chapter 447: Tea and Biscuits

    Chapter 447: Tea and Biscuits


    Although the atmosphere did not seem right, Tasha saw the silent determination on Yunan and chose to stay silent, the entity that kidnapped them seemed deranged to a point, rambling all the time about how much fun to be had, about delicious foods and drinks, it seemed that whoever this being was, it was lonely.


    It became apparent when they arrived inside the universe, there was no trace of life inside, everything in this ce was made of dream energy, no matter how Yunan scanned the universe, there was no trace to be found about any life.


    No wonder the light ball was deranged, being alone in the universe of dreams would break any psyche, if one was in a normal universe, he would have the respite of dreams and waking and would still lose some sanity as the years progress, they would forget social skills,nguage, and many behaviours, resorting to talking out loud to keep themselvespany.


    Now if we apply the same but everything around is a dream, the deterioration would be much faster and the sanity loss would be near irrecoverable, death by insanity was rare among gods but not as umon as death from boredom.


    As they traversed the universe Yunan found some answers along the way. From the things he saw and the things introduced by the light ball, this universe had some very unfortunate history.


    The ball of light led them to a vi where they were left to their own devices, but as they tried to look around they heard the same voiceing from upstairs.


    "Sorry to make you wait, I have not had a guest for so long that I almost did not know which clothes to put on" a cute looking cat 3 feet tall walked upright with a top hat and a monocle, a double-breasted suit and no pants, he lookedical but his demeanour was nothing but, he half pranced half walked to Yunan and Tasha shaking their hands joyously.


    "You can call me prince Cattolu, or Catto for short, even Tolu works, just call me anything you like, nice to meet you, wee wee, oh where are my manners, shall we have some tea while we talk?" the upright walking cat did not seem to be bothering himself with the idea that Yunan and Tasha would rather leave this ce as soon as possible, let alone chat and have tea.


    With a wave of his hand, or paw rather, the three of them were sitting in a garden filled with catnip and around a table that had a tea set already set up, the teapot was already streaming, there were no biscuits though, only crumbs left in the te. Yunan could already guess what kind of tea was in the pot.


    "I love this garden, it helps refresh my mind and restore my thinking when I get distracted, help yourselves to the tea, there is no need to feel awkward, act as if you were home, you are my honoured guests after all". The upright walking cat kept talking endlessly, it had no "nya" in its speech patterns, it was very verbose and had no end to things to talk about, Yunan and Tasha were still debating if they should call the cat him or it.


    "Oh right, you already passed the test of another dream god so this should be easy, as per the will if you can pass the test you shall inherit the ce, if not, then you can keep trying as long as you keep mepany, are you ready to take the test, I must say I will not help you, for I do not know the solution myself" this ended Cattolu''s rants, he looked at the two very keenly.


    "You dide here for the test right?" the question was a threat, they had to answer very carefully or be in peril, the upright cat looked like it was waiting for the wrong answer.


    "Tourists, we are tourists" Yunan almost stammered before remembering that this thing could read him like an open book, "well, sort of tourists, we are on a mission, and we hade here to replenish the dream energy reserves of our realm, we had no idea that this ce existed before, therefore we are not interested in this universe, we have no benefits from causing it harm, as such we hope to leave once our divine realm has recuperated".


    Yunan tried to keep things a bit unclear, he had no choice, telling the truth was redundant and clued the god before them that they knew it can read minds, or whatever its ability is, and lying was just asking for death, being ambiguous was the best choice.


    "Yes, yes, how unfortunate, you must take the test once before you can leave this ce, those are the rules, the good news is only one of you must take the test, the other is free to leave once the test starts. How terribly sorry I am, I thought you came as challengers, to repent let me serve you some precious and rare biscuits, usually these are for big events but, take it as my apology" the walking cat then walked to some brick in the wall and removed it, behind it was a metal cookie box.


    "s only three are left, woe is me for failing so miserably and having to apologize, please ept my most precious of belongings", the cat served one cookie beside each teacup, his shaking arms showed his unwillingness to give away its treasure.


    Yunan took the cookie and ate it, although it was old, it was not stale, and had some traces of life on it, this was something made by a living mortal. As to when it was made, he could not tell at all.


    Feeling a tinge of guilt as he chewed on the cookie, Yunan felt worse when there were tears threatening to spill from the feline eyes, Cattolu watched Yunan move his jaw as if he was loath to the idea itself.


    Seeing this, Yunan cleared his throat and took out a box of cookies and biscuits from the portable home slowly saying, "to forgive mister Cattolu, I have to insist that you share the contents of this box with us, how about that?".

 Chapter 448: Too many in one

    Chapter 448: Too many in one


    There was a moment of silence, then there was a gulp and then there were tears flowing down Cattolu''s furry cheeks, then there was gentle sobbing before it turned into some hysterical crying, ending with Cattolu gently purring in Yunan''sp, curled into a ball around the box of sweets.


    Both Tasha and Yunan felt very bad for the feline, Cattolu was already preparing to take Yunan as his sworn liege, or so they thought they heard between the sobs, even the crazy aura around the upright cat was gone.


    At this moment Yunan was fighting the urge to pet this cute and cuddly ball of fur, the gentle and satisfied purring only made it harder to resist, and the well dressed Cattolu looked so adorable while hugging the box of baked goods.


    Now that the host has stopped using the gentle force to keep the two restrained, they found that they had no ability to act on this universe, thews were too different and mutated to support any action, even survival was purely thanks to the dream energy that Yunan cultivated and used to cultivate his followers.


    Tasha was getting the worse of it, while Yunan was not bothered too much, he was used to the difort, his body seemed to be fated with having strange situations were difort was the main theme.


    He could still grit his teeth as he slowly learned thews of the ce and got used to the pure dream energy.


    After a while, the well-dressed cat saw it fit to leave Yunan''sp and slowly munch on the cookies and biscuits he was given, although he still wanted to save some, he dared not risk the ire of Yunan and send the man to the test while still being unforgiven.


    "So, about the test, I am really sorry, one of you must take it, I can promise you that you would not waste time and the rate of death is less than 3%, so please remember to pass by another time after the test, I would love to have some more of these cookies" the cat was trying hard to not leave behind anything, even the crumbs.


    "Can you at least tell us about what is in the test, anything that could help us out, we have more of these on hand, we can even bake fresh ones for you, this guy is good!" Tasha decided it was worth it if she sold Yunan''s cooking for some pointer, especially when a death rate was mentioned.


    "I am terribly sorry to both disappoint you and forfeit those fresh cookies, as the guardian of the test, I have no knowledge of it, all I know is that t changes with each challenge, I would also rmend that you do not seek death, else you will die, as for the wins, there are so far none, only failures, you can quit the test after finishing it, the result does not matter" the cat said, his words were shrowded by crunching sounds as he chewed and talked.


    "Fine then", Yunan sighed as he stood up from his chair with a wince, reminding Cttolu to reestablish his gentle force, "lead me to the test, send Tasha and Dreamscape away afterwards, I would ask you to let them stay until Dreamscape has recharged". Yunan had made the decision.


    Sacrificing Tasha would have been the wiser choice, that way, the weakest of the group would be left behind, allowing Yunan to resume his quest, unfortunately that was not how Yunan operated, he would rather flee from a battle than to refuse a challenge, losing his teammate while running from a fight with enemy was not as shameful as sacrificing them for a test, besides, this was just part of the excursion.


    The cat in the gentry suit and hat led the two to a stone stele, it was engraved with senseless patterns and emitted dream energy, it was most likely a gravestone, but Yunan chose not to ask Cattolu, he had already been in touch with the will of a dying god once before.


    "So, who will take the test? there are too many of ''you'' in that body, only one could take the test". The cat found the look on Yunan and Tasha amusing, but with a wave of his paw, three more joined them.


    "Oh,e on", said the three as they were ejected from Yunan''s body, they shouted the same for twopletely different reasons, one was that someone wanted to watch, and the other was for breaking apart the same body into three fragments.


    Yunan could not help but sigh, he had forgotten that his body was full of others, he found it strange that Drogon and Ignis still held their consciousness, and did not even try to understand why Effort was ejected too.


    "I''ll go", sighed Tash as she tried to step forward but Yunan was already touching the stele. He activated the power inside and was teleported somewhere leaving behind only a thought, "you better wait for me, or else". Although Cattolu was not the target of the thought, he shivered slightly.


    "Your master is scary"mented the upright walking cat before taking the chance to bring out some chair and prop up a screen to watch how Yunan did in this test, he also sneakily read all he could from the four beings with him, even as unique as the feline thought he was, he was near as unique as the current batch of guests, worst part is that they seemed to like sharing the same body, the best part, they had cookies.


    Tasha was persuaded to use her privileges as Yunan''spanion to gain ess to the private dimension, in order to bring out all types of sweet goods for the cat to taste, strangely it refused meats and vegetables, did not like them as much as cookies, even other types of drink and sweets, including theva wine and lotus fruits, everything that did was not baked dough in different reincarnations was rejected.

 Chapter 449: Testing?

    Chapter 449: Testing?


    "Master is not too scary, he is the nicest, but he can get creepy and violent sometimes, you know, your run of the mill god" reyed Ignis, meanwhile Drogon did not even deign to answer, he was more concerned about Effort sitting next to him.


    "What are you looking at, rodent?" Effort was feeling annoyed for some reason, although he knew of the existence of Drogon, being side by side with him felt very irritating, especially with how close Yunan''s battle form looked to Dogon''s humanoid form.


    "Nothing, you just rub me off the wrong way, so much so, my teeth are itching to take a bite". Drogon snarled and showed his sharp teeth to Effort, if it was not for Yunan, Drogon would have just started gnawing on the divinity already.


    "Boys, be nice, we all know if dad knew you were fighting there will be punishment, I would get dragged into it too, if you feel like fighting, do it outside, otherwise, just sit and watch like the good boys you should be", both Drogon and Effort shoved their irritation on Ignis who just lifted her nose at them then turned to the screen.


    "Wretched brat!" the two spoke at once, looked at each other then dejectedly watched what would happen on the screen, meanwhile, Tasha was taking mental notes, these were pieces of Yunan, or so she thought, she had never seen these in the dream city, and they should have some profound effects on Yunan''s subconscious.


    "Hush now, it starting focus, you might learn something, your dad or whatever is very likely to do well in this test, by the way, do you think he would like a cat as a pet?" the cat was already thinking about leaving his post as guardian and following the endless cookies , but he needed to make sure he would be wee first, as a gentlemanly cat, he would never impose too much. Maybe just a little bit, for the sake of cookies.


