Chapter Fifty Six

D U N G E O N : PLAY DATE

“Today we are going to explore a dungeon.” The teacher tapped their stick against the grass floor. “I know most, if not all of you, have never been in a dungeon before.”

Osiris yawned.

It was a class field trip to the outskirts of the Kingdom where a dungeon they keep for educational purposes sits. Osiris looked at the entrance. It was rigged to trap him after he passes a certain threshold.

It was the Crown Prince this time. The old hag was trying to have the kids do the dirty work now. He stretched. He might as well give them what they want.

Osiris walked around the class and headed straight in.

“P-Prince wait-”

“Leave him.”

The teacher looked at the Prince’s guards play cards under a tree in the shade.

“He does it all time time.”

“B-but-”

The gate began to collapse.

The teachers backed up the students and cleared the way. Dust and debris flew, and some of the students and faculty were injured.

Everyone, but the three guards, began to panic.

They continued playing goldfish while everyone came and went, even ignoring the others when they tried to push them to help dig out the Prince. The headmaster had to call the King to report it himself.

“Finally.”

Osiris threw his school jacket to the floor.

It was finally time for the main villain to make an appearance. Osiris ran his hand along the wall as he walked up to the main lobby. He stopped.

The mana was white.

Osiris turned to the wall. Woven deeply within its natural mana laid the King of Nox’s spell.

“Beautiful.”

Up until now, Osiris didn’t know mana could be used this way. Don’t get him wrong, he’s seen thousands of users across all races use mana, yet this man.. Maybe man wasn’t the right term.

“-ating is a thing for them.”

“So the prince from that place is in love with the female led?”

“LEAD, but yeah. The Nox’s are descendants of the Snake God Apep.”

Osiris watched the eye slowly open and gaze lazily at him.

Power.

Osiris ran his hands slowly over the wall. The mana pulsed along with the dungeon. He began his march. The lobby was huge.

Something that always bothers Osiris, when it comes to dungeons, was that they could contain an entire ecosystem separate from the world above. He could be in an ice storm on one level, and the next a volcano. Dungeons always went down and towers always went up.

This lobby was a giant stone pathway leading down a hole that is guarded by a giant woman. You could only see her head and shoulders but as you delve down, more of her body will appear. Her crown had two horns like the mouflon.

She was covered in moss and vines with a red ruby like jewel on her forehead. She looked down upon him with a look fitting of a Queen. In the plants, Osiris could see the beginning stages of what he saw in the entrance. Osiris rubbed his sternum.

He felt anxious.

Osiris started his trek down.

The Amar Odio Dungeon has been around since the founding of Lux. Some time ago it was made as a love letter to the First Queen, to other’s, a suicide note to a lover. The theme was broken promises.

The first floor was a stone path above a deep riverbed. The creatures on the first floor were usually tame. He stepped onto a stone. The trees were long and stringy, almost like swamp moss and jungle vines. Everything was washed in a blue light with eerie red lanterns floating around the trail.

A light fog really added to the vibe.

Osiris began jumping from stone to stone.

The dungeon had seventeen levels, with the last level holding the very core of the dungeon. Once removed, the dungeon will cease to exist and return to the earth from which it came.

It was quiet.

Osiris slowed his jumping to a light walk. He went to dip his feet when he saw a baby leviathan reach towards the surface. He changed his mind. Water was his biggest enemy, yet something he craves to jump in.

“..”

On the seventh floor, the room sat in the woman’s chest. It was an empty church with sunlight that turned red when they touched the shadows. It bled into a lovely mosaic design against the tiled floor. At the pillars, where red and black mixed, the faces sculpted on the gargoyles twisted and pulled. Sometimes they looked like angels, other devils, and sometimes they looked like faces he’s seen dying beneath his feet.

At his level of power most creatures avoid him, but turning to his left he watched some of the gargoyles begin to break away from their posts. They looked like they were constantly being regenerated by an artificial art program. They glitched through the room like a moving painting.

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Osiris only had to tap them to pop them.

At the base of their skulls he could see small, little patches of white mana littering their skin like mumps. Osiris dropped the thing and watched it melt into the floor.

In the original, his entire class gets trapped in here. It took them three days to get them out. The problem was, the Nox’s spell was already beginning to infect the dungeon at a rapid pace.

Osiris walked to the glass window and peered outside. It was a land of red, black, and gray.

Nox’s spell is supposed to infect and cause the entire dungeon to break in about a week from now. This will, in turn, weaken the school and kill most of the future heirs off. It was a good plan, and something that could possibly cripple the kingdom, especially right after a war.

“..”

The original ends up telling the King after they escape and he comes and destroys it along with his son. No one finds out who it is until Osiris’s Coming of Age, three years from now.

All of Nox’s attacks went undetected.

Osiris shivered.

