Author’s Note: Mea Culpa.

It has been a while and I really want to say that I am sorry for my prolonged absence. But to me, apologizing equates to never making the same mistake again, and I cannot ensure that this will not happen again in the future.

Even so, you deserve an explanation - however lame of an excuse my explanation may be. My absence was caused by a mixture of various factors. Yes, I lacked the drive and dedication to persistently administer my craft for these past few months. However, I also believed that by writing, certain people who knew of my identity have used my work against me. I was torn as to whether I should continue at all.

But I love creating my own stories and had already decided to share this one.

And I had readers who enjoyed my story, with EndingNight even saying that he was rooting for me! EndingNight, that simple comment of yours has been such a comfort. I belatedly found out about Qeron, who had never commented but had always repped me, and I realized that here was another user who had cared enough.

Many a night, as I had lain down to rest, I thought to myself that I would write the story to near completion and surprise everyone with 5~10 chapters a day when I returned. Because I had to return. I have returned, but with nothing in hand and with nothing in reserve. A prodigal writer indeed.

I don’t know how many people would truly care about my story, especially when I have barely even started. But I say to you, I will finish Dungeon Defender, no matter how long it takes. I know that I could pump out chapters at a much faster pace if I merely wrote for entertainment purposes by not putting in as much effort. But there are simply certain kinds of things that I enjoy writing, and I find that writing these things take a lot of time for me. I believe that if I enjoy creating my work and succeed in doing so to a certain minimum standard, that then you will also be able to share in this enjoyment.

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Apparently, Hwantasy is a pretty complicated place.

Yes, this is a fantasy world where the commonly fantastic occurs, such as the coronation of a new Dark Lord and his dungeon being announced for all the denizens of the known world to know, if the upper echelons in whatever governing lands allowed their residents to be privy to this news.

Gajie told me that as soon as I came into existence as Deprofundis Reprobate, the appropriate maps and scrolls all updated themselves to include me in their registers. The appropriate magisters would recognize this and soon enough all of the people who needed to know would know about this. These database-like artifacts were common enough on the international level and could even be reproduced.

The Kikesta Firm had an Intelligence division of which a part were dedicated solely to monitoring the activities of dark lords, and as such Gajie had been immediately dispatched to my humble abode.

Me being who I am, I did not simply accept this act of the divine as is and once again questioned the inner machinations behind this entire process.

Who or what governed this process and how did they do it? Why did they do it?

And of course, once again I was unable to attain any satisfactory answers. So I left this occurrence as an unknown in my mind for the time being.

Now here is where things get somewhat more complicated: politics and religion.

This world is not split into a simple binary of black and white, at least not on the surface. This is not to say that there are no areas where dark lords are seen as the ultimate evil and subjected to attempts at eradication, for there definitely are such places. The important point is that there are places where a dark lord is in alliance with a human kingdom for example. And while there is a custom that dark lords do not kill each other, it has occurred, and they have fought against one another even on opposite ends of coalitions formed from different races and countries.

This is definitely a good thing because I believe that my chances of being wiped out straight away will decrease markedly unless I do something stupid. Also, it makes life more interesting, at least for me anyway.

All of what I just mentioned was possible due to the actions of a prior Dark Lord from approximately a millennium ago. Back then, even this world was split up into a Good vs. Evil dichotomy. However, an Otherworlder Dark Lord rose to power through his persuasive orations, capable scheming and backroom dealings, leaving an indelible mark on this world and forever changing history. There are urban legends stating that he is still alive, albeit in hiding.

Anyhow, I contracted with the Kikesta firm to provide me the services I would require as a Dark Lord under the condition that Gajie would serve as my stewardess. After the initial surprise, which lasted a day at most, she calmed herself and the business-like demeanor was back, never hinting at ever being unblemished. I wasn’t expecting her to switch her allegiances so soon and become my faithful subordinate, but eventually and gradually, that is the goal.