    "We already had a cat, well two to be urate, so why not, besides, you how should I say this look  interesting" Ignis tried her best at diplomacy but gave up on it soon, the feed was connecting and the view of Yunan and an old man; standing face to face; came up.


    "Once upon a time this universe was full of life", said the old man, it was merely a recording and Yunan stayed silent to hear everything it had to say, if he asked some question before it was done, he might lose on some information.


    The scene changed, it showed a of humanoids, living in the desert, they had rough sandy skin as if born from the desert, they had great beasts of burden and huts made of cloth, they looked more like huts then tents, seemingly semi-mobile, the men wore long dresses that reached to their ankles, the women wore baggy pieced of cloth wrapped around every part of them, even the eyes were shrouded from prying eyes.


    Each one on the street was going oring with a certain purpose, the heat of the sun was already unbearable and it was still onlyte morning, the poption of this ce looked to be somewhat at ease as if adapted to the environment.


    "This was split in half between two people, the sand walkers, and forest dweller" the scene changed once again, from high up one could see, that the world was split into two colours, golden brown and deep emerald green.


    The scene then zoomed in towards the emerald greennds, it was just one big forest, some elfish race was living in that side, there was more life here, animals and beasts and those elfish forest dwellers.


    Unlike the conservatively dressed desert walkers, the forest dwellers wore scant anything, some even went nude or half nude with merely leaves covering their privates, they were lithe and lean where the desert walkers were thick and burly, and they lived in trees, some lived in hollows inside trees, some had a semnce of a house build but dead wood, the rest just slept on the branches.


    At the edge between the forest and the desert, settlements came to be, mostly for trading, but it was somewhat permanent, every 10 days walk one could find such settlements, on this neutralnd between the forest and the desert, one could find everything they need, and those settlements provided that, a chance to trade.


    There was no mary system, well nomon one, the sand walkers used precious metals like gold and silver and copper as coins, while the forest dwellers use some kind of seeds that can be used to grow some marvellous trees as currency, those seeds can be eaten directly, each one of those seeds was worth one week worth of meals.


    The trade in the settlements went ording to the rules of barter, one would trade something they want for something the other party requires, it was no wonder that sometimes an entire group pools what they have to trade among themselves.


    Being cheated was both a risk and a way to make a profit, someone who has a starving a child is more likely to trade more precious metals for some fruits, while the same guy could be the only provider of said precious metals in a while and is offered more and more for his items.


    Security was a concern as well, although both side never harmed each other in the settlements, they were not so restrained outside, if there was no security around a settlement, no one would trade there, lives were worth more thanmodity, therefore, even if theft was rampant, killing was possible only in wars.


    The desert had a natural phenomenon, every sand storm brought with it, or more likely, unearthed fragments of unrefined ores, one only had to walk the face of the desert and collect those fragments, the forest was the same, it was abundant with food and water, thus trade could be arranged.


    As for the reason of war, well it was; as always; greed.

 Chapter 450: Already?

    Chapter 450: Already?


    While most of the members of the two races on the were simple; in life and belief, they all belonged to a major force on their side of the.


    At the heart of each hemisphere in this was a faction, a grand city, each city housed an idol and was a marvel of technology and civilization, they were respectively, Sandaria of the sand walkers and Terraria of the forest dwellers, two forbidden cities.


    To enter the city, one must be of a certain standard, mental and physical. Each parent brought their newborn child to try and gift them a wonderful life in the forbidden city. Those who had the aptitude were selected, their parentspensated, and the parents will strive to birth more good children because when those children reached a certain level of power and influence, they could bring their parents to the forbidden city.


    The only reason those from the forbidden city ever included new blood from the outsidends was the degeneration of bloodlines, they had once been ruled by inbreds and dimwits born of superior bloodlines, but such dilution and degeneration were barely noticed until they almost took over and destroyed the world.


    As such, the custom of injecting new blood from the world came to be, as long as new genes of certain standards entered the gene pool, things would not go too bad.


    The opposite also happened, when those born in the city had no aptitude, they would be given to those living in the world, making sure only those who were superior lived in the city.


    What had the forbidden cities used to trade for the new blood and the other things they acquire from the poption? They used things like cures, pills, training manuals, and general knowledge.


    A n of sand walkers would prosper if they were able to give birth to a sufficiently good child, or a number of good children, to trade for a manual that taught them how to identify the rarer metals and resources, and a n of tree dwellers could prosper if they gain the techniques of rearing animals and fruit trees.


    ns would die out or be robbed, killed or simply assembled, thus, the level of technology could be kept very low. if the people residing outside the forbidden cities had no time to upgrade their technology and had to work hard for a living, the forbidden city would disseminate technologies at a pace that would never threaten them.


    It was rare for a n to assemble three or four techniques before they are robbed and killed for the precious manuals they traded their children for, that way, it would be hard for just one n to dominate, although it happened that some ns were capable of growing to a certain extent, they no longer feared the power of the neighbouring ns, the forbidden city would bring them down no matter what, even going as far as to wipe out the entire n and call it divine retribution through natural disaster.


    And then, the asional wares, stating the stupid reason that the numbers of the poption must be controlled, all those infirm and ill and old are sent to fight in the neutral zone, they are told it is mandated by the god, the ill and infirm must prove to the god that they were worth as much as the ordinary and healthy ones, they must obtain resources through force, since they can no longer work like the rest, they have to sacrifice their lives in order for the children to grow stronger and healthier.


    Religion is the opium of the masses, and religion controlled this, its origin was the two seemingly opposite poles of power, but in reality, they were the same, they had frequent contact and exchange, they worked together to further profit themselves and eventually reach the exalted state of godhood.


    Gods ascended from the forbidden city and used their power to further power up the city, an endless cycle, the end goal was to dominate the entire universe.


    Yunan''s test had turned into a history lesson about the force that dominated the universe, but it was at this point the exnation ended and the test started, the old man gave Yunan one simple task.


    "As a ten-year-old child, you must live and work to bring down the forbidden cities, you can not use your knowledge, you must not divulge your identity and must follow the rules of the to ultimately reach your goal".


    Yunan frowned and looked troubled about what to do, he kept a close eye on the projection and asked one simple question, "how many times can I try again?" to his surprise, the answer was very suspicious, the answer was "as long as you have the will to try". That answer only made Yunan''s frown deepen and his face contort further into contemtion.


    Cattolu was looking very excited, he was preparing to watch a good show of a futile struggle that would go on in a cycle until Yunan was mentally broken, but to his chagrin, he looked at the screen and the child who just put a spike through his heart.


    It did not take five minutes for Yunan to die in the test, that was a failure, suicide was notmon amongst the challengers, especially one with no rhyme or reason, most of the challengers would only kill themselves if they were stuck and had no path for recovery.


    Cattolu wanted to scream foul and curse at Yunan for a few years but the Test had already reset, and the projection of the old man returned to offer Yunan his next chance, that or the choice to leave the test, as one failure was considered enough to leave.


    "Would you like another chance? Change somethings you found undesirable? After each failure, a single detail could be changed in this test, alternatively, you may also choose to abandon the test, if so please state the reason why you ended the test so fast".


    Yunan gave a weird smile to the old man before slowly saying the words that made him the first and sole victor of this test.

 Chapter 451: So sleepy

    Chapter 451: So sleepy


    "Well, youngster, please make a choice" the old man spoke and 3 different orbs of light flew from his palm and floated before Yunan, each making itself as enticing as can be.


    "I choose to end the test, there is no need to take a test designed to be failed, it took about 200 years to take over my universe from the age of ten, and nothing in this can grant me the same resources and open up the same paths to me, even if I were to use my entire life as a guideline, it would not work, this test with these rules; it can never bepleted in the amount of time I can allocate to this test, therefore, it is better to not even try".


    Yunan took a moment before saying a few more words.


    "You see, I have the ability to solve this test but not the time, I should be moving along with my journey as soon as my divine realm recuperates, and a decade is not long enough for me to solve your puzzle" with that he touched the third light ball and was ejected from the test.


    He was brought out where the audience watched the screen, the live feed had just cut off, Cattolu was still cursing at Yunan, Tasha was looking very intently at the three who were nodding their heads, unexpectedly all three came to the same conclusion, voiced at the same time when Yunan arrived.


    "As expected, you did not even bother trying" then the three voices diverged into three different statements as follows, "disappointing really", "should we leave now?", "Anyway, did you miss me?".


    The upright walking cat has just stopped cursing long enough to hear those words, there was a stunned expression on his face, then it turned to iprehension and finally resignation, it truly had no idea what the result was, usually failure would be announced so spectacrly that it would never be missed.


    Sess was also hard to miss. just as Yunan was thinking about what to do with his retinue of oddballs, he felt a tug at his soul and the stirring of the fragments of Fate as well as the water fo the river Styx and the Laws, then, out of nowhere, there was something trying to imprint itself on Yunan''s soul.


    Although this neer had no hostile intent, it was still blocked by several kinds of shields that stopped it from imprinting itself on Yunan''s soul, the Laws of three different universes joined to make the first blockade, afterwards, the fragments of Fate joined to make a smokescreen to hide the soul, the waters of the river Styx incased the soul in a strange current as if forming an inescapable ever-changing maze, then Ignis and Drogon souls took the upperyer of thebined soul, finally Effort divinity provided all of them with endless power.


    The imprint finding itself faced with so many hindrances, chose the path of the least resistance and imprinted itself on the only other viable target, Yunan''s sea of consciousness.


    Although it was a marvellously monstrous sea, it was still like a little drop of water that was fed by the power and light emanating from the sr-system-sized divinity. It was too small topare, inside Yunan that is, if it waspared with others, it was easily about a hundred times bigger than the sea of consciousness of your run of the mill god.


    The imprint just settled inside the sea of consciousness and did nothing more, obediently waiting for orders, it would thrum once in a while when Effort fed the sea of consciousness a bit of power.


    Cattolu was pissed, he really hated what he saw, how could the grand gift; that his master left behind; be treated in such a manner, having to delegate itself to the useless sea of consciousness, that was a soul imprint! he wanted to abuse Yunan and his retinue for that but stopped at unsheathing its ws.


    Now that the imprint was obedient and perfectly harmless. Yunan decided not to take any risks, an imprint from the owner of a universe was not something to be taken lightly, therefore, he chose to use his soul bound de to house it, the de was something that came from Yunan''s soul, thus one had to take over the soul before getting their hands on the de.


    The imprint was very cooperative and gently removed itself from the sea of consciousness and sat at the base of the de, giving Yunan a sense of its purposes, uses and abilities.


    The control centre of the entire dream universe, its Fate and a power conduit to power up its user. What a marvellous creation, it also had a message from the creator of this universe.