This was a C Class dungeon and already he’s running into A and B Grade creatures and beings. In the story, the class barely survives the first two levels of beasts. Osiris squashed another painted creature.

He can tell by the end of this road there will be S Ranked monsters.

His teeth glinted white in the red room.

The fifteenth floor sat in the woman’s hips in a field of roses and thorns. He could feel them dig into his skin.

It takes a lot to damage him these days. Nothing below A Grade will do. Osiris could feel the thrones cut through his heels like dry tumbleweed stickers. Thorns of the devil. He cringed. The wounds throbbed.

Osiris upped his heat and the bushes burned away.

“And this is only after a few days.”

Osiris bit his lip and held himself. His breath came out in steamy puffs.

“I think I’m in love.”

Osiris shivered and looked down.

And this was only over his mana.

He shivered. At this point the man could look like a rat and he’d still fuck him. Oh, fuck, he really-

Osiris dropped his hands and walked to the black tower in the distance. The red and gray storm clouds circled the tip.

“..”

Osiris felt himself blush.

This was almost as bad as when he jacked off to a boy’s baseball glove. Osiris rubbed his eyes and pushed his palms into his sockets.

“Maybe I can fuck his corpse.”

“..”

He needed to chill the fuck out.

Osiris glanced at his mana.

It wasn’t helping either because it was swooning over it.

“..”

He was never made to be celebrate.

The seventeenth floor went beneath the ground of the woman’s feet. It was green, much like the top. The entrance was a giant stone bridge with tall, skinny beams covered in vines, moss, and plants. Two giant stone guards protected the gate.

Osiris took a long, deep breath.

The placed reeked of mana. It almost smelled like no-man’s land. Osiris bit his lip until it bled. Nox’s mana was everywhere. He would miss it if he wasn’t looking for it. The fibers were so thin he could no longer see them. Osiris shivered.

The man found a way around his mana eye.

“Fun.”

Osiris smiled.

He was worried for a moment that the King would be a second rate, but he will not disappoint him.

Inside the gate a desolate and destroyed, rotting throne room sat with the remains of a battle littered around the debris.

“Fitting.”

Osiris killed the ghosts that haunted the chamber.

They burned his skin when they landed a hit.

The teal room had dull, red, torn flags hanging pathetically on the walls. The place looked like an older version of the Main Castle above.

“..”

Beneath the throne sat a lever. He pulled it. The mutual behind the throne parted down the center. Behind it sat a door guarded by very alive stone golems. They wore robes and each had a wing.

“One speaks in lies, the other in truths. Answer-”

The two crumbled as he passed.

The core was a little white ball floating above a crown in the center of the room. Osiris picked it up.

“Beautiful.”

Millions of threads moved and pulsed as he ran his fingers along its curves. He squeezed. A tiny crack formed. The entire ego or the dungeon fell on him. Osiris held his breath as he watched the King’s mana soothe the crack and try to heal it.

“..”

“Our dance will be delightful.”

Osiris crushed the core.

Dungeons, like towers, were living beings created by mana. He watched it fight for its life before he felt it die. In his hand sat the dust of what it used to be.

Osiris hummed and began his walk up. Slowly, like a gate to a shop closing, each level collapsed as he rose.

The King of Nox felt his spell break.

He was in the middle of a meeting. His ego flickered and everyone stopped talking.

“Must be that headmaster of theirs.”

The meeting continued.

“-long did you say?”

“Three days at least.”

The King glared at his son’s men. Even with him breathing down their necks they refused to move. One is even asleep. He knows his son is strong but getting trapped in a dungeon is dangerous. He could lose his life. Mikael looked back at the workers clearing debris. It’s been five hours since the collapse.

“He’s taking his time on this one.”

“Yeah he is.”

Mikael looked to his first son. He was mitigating the traffic. Mikael is now suspicious of all his other children. With Osiris back they’ve started their…pranks again.

“Do you think he actually died this time-”

Vep had a hand over Fibble’s mouth as the King glared at them.

They had the galls to look embarrassed.

Mikael was about to try and force them up again when the dungeon began to collapse. The ground shook and the land began to return from once it came.

“…”

His son just destroyed a historical monument from before the founding of the country. Mikael watched the flushed cheeked boy stumble out before the entrance shut. He looked high.

“….”

He could feel the Headmaster behind him.

“….”

He was getting too old for this.

Axel tore apart his office in his castle after he got home. His father left him to clean up that bastard's mess while he followed him back to his dorm. Again he chose that bastard over them.

Axel eyed the marriage contract.

He found it in his father’s personal study in that bastard’s castle.

“…”

Axel picked up the parchment.

Until his father officially gives him the crown, as long as that boy is alive he can claim it whenever he likes.

“Summon my sister.”

Axel needed Luella for this. His plan to trap the Prince failed.

“This was why mother…”

The paper crinkled in his hands.

He had a lot of work to do.