    "Stay awhile and listen", said an old voice, it wasing from the imprint, an old man simr to the one who conducted the test showed up and as if reading a story, he started narrating a story out of nowhere, regardless of the atmosphere or the time, no consideration for the poor cat who had yet to exin about its unsheathed ws.


    Yunan felt the story would be very long so he found a spot to sit and listen, he had nothing to do anyway.


    The story was too long, an hourter only Yunan and Effort were still fighting sleep, information left behind by a creator was very valuable, it just happens that this time, it came in the form of a long and boring story, even Cattolu was sleeping at the moment, purring with satisfaction as it fondled a box of cookies.


    This old man had a talent for sleep-induction, his voice was too hypnotic and made every cell in Yunan''s body rx, his look was so friendly and kindly Yunan felt that he would never feel hostility again, and his demeanour just gave he one the itch to go to the dream world, as if sleep was their greatest goal, a goal they have been deprived of ever since they were born.

 Chapter 452: This Chapter is too boring to be named

    Chapter 452: This Chapter is too boring to be named


    "Long ago, a creator was tasked by his Primordial to create a new universe, the creator dutifully took to his role and made a universe. As happenstance dictated, this creator was a rather peculiar one, he was fascinated by dreams and the Law behind such a phenomenon. This creator made a decent universe and popted it with the kinds of beings that best conformed to his fancy, basically, sentient and upright walking fauna and flora"


    "The creator took to delving into the dream Laws in his spare time, and when he was fully done sculpting his universe, he took to sleeping for aeons on end, wondering the world in his dreams, until he perfectly understood the Law that governs dreams: Somnium. From that point, every moment he spent sleeping influenced the universe and infected it with dream energy, until he perished along with most life forms under the effect of pure dream energy".


    "During his sleep, the creator came across a being who was wondering the world as a dream, born with especially sensitive perception and weakness that allowed it to be taken by dream energy, the being found sce in its loneliness and perceived imperfection. it followed the creator in his dream journeys and adventures, bing partners not longter".


    "The being was Cattolu, a feline with an exquisite personality and surprising pureness, its unusual defect made it the bestpanion to the creator, a being who could roam the dreands along with the creator, it soon became a god of dreams, one that had no followers or religion, but one that could link to the ever-changing universe like no one else."


    "For Cattolu, his powers grew every moment, with each time the dream energy transformed the universe, he grew more linked to it, and eventually, he became the universe itself. When the creator''sst embers of life were extinguished by the unmatched purity of the dream energy, he left a test, an imprint and a task".


    "Cattolu, who became the will of the universe, its fate and the universe itself, was instructed to only follow the one who obtains the recognition of the test, that was the task left behind by an entric creator who was too fond of dreams, and so the will of the creator was allowed to be passed on to other generations".


    "In the void, few universes would never be allowed to participate in the culling events, they would be spurned by the Primordials, set to drift for the rest of time, some mature, some don''t, somest, some are cut short, some die out naturally, some continue, eternal."


    "These universes were created by entric and odd creators, each of these creators would be interested in a facet of Laws, each one of them followed the paths of their favourite Law to the point it was beyond the Primordial of said Law and domain, each of these creators would create a universe that is in itself a Law, or for the feeble and unlearned minds, a representation of a Law."


    "Usually, a creator would use all the Laws of creation to create, hence being a creator. as creators, the Laws of creation were not hard for them to understand, and thus, they could reach at least a minor attainment in all Laws, resulting in their ability to create, but the odd, aberrant and anomalous creators used only one Law to create, or used it much more inparison to the other Laws, to the point that using other Laws was useless."


    "That kind of creation usually ended with the death of the creator. as beings born in universes with a myriad of Laws, the creators would not survive where only one Law dominates, it was therefore concluded that only one of these universes can exist at a time, there can never be two universes created with the Law of sharpness as there can never be two sharpness Laws."


    "These universes were discarded as faulty due to their uniqueness and lethal pureness, any Primordial who already solidified a domain could never digest such creations, after all, the purity of these Laws had surpassed that of the Primordials. for the Primordials who focused on a domain would supplement it with other domains, hence impurity of the domain and consequently, the impurity of Law".


    "You who have won the favour of this old man and seded in this test, you shall be unparalleled in the Law of Somnium, with the imprint as a power source, you may create a domain of pure dreams and usurp the current Primordial." by this point no one was conscious to hear the rest of the message, Yunan could no longer help himself and dove into deep sleep and consequently a rather strange dream.


    "Took you long enough, is that oldie still prattling on?" greeted Effort as he sipped on his teacup before taking a whiff of the fragrance, just like a connoisseur.


    "You dare sit here, in my dream, sipping daintily on your  sniff sniff oh, that is some good tea, can I have some what was I saying? Right! How dare you leave me alone to listen to that endless tale, that was torture to bear alone, I feel betrayed". Said Yunan without any hint of either anger or disappointment in his voice


    Yunan too sat with the group and sipped tea as well, the atmosphere was gentle and the people around the table were more focused on their teacups than on theirpany.


    "Can you believe such calming tea actually exists? Such spirituality is too absurd, can we keep the cat? He made the tea" Ignis was rather enamoured with her cup, she refilled it a few times in session, looking like it she was drinking a tonic of life and eternal happiness.


    "Sure, the cat can stay, but the main problem is not the tea, what I am wondering about is, what in tarnation are you people doing in my dream, other than brewing tea, and since when you three get along so nicely, I get the cat, forgive me nut... although you three sitting on the same table; so peacefully at that; is not so bad, it is too peaceful for this party, also where is Tasha?".


    No response came, Drogon pretended that it was not his problem, Ignis was too focused on refilling her cup and Effort was studying everything around, then the table vibrated, looking down, a pair of pleading eyes met Yunan''s.

 Chapter 453: Sorting things out

    Chapter 453: Sorting things out


    "Cattolu, we don''t use this kind of corporeal punishment", Yunan gently said, "especially things like transfiguration and nightmares, alright?" Although Yunan was half scolding the cat, he was slowly undoing whatever he did to Tasha. The sentient tea table turned back to her gorgeous self, she had this hostile gaze locked onto Cattolu, she was ready to pounce on it and swing it by the tail.


    Yunan nonchntly lectured Cattolu on how to punish for half an hour, teaching him about how things should be done; from the experienced viewpoint of a torturer; as well as gently cate the furiously frightened Tasha, as for the other three party members, he said nothing to them.


    He knew that if all of them agreed to punish Tasha, they; against the natural order; somehow agreed that she deserved it.


    In the dream, the unnatural meeting continued, as Yunan attempted to exin to Tasha that, as soul fragments, Drogon and Ignis were sleeping and resting, well until they were forcibly woken and "extracted" from his mind.


    "Look, they were my pets before, now they are parts of my soul, that is as easy as I can put it, in order to stay by my side, they merged their souls with mine, as for their bodies, they were used to strengthen my bloodlines, and yes, before you ask, I have both Phoenix and Dragon bloodlines somehow, that is how it goes".


    Cattolu who was listening to the conversation could not help but twitch the feline ears, having multiple bloodlines with two beings of such potent bloodline each was notmon for a human, let alone the strange case of both beings merging their souls with a human''s.


    "Human souls are not that strong are they? Can you even handle the extra weight of two premium souls, not to mention anything about your body handling both high-end bloodlines, how did you even convince them to like you that much? at the same time!".


    "Nothing much, I am just lucky that way, as for my body handling the bloodlines, well, let''s say I got so lucky with my food, it was ridiculous to say the least, anyway, my soul has been strengthened during my ascension, so yeah, "I was lucky" kinda sums up my entire journey up to this moment in my life".


    Cattolu just shrugged and lost the drive to pursue this line of questioning, he hated lucky people with a passion, being the unlucky things he was all his life, he had nothing but hatred and disdain for those who rode their luck to the hights of the world.


    "What is up with this ce anyway? It''s like your own dream domain inside your mind, neat, for a lucky bastard, that is, how much luck do you have left after you got this?" Cattolu was more interested in the dream city; the unconscious world that Yunan had.


    "The thing is, my luck is dependent on karma, so the more good things I do the luckier I get, for example: killing a few gods to save a universe worth of souls would grant me some decent amounts of luck, doing bad deeds reduces my luck, and my luck activates on its own, so I can''t control it, just direct it towards the end goal, everything else depends on how much luck I part with".


    This exnation made Cattolu hold in its steps, Luck alone was not enough for this particr lucky piece of bovine waste, it had to work in conjunction with karma, this was just making the already overpowered lucky trait even more impossibly overpowered, just being nice makes this guy luckier by the moment, as long as he does not do anything too evil, his luck would never end.


    "This sucks, why did I have to join up this squad?!" the cat dejectedly lost all interest in everything and chose to just curl around and seekfort in the metallic cold of the newest cookies jar he got his paws on.


    "Well anyway, you two get back to sleep and rest, see you when you are fully merged with my soul and well-adapted, better leave your consciousness sleeping as well, things may get weird if you move about, as for you furball, get out of my brain, otherwise things will get ugly, unless invited, never ever do that again, got it?"


    Yunan turned around after giving his orders, he pointed at Effort and Tasha "you work on your dream energies, no one is to do anything else unless I say so, I have a universe to deal with". Then with those words expelled everyone from his dream.


    Waking up alone, Yunan sat cross-legged and brought out his soul bound sword, connected his mind and the imprint of the dream universe and started exploring what it could do.


    Other than being the fully matured Fate, the imprint also contained the pure Law of the universe, giving Yunan full control of the ce, unfortunately, all living beings have died away and everything they left was now tainted by dream energy, hence, no artefacts or other things can be gained.


    Yunan was not greedy enough to scour an entire universe for an artefact or two, he could just use the resources to make his own so he was not too perturbed.


    Taking a moment to think things through, sighing a few times, then finally getting to it, he split the Fate and the Law from the imprint, and left the control on the sword, he decided to use the universe as an energy core for Dreamscape after it was upgraded fully.


    The Fate was added to the other imprints, and the Law was to be studied slowly.


    Under the might of a pure Law, Yunan sank into meditation, he tried toprehend the pure Law while still feeling that his karmic luck was still about to trigger.


    Since the reason to trigger the karmic luck was outside of this universe, Yunan was sure that he wasparatively safe, Cattolu was on his side now, and anything that would trigger his luck would have to wait until he started his journey again,

 Chapter 454: Captured Dream

    Chapter 454: Captured Dream


    While Yunan was meditating on his newest Law, things were changing in the void outside, all of this was because the karma he gained from resolving the test of the dream universe.


    The feeling Yunan got; the one rted to the karmic luck on the verge of activation, was true, he just misunderstood what was the reason and the results for activation.


    Since the karma he just got was enough to trigger the karmic luck trait, it immediately changed things on the path that Yunan would traverse after leaving the dream universe. At this moment, entire universe clusters were changing their paths in the void, and those rare purew universes somehow got closer and closer to Yunan.


    A path was being paved for Yunan while he was meditating, a path that did not escape the gazes of the Primordials, even the greater ones had to stop and take a moment to consider this change.


    This particr activation of the karmic luck had influenced too many Laws, from Fate to Luck to Motion, and many more in between, the Primordials of those domains would have been useless if they could not feel such a change.


    Since only the greatest Primordials knew about the karmic luck trait, only four of them to be precise; Creation, Fate, Null and Chaos, they were more aware of the possibilities. They were very ecstatic to find out such a function of the karmic luck trait.


    To them, the bet they had made on Yunan all those years ago was on its way to paying off, a trait that could override the control of Primordials, meddling with the void and making things even irreversible for the weaker Primordials. Once again, the big four chose to use their influence to stop the rest of the Primordials from meddling in Yunan''s business.


    This bet they made out of boredom was turning out to be on the way to fulfil their deepest desire; if Yunan was smart enough that is. If Yunan was not too eager to reach the domain of a Primordial, he would be the one to break out from this prison called creation.


    The big four were very much aware why they could never beat the great eye above creation, they were impure, their Laws were not pure enough, and those who had the purest of Laws had no intention of bing Primordials, Yunan was the first in a very long time to chose to pursue both paths, purity and power.


    The big four were not hoping that Yunan might take them out with him to see what lies beyond the great eye, they just wished he could dethrone it, just that would satisfy the revenge desires in their hearts. After suffering under its oppressive might that one time, just its downfall was enough for them, that was how much inferior they were to the great eye.


    The being in the shape of an eye was still unaware of what was going on underneath its shut eyelids, hibernating or sleeping, either way, the danger it felt all those years ago was growing steadily unbeknownst to it, something like this would have usually been detected, but the unmatched karmic luck was somehow shielding Yunan from the senses of the great eye.


    Back in some old and quaint universe, a dwarf was pulling an orc thrice his hight by the ear, he was whispering some kind of strong words of scolding into the eardrums of the obviously unrepentant and uninterested orc, the two were moving away from what seemed like a courtroom of some sort.


    As the two moved away from the court, they left the solitary and as they moved away, the two straightened up and made sure they looked presentable enough. Leader and Fey were floating out there, their eyes focused on a collision point where another universe was adjoining itself to the Hosana universe.


    "Are we going too slow or is he moving ahead too fast?" Leader asked no one in particr. Dustan, seemingly itching to test his metal against the neers, let his power flow out like a beacon, an invitation and a challenge. Aside from the eager Dustan, a silver-haired werewolf shimmered into existence beside Leader. His disapproving sigh was enough to show how many times the argument; should the orc be stopped or not; had been carried.


    "Where is the shifty one?" Asked Balin, the answer was obvious but shifty people must be bad mouthed at every moment possible, whether they were present or not mattered very little to the dwarf.


    "Preparing the next scheme for the neers, as usual, you think this bunch are as aggressive as thetest ones?".


    "Doesn''t matter, use them to get stronger, we aregging behind the little twerp, never in my life did I believe my motivation would turn out to be a kid that I beat the crap out of for near on half a century"


    "Well, soon we can step out as well, still, we are too far behind, better work on keeping our strengths and powers as pure as possible, with a good foundation to back them up, otherwise we would end up with just power, a power that has no actual backbone to back it up".


    "Think about it, all these new guys joining the fun are focused on keeping the status quo, no ambition and very much stale, we need to get out or we will turn stale as well, we are spending millennia without much progress, but the kid said to not leave until we can actually find him, meaning that just getting out is not good enough to survive".


    "Well, let''s hope Dusran will hook us a nice fish to feed on, otherwise, we just have to leave and risk life and limb out there".


    Meanwhile, Yunan woke up from his meditation, feeling like he just found a trail in a forest that had no visible paths before this moment, he also noticed theck of impending karmic luck activation, he called to his newest Law and had it integrate into the rest. It was time to start the journey again.

 Chapter 455: A WITCH?

    Chapter 455: A WITCH?


    Unexpectedly, more than a decade was spent on meditating about the purest Law Yunan hade across. The purity of Somnium drove Yunan to change his way of dealing with the Laws he had touched and gathered.


    Before, he wanted to merge his Laws and integrate them regardless of purity, but after getting in touch with the pure dream Law he decided to separate his acquired Laws into two systems. The first system was the universal Law system, where he would assemble all the Laws assimted from ordinary universes, as in universes created with myriad Laws, the second was the pure system, he would merge the pure Laws he encountered.


    This segregation of systems based on purity did not mean that the Laws were ced in different locations or treated differently, the separation was only for the sake of keeping the purer Laws undiluted by the normal Laws. The act of keeping apart the two systems separately will allow Yunan to draw enlightenment from two sides simultaneously, the end goal being the purification of the ordinary Laws as well as the merger of the purified Laws into aplete universal system.


    This was a long term project that may change ording to new Laws and insights during the excursion, for now; what Yunan needed to focus on now was the integration of dream universe into his Dreamscape.


    During this decade Drogon and Ignis returned to hibernation; their merger with Yunan was not yetplete, Yunan spected it had to do with theck of relevant Laws due to his fairly recent dealings with Laws in general. Cattolu was somewhere in Dreamscape acting as a node for the upgrade of Dreamscape and its absorption of the dream universe. Cattolu was basically a being of pure dream energy; thus very weed by Dreamscape.


    As for Effort, he was engrossed in his sense of self, it was newly discovered sensation that he has been using to merge with Yunan, and his recent breakthrough was nothing other than the ability to dream. As a sentient being who has just discovered the notion of self, having dreams was a natural point he had to pass through on its journey to true existence.


    As for Tasha, she was still working on her Laws, the purity of Somnium forced her to return to her own Laws and start working on mastering them all over, the purity of Somnium made her feel the difference she thought was shallow whenparing Laws with Yunan, although hers were notcking much; mostly due to them being gifts from Yunan, hers were only worse when it came to the amount of understanding she had when using them.


    To put it in pure numbers, if Yunan and Tasha stood in the universe of military automatons, Tasha would feel about 20% of the suppression while Yunan wold feel less than 3%, in the greater scheme of things, it was not much difference, but the devil always hid in the details.


    When universes fought each other, things were decided by whichever had a fraction of a percentage more control, more mana or more faith, those little fractions may not even draw attention, but it always came to the little things one had over his foes.


    The integration of the Dream universe as the energy core of Dreamscape took some time, and Yunan did not have it in him to just sit there and wait, instead, he took in his divine ne and started on his next leg of the journey, this time he was not as blind as he was when he first walked out of universe Hosana, no, this time, he had a faint lead tugging at him in the direction of his next fortunate encounter.


    Following the path illuminated by the recent activation of karmic luck, Yunan silently flew towards a silent spot in the void. What he found upon arrival was a derelict looking, human-shaped nt. The being that sat there for who knew how long in piece opened her eyes and beheld her guest with a look that said she had been waiting for him for a very long time.


    "Come forth dear client, please sit before me and show me your palm, I must say, I have not had a customer find me since the day my universe could no longer hold me, please sit dear client, this witch had never left a client go unsatisfied".


    This being who called herself a witch was by no means weak, she was beyond Yunan in every aspect, that was what Yunan felt deep inside, she carried no hatred and the purity about her was like that of a blooming flower under the silvery light of the moon.


    Having no reason to reject her invite Yunan decided to sit down and offer her his palm, he, however, stated that he had very little that may be traded with the witch and he was not prepared to part with his important things.


    The witch only waved her hands and smiled like an old witch hidden in some haunted forest, she smiled the same smile as the witches who were sought by those who wished to change their fortune. "Payment is not something we can discuss, you and I, I was always paid my due, and it was different every time, a memory, a divinity, or a handful of rotten twigs, I never asked for a price and my clients never offered, we make the transaction first and the payment will follow its own course to me when it is due"


    The witch than focused on the palm Yunan offered, he was not against having to pay a price that was fair, and the price to be paid will depend on the transaction, maybe the witch would be the one paying Yunan, maybe they would trade favours and no pay would be involved.


    Although Yunan did not care much about the things that could be lost, he was worried about the things he did not want to lose, and these witches know just how to take away the things a man held dearest to his heart.

 Chapter 456: Karmic Universe

    Chapter 456: Karmic Universe


    The witch looked hard and stared deep into the palm, from what Yunan could see, her vision dove into depths unknown, watched over many crisscrossing paths and got lost in some tangled thread for a bit, what he read from her using the dream energy was vast stillness, a spark would sh here and there, but the stillness was unparalleled.


    Not having a client for a long time may have driven the witch mad, but the stillness he felt was something akin to a tempering of the soul, something brought by a calmness thatsted for an eternity. As for the asional spark, he wondered about that for a bit before being brought back to focus on the asion by a could fingernail touching the centre of his palm.


    The look on the witches face was still the same old, decrepit and strangely; now that he looked closer, it looked more like tree bark than skin. Her breath was gentle and her eyes shone the deeper she looked into Yunan''s palm.


    After some time the witch spoke with a tired voice, it seemed even though she looked as she did when they first met, she had spent a lot of energy on this reading. "I have karma to give, so much of it in fact that maybe only you can use it, however, this time I must ask for remuneration first."


    "If the price is eptable, then we may make a deal" Yunan answered with a bit of trepidation, he would have taken a more stable stance if he knew what the price was beforehand but the way the witch acted as she read his palm and the offer of so much karma was a little too out of his consideration.


    "Well, it should be easy for you, I assume" she smiled and let go of Yunan''s palm, he took a look at where the fingernail had touched, he could not help but shake the feeling he was about to sign a contract of some sort.


    "What I want can be separated into two demands that you must aplish, one must be done before you leave this ce, the other is up to your discretion." she lifted he hand and raised a finger. "First, I want you to take away my power, turn me back into a mortal and send me to a ce where I can regather my karma with time." she then took a long breath and raised the second finger.


    To Yunan, the first finger had a weight to it, as if she was lifting some burden when she made the demand, following that analogy, the second finger was iparably heavy, even unfurling it took its toll on the witch. Yunan scrunched his eyebrows, he understood that this second demand was why she gave up all her power as well as all the karma she had umted her entire life.


    "There is a universe out there that must be destroyed, a ce where Karma is used as currency, the creator of that universe has already been stricken down by his karma, but the universe itself still exists, it has been a while since I have been there myself, and I assume it has be even worse, I want it destroyed, removed from existence, you may use any method you see fit to get rid of it."


    As the witch finished her words, she trembled and copsed, he breath ragged and her energy distorted, Yunan had some guesses on why and ording to the clues he got, this witch has lived to see that ce destroyed, even if it meant her destruction along with it.


    With the witch being as exhausted as she was, she missed a glint of happiness in Yunan''s eyes, he would never have thought he would literally walk into the huge treasure this easily, he was literally getting paid to get stronger.


    In his mind, the gears were spinning like mad, another pure universe was already in his path, and this one was full of pure karma and will greatly impact the future of this excursion to the best possible way. Yunan''s innate karmic luck might even get upgraded, or maybe he would get enough karma to no longer fear bad luck for the rest of his life. The only sore thumb was the annihtion of the beings inside the karmic universe.


    As if reading his thoughts, the witch told him something he never thought was even possible. "Trading karma is not the main reason I wanted to destroy that universe, the main reason is that its inhabitants are well versed in stealing good karma and imnting their umted bad karma into other universes, although its creator died to his own bad karma, he was very good at spreading the bad karma he got from creating such a universe, and his creations mastered that ability as well. Many universes have fallen prey to them, many universes are used as karma farms and/or dumps and that is uneptable".


    There was a moment where Yunan froze, and for a very long moment he could notprehend the words that were spouted by the witch, the idea of an entire universe''s livelihood, for everything to be based on stealing good karma and sowing bad karma, the repercussion of this has already killed the creator, but for the universe to still exist, the Law of karma must be very pure in that universe.


    And then a thought bloomed in Yunan''s mind, the witch, she must have stolen all the good karma on her from residents of that universe, then another idea that was even more terrifying took hold of him, what if she got all this good karma from taking away the bad karma from the universes inflicted by those guys.


    Yunan never thought of himself as righteous, his own karma and luck were gotten from good deeds and bad, he did influence the lives of others by changingws, taking away their luck, sarong them, footing them into belief. But he had never attempted to do harm to others just for the sake of himself, he actions may have harmed others in his selfishness, but nothing was done for the sake of harm, taking someone''s good karma and dumping the ad karma on them was something Yunan would have never considered, even the enemies he fought were dealt with directly, none of them got killed due to bad luck or bad karma.

 Chapter 457: worshiped flower

    Chapter 457: worshiped flower


    "To think that this kind of deal can be made as well!" Yunan was almost scared out of his skin when the eximing voice of old Death rang in his ear. As Always, Yunan could never detect the old man when Death was actually trying not to be found.


    One look between the witch and Death told Yunan that the two were neither strangers nor liked to be in each other''s presence. The simple nod they shared was the only sign of an old enmity buried in time, one that was held back by a flimsy yet long-standing truce.


    "I''d advise you against taking the deal, all witches are cheaters and hoodwinking harlots, but I guess the sight of you pulling your hair out of regret would be a refreshing scene". Death was strangely crude with his words, but Yunan did not care much, he only scratched his head before responding sheepishly.


    "I might be the one ripping her off this time, forget that for now, let me finish this deal and we can see to your needs". With those words, Yunan sent Death to Dreamscape before focusing on the recovered witch.


    "I agree to strip you of your power and to remove the karma rted universe from existence, the payment is all the karma you have on you, as well as all the power you have gained, you are then to be sent to a safe universe where you can start over as mortal, this is the deal we are having, do you agree?".


    Yunan produced a ball of light on his fingertip, it was his way of swearing an oath on his divinity, the witch did the same and when the two balls of light touched, Yunan could feel the contract taking hold.


    The witch smiled a wicked smile at Yunan before shoving her palm inside his chest and with a muffled sonic boom, her entire palm was inside his ribcage, holding his heart rather forcibly.


    Yunan had yet to react to the feeling of his heart being restricted when he felt another jolt, and then another, each beat of his heart in the hand of the witch brought a jolt that stunned him out of his thoughts. Jolt after jolt spread through Yunan''s body and soul until he could no longer tell what was going on.


    Sometimeter Yunan woke up feeling bloated and hungover, he was still in ce, the witch was nowhere to be seen, Death was chuckling to himself at the dumb-looking Yunan who was still unable to think freely.


    "You woke up faster than she expected, she said you would take a year, it took you 4 hours, I do hope you will hold a grudge against her for this" Death knew what Yunan was most concerned about and thus gave him the answers he sought first, before even helping him to his feet. Tasha was there too, she seemed more concerned with refilling Deaths drink and snacks than about what was to happen to Yunan.


    "To think that even with consume, it took me 4 hours to wake up and still feel bloated like a stuffed turkey, was that why you came? To keep an eye on me?" Yunan was muttering audibly and jumping from one idea to another, so his sentence was not very coherent. But the gist of it was understood by the two who were present.


    "Nah, I missed these poison lotus fruits, and my boss is feeling like you should be a bit more discreet, keeping the Primordials in check is not a solution that can be effective for long, try not to cause too much trouble, for a while, just until you can take a Primordial on in a fight, and I am to escort you until a certain point where you will be required to do something for my boss, hence, here I am".


    The groggy Yunan barely registered all of that, he plopped down at the table and started chugging theva wine to restore his energy and state faster.


    As Yunan rested and restored himself bit by bit, Effort was slowly digesting a stupendous amount of karma and a strange divinity rted to karma. ording to the primary analysis Yunan made on the energy of the divinity, it was rted to purifying karma and digesting bad karma, it was like as if it was a syphon of bad karma that did not originate from a person''s bad deeds and words.


    After sharing the findings with Death, the old man did not seem very surprised, he felt mncholic and had a look of nostalgia on him.


    The Witch was originally a flower worshipped by some local vigers in a hunting vige as a flower of protection, as the faith from the vigers gathered, the flower grew in proportions, and it soon became divine and not long after, the flower gained sentience and did her job as the protector of the little vige.


    Some yearster, those from the karmic universe arrived in her vige and infected it with their bad karma, Death was still on his third universe back then and came to harvest the lives who were infected with too much bad karma, the two came into conflict multiple times, and eventually, they came to a truce, as long as the flower could remove the bad karma before it caused the deaths of the vigers, Death would note for her people.


    To keep the karmic universe agents from sowing the bad karma, the flower turned into a wood-witch and started selling her services as someone who took away bad karma, and from then on the wood-witch grew in strength, fought Death a few times, absorbed enough bad karma and for her protective divinity to mutate into something else, something that Effort seemed to find very appetizing.


    "Thanks for the meal, I sent the flower back home, she was very thorough in paying for our service, she left everything but the root of her origin, a nice flower, well, I now have information, memories and even feeling that I have n idea what to do with,e and help me go through this stuff". Effort sent a message to Yunan as the three were talking about the history between Death and the wood-witch.

 Chapter 458: Null, end?

    Chapter 458: Null, end?


    Yunan invited Death and Tasha to help himb through the endless amounts of the information left behind by the wood witch, For some reason Death declined the invitation, while Tasha who was very interested chose to stay with the old man, something that Yunan did not care to dig into.


    "Cough, cough, ahem, I would like to help out in that regard" the voice of the usually grumpy Cattolu was rather timid, that was enough to draw the attention of Yunan to his newest pet.


    "Um, it''s me paying for my keep, you know, helping out with the work as payment for my stay with you, it is not like I want to help out in exchange for cookies or to say thank you". The fidgeting gentlemanly cat gave Yunan a knot between his eyebrows, this was not something the cat did at all, not since he was taken in by Yunan.


    "Fine, your job is to sort out the information rted to the Karmic universe, guide Dreamscape there, no peeking into other stuff, otherwise effort will eat you". Yunan was not about to refuse any kind of help but was not in the mood to y around or be pranked by the cat in a hat.


    "Let''s do this". Effort was strangely enthusiastic about doing something other than increasing his affinity with Yunan, driving Yunan to further furrow his brow, not even dreams were this strange, of he was not sure of it, he would believe he was dreaming or in some sort of illusion.


    While Yunan started working on a task that seemed nearly endless, Dreamscape followed its path without deviation, it was on the right path, it would eventually find the karmic universe, it was merely a matter of time. Meanwhile, Death and Tasha were in deep discussion over their drinks and snacks.


    "It seems your choice did not backfire on you for once, how does it feel to be on the side that truly moves the hands of fate?" Death asked Tasha his eyes peering deep inside the woman, at something that was beyond what was called destiny, fate or simply soul.


    "Worth it" replied Tasha with a sigh and a smile, only she knew how hard being on this side felt like. all the luck, all the good karma and all the delicious new Laws she got her hands where a product of hard work, dedication and endless suffering.


    "You seem to have gotten used to it, good, this way, our task is going to proceed much more smoothly" Death shifted his gaze back to Tasha''s face causing her to shudder. This was the true gaze of Death, he did not pull out this gaze much, even after his long years with the man, Yunan had never seen it once, although Mother had seen it, she was one of the few who did not reject it, just like Tasha did now.


    Tasha had no power to block the true gaze of Death, her shudder was the natural rejection life had towards death, it was not much of a reaction from her part, it was just how the world worked, that gaze was not meant for living beings, to begin with.


    "Good, good, you seem to have grown up,pared to your childish days in the council of stupid oldies, you seem more like a goddess now, how does it feel?" Although Death''s voice was gentle and calm as always, Tasha hated it so much, her history with the old man was not very pleasant by any stretch of the imagination, but she had learned to enjoy her time with the old man, now that she had grown up as he said.


    "He has this effect on those around him" she tried to remain neutral but her rxed expression told Death more than her words could ever do. "This strange power he has, it draws you, strips you of all that made you who you were then leaves you but with your true self, it''s easier to grow up when all the hindrances are out of the way".


    "Spoken like a typical housewife, I find it infuriating to be beside the dimwit. To start questioning all that you thought was who you are is just cruel when you are our age, but, it is as you said, worth it". Death nodded his head at something he saw in Tasha then continued speaking. "If I stay around him long enough, taking over my master is just another step along the way, truly infuriating". Although the words conveyed difort his expression was the opposite, something that happened quite a lot when talking about Yunan.


    "Your master does not seem to reject your overreaching thoughts, did Null get affected too?" the question remained hanging after Tasha spoke the words. The answer took a moment to formte, an answer from Null himself, Tasha judged. "Null is the end, even to itself, it would not reject my ideas, nor would it discourage or encourage them, Death as a domain has always been like this, to end all is the way of Null, and the current Null is reaching its end".


    Both Death and Tasha had no idea why they felt like Null was happy about its own end, or rather epting of the mere idea of it. Primordials were not known for relinquishing their power and position to capitte before anything. When a primordial was reced, things always started with a bang and ended with an even bigger bang, themotion was definitely the sort generated by a friendly take over.


    "Let us forget what was just spoken, soon your master needs to know, otherwise, he may trample your beloved world without a care. Although my master wants him to revive your old home, I have no idea if the kid would agree, better you tell him than me doing it, you know how he gets when ites to his wives". There was a slight smile on the old man''s lips, as he spoke to Tasha, who did not seem to like being part of Yunan''s harem without being told beforehand.

 Chapter 459: Karmic revelation

    Chapter 459: Karmic revtion


    "Yunan is much more unreasonable than that, a dead universe may attract his attention and just as likely pass by him unnoticed. If you want him to revive it, he would do so, just because you asked, but what value is there in a dead universe" Tasha was rather confused about the whole thing, although she had epted that her world was more than likely dead, she could not help but feel emotional at the thought of having it revived.


    "Half-dead" corrected Death. "My master has been the one holding onto the universe and has kept it from decayingpletely, but the recent end of those who were part of the bet has let Null reconsider some matters, including but not limited to the revival of dead and dying universes, especially those who lost their fate, Yunan meanwhile is part of arger experiment, about universes that lost their fates and if the could still survive and for how long they couldst, his stunt of merging universes is annoying but Null is rather content with what is going on".


    From Death''s point of view, Yunan was having too much fun, travelling the void, making friends and enemies left and right, and more importantly, he was meeting the most fabulous people in the void. Although he would not admit it, Death has been missing the liveliness that he encountered in Universe Hosana, all thanks to some coincidence.


    "Well, since Yunan will probably try it just because it is you who is asking, I assume, there are things we need to prepare? Or is Null letting us do it our way?" Tasha was still notpletely back to her normal self, one of the things that held her hope for what seemed like an eternity was hope, the hope to see the ces where she made her most beautiful memories once more.


    "There is nothing to think about, I suppose, just let the kid do it his way, Null should not interfere too much in the current phase, the lower Primordials are getting antsy as ofte, hopefully, the kid can stay quiet for a bit longer and let things settle down a bit".


    While old man Death and Tasha were talking about this and that, Yunan and Effort were finebing through a lifetime worth of experiences and memories, the wood witch had left behind everything, quite literally, Yunan found that she even left her earliest memories, behind, all that was left was a seed of sorts, the core and root of the flower, Effort sent it back to Hosana Universe.


    While Effort was taking in every sensation, Yunan was focused on things rted to karma and how it affected those who it was dumped upon, how the wood witch dealt with it, how it was absorbed and purified and then given back to the vigers as pure karma, neither good nor bad just pure karma, something that Yunan never knew about before.


    Among the things Yunan found deep in the memories he got was how this flower could manipte Karma, it was the faith of her followers. when those worshippers prayed to the flower, their extreme Karma tainted their faith in some way, giving the flower its ability to absorb Karma and purify it andter on manipte it in its purest form.


    On the other hand, Effort was collecting all those trials and errors, all those idental sesses, all the epiphanies, the eureka moments, and distilling it all into the purest essence of effort then injecting them into Yunan, slowly conditioning him, training him to be a Karmic maniptor, named so by Effort for the obvious reasons.


    As the two digested the power and memories, Yunan started feeling lighter, his hangover and bloatedness were gone, his senses were bing clearer and he could now sense his Karmic luck ability clearly for the first time.


    Before today, every time the Karmic luck trait activated, Yunan either never noticed the activation or just happened to have a gut feeling about it, strong or weak, it was always just a gut feeling. Now, however, thanks to all the pure Karma he got his hands on, he could clearly feel his only innate ability.


    Karmic luck was so much more than he ever believed, it was not just Karma or Luck, no, that was the least of it, the ability that has single-handedly brought Yunan to godhood was much more than what he thought it was before. It was not only linked to his Karma and Luck, no, it was also linked everything.


    Everything rted to Karma or Luck was linked to this ability, as if it was the spider at the heart of its web, a single tug could change the look of the entire web, or smaller actions and individual threads, all at the will of the spider.


    Before; Karmic Luck only worked on Yunan, changed his life on a small scale, finding a golden book down in thebyrinth, hatching a dragon, finding the legacy of a powerful god, things revolved around the owner of the ability at first, but as he started getting beyond the scope of mortals, the Karmic Luck started affecting others, his teachers, his family, a premonition on a cosmic scale, a prophecy that touched beyond the walls of the home Universe, and thetest known activation, changed things that were beyond the scope of knowledge of Yunan himself.


    An ability with this much growth and potential might have been wasted on any other person, but not on Yunan, for he had no use for it, he was happy if it activated and made his life easier, and was just as happy if it did not, to Yunan this ability was always a luxury, something that he did not have control over but still benefited from, now that he could feel it, he knew how wise his young self was in not ignorantly relying on this strange ability.

 Chapter 460: Death flees

    Chapter 460: Death flees


    As Yunan carefully felt around his Karmic Luck ability, time flew around him without indication. Effort was focused on including the pure Karma into himself, while both Tasha and old man Death knew better than to wake Yunan up from his contemtions and musings, not that it ended in harm for them, it was just the nagging part they tried to avoid, and the idental activation of the ursed Karmic luck trait.


    Death had witnessed first hand the effects of Karmic luck when it retaliated, he was a god of Death, powerful enough to extinguish universes like they were candle mes blown out with a gust of wind, but he feared that ability. its retaliation hurt, and it was always on an entirely different order of magnitudepared to the trigger.


    Deep in that state of open thought, Yunan finally understood how his little ability could do what it did for him, it was linked to every being touched by Karma and by Luck, everything touched by thosews, almost everything was part of the web this ability could target. Very few things in creation could escape the effects of this ability, even the great eye on top of creation was not an exception, as Yunan had been hidden from its sight and senses multiple times already.


    What was more was that through the right type of maniption, Yunan not only could find a person, he could also listen to them, read their memories, change their future, manipte their luck and much, much more, he could even watch through their eyes and listen to their inner thoughts.


    But this type of maniption was beyond the current Yunan, him sensing the ability, and the extent to where it reached was all for now. He still could not manipte the ability, however, directing its next activation was not an impossibility anymore, not that Yunan would even try to control something on this kind of scale.


    The current "Karmic maniption" Yunan was capable of was not enough to do much with the ability, worse, was that he did not know the consumption required to even start on the lowest levels of control, even with his new reserves, he did not think he had umted enough.


    This session was not void of good news, he learned something very crucial to his advancement. Effort; his unique Divinity was apatible fuel for the Karmic luck ability to activate, especially now that it has started digesting the pure Karma, it grew an affinity with Karma itself and by extension Karmic luck.


    When Yunan opened his and returned to consciousness, he found that he could see thing differently now, the entire world was full of strings, attaching this to that, even dreams had Karmic ties among them, between them, Yunan, Dreamscape and even Cattolu had some strings. These strings went into all directions, he could instinctively identify those that touched his home universe, a smidgen of familiarity was what clued him.


    Death and Tasha were close by, both had things to say, Yunan could see it in their strings, one of these strings was especially thrumming with activity. Yunan blinked his eyes and willed the strings to go away from his vision, he did not care about them for now, they would justplicate his alreadyplicated thought process. Not to mention all the karma entailed in getting into contact with any of these strings.


    "Let''s hear it then" Yunan spoke gently, he could sense from Dreamscape they were getting close enough to the karmic universe, if neither Death nor Tasha spoke about what they had in mind, they would probably have to wait till after his conquest. He did not mind them keeping silent for now, he just did not want the two to be simmering in their indecisiveness.


    "Revive her home universe, Null will keep some of the lesser primordials off of your back, three times is the promise, that is the limit before the endes and the next null takes over." old man Death spoke, Tasha gaped and Yunan nearly jumped out of his skin.


    The words brought with them an aura so empty and ancient that the surroundings started to turn into nothing, disintegrating by their own volition. Everything decayed as the words left old Deaths mouth, the words travelled not as sound but as will.


    "epted" was all Yunan could say to the being behind those words, for all his growth and explosive reserves, he knew that if the words targeted him with any intent, he would have turned to ash. What else could he do when a primordial gave him an exchange so skewed in Yunan''s favour.


    Old man Death had a bitter expression, Tasha looked like she was about to storm out of the room and Yunan was still registering the fact that a primordial deigned to personally speak to him, he did not even dare to contemte his mission. To revive a universe meant it was notpletely dead, it meant that its corews were still there to support it, albeit weak and weakening as time passes.


    Only when the ancient and empty aurapletely left the ce did the tenseness among the three showed itself, and as they felt the stress from each other, they began to rx. At least the great existence was not nning to stay there anymore, or it did not care what the three nned to do and how they would aplish the mission.


    "Well, that was it, you heard the boss, now I leave you to it, have fun, don''t call me in the next millennia or three okay? Bye-bye". The words followed a puff of necrotic energy that swallowed the old man Death and took him somewhere far away from here. He probably felt he was going to be pushed into the role of null if he stuck around. No, he was sure of it, Yunan and those around him always had things like this happen to them.


    "He ran away"mented Yunan, perhaps the old man had wizened up a little bit and no longer was as sure of his superiority. If he had stayed, Yunan was surely going to give him a big packet full ofws, the old coot always brought him trouble when he returned from being away

 Chapter 461: Unbreakable Attachement

    Chapter 461: Unbreakable Attachement


    Tasha looked at Yunan with a weird gaze, this kid has actually been nning on pulling a fast one on a favoured servant of a primordial! Oh well, it was not unlike him to do that.


    "So, what is the n?" although she was curious about what Yunan was going to do to death, she restrained her curiosity, ever since she started following him, her curiosity would be satisfied if only she could wait a little more, she learned that the hard way.


    "I''m sending you there to take a look". he said while pondering. Effort, who had just materialized was shimmering behind him, half merged into his body. It gazed at Tasha with a questioning gaze. Making the goddess feel rather ufortable.


    "I need you to sample the leftover Laws" Effort spoke instead of Yunan. "Analyse them and see which are salvageable and which need recing, it was your home and you are most familiar with it, even if you did not understand its Laws back then, you are more than capable now. I''ll send Cattolu with you, his link to Dreamscape can allow us to foster some new Laws to reinforce and rece the damaged ones if need be".


    "You are sending me away?" Tasha was rather reluctant to leave Dreamscape, her habitation with Yunan was a source of constant advancement andfort to her. Now that she was going to part from both, she was reluctant to just leave, even if it was him who asked her for help.


    As if reading her mind, Yunan smiled and presented his palm to her, above it shone a brilliant golden orb. "This is a fragment of effort, it has yet to take in the karmic powers, keep it on you, it will help you be close at all times, it will also function as a connection to myself, through this, I can keep you in the loop, and give you the chance to learn thews wee across."


    Tasha took the fragment and put it in her sea of consciousness, next to her own divinity. "So, it is going to be just you dealing with those karma maniptors?" she was not stupid, sending her away was not just to fulfil part of his mission. If he did not give her a fragment of effort, she would not have thought too much, but now that he did, it meant he was more capable of fulfilling his deal with the witch when Tasha was away from this next altercation.


    "Fine. I''ll go, but you better be done by the time I get there". She decided that she was not going to be stubborn. She saw that Yunan was thinking even deeper after she epted being sent away, and for a fleeting moment, she longed for the older days.


    Nostalgia was something that she refused to adhere to. her past was dead to her the moment she decided to side with Yunan, but now, it seems that no matter how she ran away from it, her past was going to catch up to her, or more precisely, she was falling face-first into that past.


    "Don''t worry" aforting hand touched her face. She looked up to see ignis who had the look of someone sneaking about, the phoenix in her human form radiatedfort. "No matter what, you will have a home with us, there is no reason to be sad about mere memories". A trace of phoenix fire flickered and reflected in Tasha''s eyes, then fury surged as she pped the mischievous bird back into Yunan.


    Since when did she, a great goddess with immense power be so easy to y around with, first a cat, now even a damned bird was trying her now, she needed to exert her station when she returned from her old universe.


    After Tasha left, Yunan gradually left his reveries and focused on a tiny string that extended from himself to a distant luminous point in the endless void. The light was not real, it was just a beacon that put him on the correct path.


    When only the two of them were alone, Effort and Yunan exchanged a nce, both of them could feel it, at the end of the string, something was waiting there, it was not attached to the string leading them to the karmic universe, it was detached from it, adjacent but superimposed on it. it was still there, waiting endlessly, waiting beyond time and the passing of eras.


    Effort was the first to shudder, and Yunan followed soon after. What made them shudder was not the strength nor the endless patience IT showed, what caused them to shudder like this was the scale. A divinity on par with Effort was there, as obvious as the sun and as obscure as the faintest mirage.


    While Yunan and Effort were contemting IT, in the karmic universe things were in a frenzy, all beings in the universe felt it, even the deranged creator did. A string of karma attached itself to their very being, the minds, the souls, the bodies, the Laws, the fates, everything was connected to something. As if the entity on the other side of the string did not want to spare any of them.


    There was no sense of dangering from the karma string that attached to the entire universe, but to karmic maniptors, this was worse than death and decay. To never be able to disentangle themselves from a karmic string was what they dreaded the most, after all, severing their attachment to karma was the basis of their entire culture.


    Meanwhile old man death met Tasha a few universes down the path. Her old universe was under the hands of Null, she would not be allowed to reach it unless she had the older man with her; otherwise, the minor primordials would ughter her for just her association with Yunan, being part of his adventure was enough reason for the fearful primordials to eliminate her before she turned into a threat.

 Chapter 462: Back Home

    Chapter 462: Back Home


    While Dreamscape weaved through the void, the rest of creation was experiencing some interesting changes, to say the least, especially since the culling has been proven to be the least useful path to harvest fate, many Primordials started looking into other ways to harvest the fate of the universes under their control.


    Trial and error became rampant. The Primordials have already solidified their chosen Laws, many of them focused on a singlew to identify their domains with a few supplementary Laws sprinkled to round up the domain.


    Unlike Yunan who was still collecting and understanding the different Laws, they could not just absorb the fate of a random universe and that was that. they had to filter out the Laws they could not use and either share them with allies or reinject them in other universes to create something worth trading with other Primordials.


    As a result of the many ways Primordials proceeded to experiment in, the void became rather lively, the Primordials who once were mutual enemies, for the most part, a sort ofmunity had risen around the discoveries that havee about thanks to the actions of Yunan, most of which the lucky little thing did not even know about.


    Although the lesser Primordials were still itching to kill Yunan before he decided to ascend, many of them stood at the ready, they were just the cusp of being weak enough to serve as feed for his ever-growing power, especially with that weird divinity of his, it was something new, and even if the brats domain was unique, there was a precedent of the Effort Divinity devouring other divinities to sustain and grow itself, that meant that as long as one was in the range of being devoured they had to tread very carefully.


    Among the greater Primordials, the leading four were also starting to be active again, much to the dismay of the lower primordials, the eldest ones were truly extremely old, they have been part of a cataclysmic event that ended with the near annihtion of the Primordials, leaving only the four of them. They had witnessed the birth of the rest of the Primordials and have killed enough of them just to make a point, or out of boredom.


    The greater primordials getting active was in preparation for theirst moment. They had all sensed it was their time for their domains to be inherited, although they did not care much about the ascension of people who would take over their domains, they were thinking about payback for the cataclysmic event.


    For now, their favourite experimental subject was in need of purer Laws to work on. The four decided to help the kid by giving up some of their best faith generating universes. Not that they did not need faith to keep their lives until their inheritors were ready, they were nning on giving their umted gains to Yunan. As for their inheritors, why did they have to care? They too had to work hard to gain their positions as Primordials.


    In some remote location under the great eye, Fortuna, Death, Tasha, Hephaestus and Apophis were all gathered atop the entrance to a half-dead universe, the power of Null was preserving it but it was obvious that power like Null''s would not keep it "alive" for long.


    The quintet was still hesitating to enter the universe, even if they were told to get in by their Primordials, they still had an instinctive fear towards Null''s domain. They looked up at the four Primordials from antiquity who had gathered to see them in.


    Bringing life back to a fateless universe was a strange thing, even with her presence, Fate, the Primordial of fate, luck and destiny, it was still something that has not been attempted in a long time, perhaps it happened somewhere beyond the gazes of these four Primordials, but it was a first for them.


    Watching these gods enter was nothing but a mere impulse, they wanted to see if the altered fates of these gods would do something to the fateless universe.


    Null, his domain contained nihility, emptiness, nothing and decay. Fate, her domain was the most limited yet the most mysterious, it included Fate, Luck, Destiny and a smidgen of karma. All, everything, chaos, order, and almost everything in creation stood under the banner of All. Creation, building, smithing, transforming, growing and the likes rested under the umbre of Creation.


    Tasha held the most trepidations about returning to her home universe. Seeing its current state was already making her feel bad and lost, she did not know how it will feel when she actually felt the old Laws touch her divinity after so long.


    Although she discarded the divinity she started with originally, as a god that ascended in her home universe, she would still find herself linked to this ce. And that link was what saddened her most, she had spent untold years in the council in an attempt to save this universe, only to give up on it in the end.


    With many eyes on her, she smiled at herpanions and took the first step inside her old home, as soon as she got in, she could feel the wee from the universe, although it did not feel like much, she knew where she was and how to navigate her way, she knew where her home has ended up, where her divine kingdom''s ruins stood abandoned and deste.


    Behind her came the other four one by one, Death had it easiest, he did not face much rejection from any universe unless it was heavily invested in the Laws of life, Apophis was unconcerned about the rejection, he would just take it as a boost to his chaos Laws. Fortuna was just oo lucky to face harsh rejection, meanwhile, Hephaestus was shouldering the most for rejection for his friends, he had enough artefacts on him to take even a bit more without having to tap into his avatar status.


    Normally, no universe would reject an avatar, as all universes were an amalgamation of too many Domains, evoking avatar status will grant one unhindered ess to most universes. But these four gods did not use their avatar status, it was best for them to get into contact with as many Laws as possible. Only that way they can identify which ones are still active and which are needed to be repaired or reced.

 Chapter 463: Wrath

    Chapter 463: Wrath


    Through Effort''s fragment that Tasha carried with her, Yunan was capable of understanding the situation in Tasha''s home universe. The dry wee back and the feel of the universe gave Yunan some concern about the feasibility of sess on the revival mission.


    Although he was not very keen on having all the other four join her as scouts, especially since he had left them behind back home; he needed them to help defend the uing culling. Unfortunately, he simply had no say in it, not since they were ordered to join Tasha by their respective Primordials.


    Thanks to Cattolu, Dreamscape was already assimting and refining the most prominent Laws in that universe, the weaker Laws were left for the five to analyse themselves.


    Back to Yunan and Effort. They were finally looking down at the karmic universe. It was close enough for an invasion but the duo stayed put. The divinity they have been feeling for a while now was radiating such intense power that they felt like it was beckoning them to approach and take it.


    What Yunan found most suspicious about was that whatever yed host to the divinity was superimposed on the karmic universe, yet it was still unimed by the inhabitants. Yunan was certain that the divinity in question was rted to karma in a bizarre but deep way, therefore, the fact that it was still there, under the noses of the people most attuned to karma, made Yunan think twice more than usual.


    If this was a trap, then it was a stupid one, if it was not, it was much more dangerous. For anyone to leave behind such a powerful divinity, they must have had a stiff process to appoint a sessor, otherwise, they would let it be open as free for all.


    Yunan did not like either idea, to be frank. He was content with one divinity, he was already troubled by firmly taking control of it. The thought of him having another divinity on the same scale if not greater, it was not appealing at all.


    Still, he had a deal toplete. Coming in contact with IT; the host as Effort called it; was inevitable if they decided to invade the karmic universe, and Yunan was already prepared to reject the divinity if it was offered to him.


    Effort was much more open to devouring a divinity of the same magnitude, especially if it offered itself to them of its own volition. Growing stronger was moot to Effort, he was more interested in the Laws that this divinity had. He knew that Karma had a great connection with Yunan, its Laws would augment his karmic luck to a new height.


    As the duo held on to their different thoughts, they decided to just barge in and start their extermination. Yunan was very certain he had enough power to just tear the universe itself asunder, the string of karma brought all kinds of information to him and measured it ording to Yunan''s standards.


    Looking at the universe through his karmic luck trait, he saw that it had no attached karma; except to himself. it was as if isted from the rest of creation, and that gave Yunan a sick feeling. It radiated from his innate connection to karma, it was more like a rejection of the Law than from Yunan himself.


    Seeing that Yunan was still not making his move, Effort pushed him out from Dreamscape and into the karmic universe. Although there were a great many things to consider, as a divinity, the sick feeling that Yunan felt was magnified manyfold for Effort, and that brought out a hastiness to bring an earlier end to this universe.


    As soon as Yunan made it inside the karmic universe he felt a perverse sense of rejection unlike any he had experienced before. true, it did not affect him by any great margin, it just felt dirty and icky, to the point that he felt like he would hurl out histest meal from disgust.


    Yunan had seen many unsavoury things in his life, he never felt this disgusted with everything, not on his first kill, not when he let an entire n die out of spite, the only thing that was even marginallyparable was the feeling he had when he found a certain nest.


    Back then his disgust urged killing intent, this time, he only felt like he would rather cleanse his body by searing the flesh from the bone by me and acid. This type of universal rejection was extremely unexpected but what made Yunan decided to start killing in the next second was a corruption of his feelings.


    As soon as the rejection of the universe acted on him he started noticing a change in his feelings towards his family and friends. An ugliness permeated the pure and clean feeling, tainting them with gross and sickening images.


    Exploding like a newly born star, he pushed off the rejection of the universe away from him, with the maximum power under his hand he started ripping the universe into shreds, white-hot rage turned into mes that cleansed anything it touched, turning everything into ashes.


    "Fire washes the skin off the bone and the sin off the soul. It cleans away the filth. And my momma raised herself no dirty boy".


    Yunan did not know who said those words, he did not even remember where heard them, but he found them very fitting for this asion, his endless rage tranting itself into cleansing mes felt like the correct turn of events.


    He did not know the cause of this rage, not until Effort intervened and brought him to the edge of rationality. Effort did not pull Yunan entirely from his rage, he only brought him back enough to keep him from doing anything too stupid.


    "That Witch has gotten you good, try not to lose yourself yet, the big shots are about to find their way here, also, I would rather like it if you reduce the output a little bit, it is exhausting to maintain our current synchronisation when you are literally radiating my reserves like they have no end".


    "Your reserves have an end? I''d like to see it. endure it for now, since I took everything from the Witch, we should satiate her hatred a little bit" responded Yunan from the edge, rage has be wrath.

 Chapter 464: A Little Bonus

    Chapter 464: A Little Bonus


    As Yunan continued to radiate his power with an output that put most stars to shame, the universe around him was slowly breaking apart. The very foundation of it was crumbling apart, starting with the erosion of space in the immediate vicinity, the Laws that built the universe were crumbling as well.


    Oddly enough, the Laws started crumbling at rather frightening rates. We are speaking about the Laws that served as the building blocks for all of creation, Laws that nurtured everything there is. To see them crumbling at such a pace was beyond what Yunan and Effort ever imagined. Something was very wrong with this universe. If the Laws were so easy to sunder, how did this universe even support life for so long?


    Every creator had his own understanding of Laws, and each creator could use these Laws only as far as their understanding permits. That does not mean a shallow understanding would result in brittle Laws. the stability of all Laws was a constant that never changed.


    While Effort mulled over these thoughts, Yunan was venting all the negative emotions the Witch had umted during her long years, holding a grudge for as long as she did without venting it was like a keg of powder, it would explode upon the merest stimtion.


    Yunan estimated that he would be confronted with the inhabitant of the universe quickly, but he waited for an entire month before the first god showed themselves to him. A messenger who barely had the courage to approach and none of the presence of mind required attempted to approach Yunan.


    The poor thing was ripped to shreds as soon as he got into range of the violent outburst. Not that Yunan was against talking to these people, he would rather not mince words with insincere cowards. He was killing them anyway, so it did not matter if he killed the first messenger or ten.


    The next messenger was of higher status in the universe. Yunan concluded that from the many domains his divinity had control over. Not an over god but not lesser god either, somewhere in between. This arrival prompted Yunan to decrease the output of his aura of destruction. He wanted to ask some questions and let Effort breath a little bit.


    "Where is the creator of this universe, I have no interest in dealing with lesser beings, talk or die". The disgust Yunan put into these words made the messenger god tremble like a leaf in the wind. True power and superiority radiated from Yunan, it was not intentional from his side, but to the messenger god, Yunan was a being that could make the entire universe shiver.


    "He wishes to know your grievances with our little universe, we are sure we have never offended your highness, nor have we ever intended to make an enemy such as yourself" he was stopped midsentence when he saw that the great being he was trying to sweet-talk was getting impatient, he knew his mission was to stall and get a beat from the invader, but at the moment he felt tuck.


    "Do I have to go and dig him out of whatever rock he is hiding under?" Yunan tugged at the string attaching him and the messenger, giving the god an unprecedented fright. As a god of the karmic universe, he was more than aware of what these strings meant, cutting them off was the speciality of their universe, but this guy just tugged at a karmic string, although it was just a mundane tug, it broke the messenger god inside.


    A monster, this invader was the truest monster, the natural enemy of their universe. To be capable of interacting with karmic strings in such a mundane way meant he could much more, cutting a karmic string was much easier than interacting with them after all.


    "His majesty the creator wishes to know your demands and if there is anything we can do to calm your rage andpensate you for any crime we may have inadvertentlymitted". The messenger gritted his teeth and decided to forgo the stalling attempt, but the answer he got was out of expectation, "if he has questions, let hime and ask them, now scram and report back".


    Without even waiting for the messenger to leave, Yunan restarted his cataclysmic disy of power. His focus on the karmic strings that linked him to the entire universe. A sense of relief was returning to him every time something was destroyed. This relief wasing from the host that housed the enormous divinity. Each broken string gave Yunan a clearer understanding and highermand over Karma itself.


    Effort was mesmerised by this feedback as well, even more so than Yunan, as a divinity, any slight increase in understanding anyw was a major development that led to a noticeable increase in strength. This feedback was not just enlightening the two on the Laws rted to karma, it was giving them direct control over these Laws.


    Any divinity was a direct trantion of the amount of control the god had over the Laws he knew. Divinity grew with the more control the god had, although there were prime domains to each divinity, any ounce of control over any Law, made that divinity greater.


    The ultimate controller over a Law was it''s Primordial, although Primordials had minor control over other Laws, their primary Law was their domain. That tranted to something aking that all Laws are under the control of some primordial or the other, yet not every Law has a primordial that took it as a domain.


    For example, theck of a primordial for either effort or karma was indicative of how hard it was to gain control of either Law, let alone both at the same time.


    This little bonus was rather attractive to Yunan, to gain control over a domain without the need to build the corresponding divinity or add it to his Effort, what a notion was that. He understood now why that massive divinity seemed to beckon them earlier, what it could offer was more than just a divinity, it could give them the keys to destroy this universe. Not that Yunan needed it.

 Chapter 465: off guard

    Chapter 465: off guard


    In the karmic universe, while Yunan was emptying Efforts energy reserves with zealous enthusiasm, Effort was trying to incorporate the tidbits of insight that came from the feedback of the Host. Although the size of the feedback was minute and very tiny, it umted as time and destruction followed Yunan, it amounted to something that would require some meditation, although it was just one gxy that was wiped out of existence.


    By the time the third month had arrived, the Witch''s rage had already subsided, more or less satisfied. Yunan was getting impatient, he knew the creator of the karmic universe was already dead, yet was still waiting for whoever was iming to be the creator to show up.


    Three months worth of time may as well have been as short as a few blinks to your average gods, however, that does not apply when your universe is being destroyed down to its Laws. Every god could feel as the Laws were weakening by the moment, each bit of Law that Yunan destroyed was a permanent drop in their power and the loss was irreparable to their divinities.


    To wait for three months while feeling your power slip bit by bit, no god would stand for it, he thought, at least some normal gods would have tried to run out if there was a chance, yet, they did not just leave, the Laws that built their divinity were being wiped out, so running away is a moot option. fighting was already not an option either since their fear of Yunan was too paralysing for most of them.


    The so-called creator was doing something and Yunan felt like three months of prep time was enough. He had taken his time releasing the pent up rage left behind by the witch, now was the time to go hunt the gods of this ce and its fate.


    Normally, Yunan would just start learning thews, find the fate and assimte it. Meanwhile, making deals with the residents of the target universe was just to ease up the tension and maybe allow for easier integration with his home universe.


    For this Karmic universe, Yunan felt little. The feelings inherited from the Witch were now expended and all that was left now are mere trickles of emotion. He wasmitting an act of destruction, and that alone was enough to stir something in him.


    Although emotions were never part of Yunan''s divinity, he had never been one to suppress them, nor one to wear them on his sleeve, he just never felt the need for disposal.


    Time ticked by slowly. Tracking down the Fate of the universe became tedious and even Yunan was having a hard time locating it, he knew it was out there, hiding away from him, he also knew someone was doing something that kept it just out of arm''s reach.


    By the time two years have passed half the universe was gone, two-thirds of the gods have either withered away in hiding or were killed by Yunan who stumbled onto their hiding spots, not even their divine kingdoms were spared.


    Amidst the destruction, a few gods along with their divine domain arrived before him. They did not seem to being to talk or to fight. Gods usually affix their divine realms somewhere rted to their religion of choice.


    Any god towing their divine realm behind them was by no means a normal urrence. After all, divine realms were the root of their godly power, losing a divine realm was not something to recover from.


    Sensing the approaching gods, Yunan was mystified, halting his destructive rampage just long enough for the group of gods toe close enough and surround him. If they wanted to fight, whether they surround him or not mattered little to the battle-hardened Yunan, except these ones were not ring battle intent, nor did they exude anything other than being robots on a mission.


    "The creator sends his regards". As soon as the gods got their formation close enough that Yunan started taking a battle stance, they simultaneously shouted the words as one, triggering a chain reaction that resulting in a big explosion. Under the unbelieving gaze of Yunan, the dozen or so gods destroyed their own divinities, resulting in their divine realms self-destructing.


    From the initial observation, Yunan and Effort could tell that each divine realm was filled to the brim with the power of faith. The resulting detonation of so much power suddenly was so overwhelming that the two of them could barely register what was going on before they were swept inside the maelstrom of roiling and boiling, unrestrained energy.


    Without enough time or the presence of mind to react, Yunan was caught off guard yet again, he would never have thought that gods could as well be used as suicide troops, it was something unthinkable for anyone who worked hard enough to reach the level of creating their own divine realm.


    Still, survival was the imminent problem to solve. Even as overpowered Yunan was at the moment, his body could not take too much of this pummeling, he had to do something about it or risk having to lose much of his power or even death.


    As long as he had the link with Effort, he would never truly die, it just may take a bit too long to be reborn and he would have to climb all the way back from a mere mortal. He did not fancy that thought much. Death was never something he feared, but back then Death was the end, now it was just too troublesome for Yunan to die.


    Thus, as fast as he could think, he pushed out all his power to create a cocoon around him to protect him long enough to reach out to dreamscape and run away. He was not going to stay and see if he could survive, not when he was caught unprepared and is already sustaining untold damage. He was not foolish enough to think he would not be disturbed while healing in Dreamscape, he knew better than to take an attack like this while at war against an entire universe.


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