Several days have passed with a lot of the time being spent strategizing with Gajie, but it feels like a lot more time has gone by. You know, something like being both a character within a visual novel and the player at the same time. Within the game a day has passed but as the player I had inadvertently taken a months-long break in between.

Notwithstanding that, at this point in time, I was watching Gajie busily and authoritatively directing maid-uniform garmented demonkin as they were summoned from the summoning circle she had me place in a new room. In fact, under her advice, I created a whole bunch of new rooms and passageways with most of them being either concealed or inaccessible to the greater world. Think of it as living quarters and service corridors for the staff necessary to run this place. Since I quite frankly had no idea why they would be so busy in this empty dungeon, I asked Gajie, and she replied that there were many things to do from setting up the kitchen and mess hall to establishing a communications system and control center. After all, did I not want to climb up the Dark Lord Rankings, she inquired.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Yes, that is indeed a thing. And surprisingly, I am only third last from the bottom of the rankings. The second last, heh, no surprise here, was Porcus Minorus ‘Glutton Master’ - Dark Lord of the Dondonelly Bacon Meats Dungeon. His details had a strike going through everything. Good grief, this porker was lower than me on the rankings and I hadn’t even done a thing yet… ah, the Goddess… I still shake my head at how she could’ve pulled that one on me.

What really caught my interest though was the fact that there was a dark lord ranked lower than both me and Porker. Absolutely last on the list was one named Kaburi ‘The Rascal’ – Dark Lord of the Kaburi Goblin Mining Industries and Subsidiary of Accend Lust Casino Enterprises Dungeon. Yeah, that was quite a mouthful.

Seeing as how I was ranked higher than this Kaburi, I was able to access more information and to my surprise this guy had lasted over two centuries! Porker on the other hand, had lasted less than a year. This was very intriguing. Did the fact that Kaburi was a subsidiary to another Dark Lord account for his longevity perhaps?

I checked for Accend Lust, and boy, this dude was a bigshot at rank fourteen.

Accend Lust ‘The Occluded’ – Dark Lord of the Accend Lust Casino Enterprises Dungeon. Already there were a few interesting dungeon concepts that caught my eye. Apparently, running a mining outfit or a gambling joint were two things you could do with a dungeon. I suppose we shouldn’t forget running some kind of cannibalistic abattoir as an option, seeing as how Porker slaughtered porkers.

The Dark Lord Rankings were tabulated based on a comprehensive and automatic scoring system. I could see that although the minion scores and dungeon scores of Porker and Kaburi were higher than mine, on the other hand I scored much much higher than them on the leadership scores, personal abilities scores, and master score. To illustrate the entire picture, I am Overall rank 208 with a score of 232. However, taking the deceased and inactive dark lords out of the picture, I am Active rank 138. Porker’s score was 122 at rank 139 and Kaburi has a score of 97 at rank 140.  Accend Lust has a score of 12,666.

Here are the top three, all presumably badasses who get to use the honorific of ‘One’, starting with the top dog:

#1. Legend ‘The Nameless One’ – Dark Lord of the Ascendant’s Gate Dungeon with a score of 767,333,444.

#2. Jokim ‘The Hidden One’ – Dark Lord of the Hwan Zero Dungeon with a score of 677,264,311.

#3. Bulsajo ‘The Eternal One’ – Dark Lord of the Undying Flame Dungeon with a score of 555,553,581.

Curious, I asked Gajie whether she knew the top three Dark Lords.

She balked saying that she did not personally know them but definitely knew of them, adding that everyone in the world did. After all, they had been the top three long before a millennium ago when the Otherworldly Pioneer Dark Lord rose and fell from power and are still the top three today.

Now I don’t know if being the top dog is all that it’s made out to be, no matter where the world. Also, honestly those scores of hundreds of millions for the top three and the seemingly insurmountable gap between them and even the Rank 14th Dark Lord makes me believe that it will be an incredibly challenging journey to make it to the top. However, it is something to strive towards and who doesn’t dream of being the best? Most likely though, all these numbers do not mean much to me right now, as I lack the experience to realize the weight behind the scores.

Gajie interrupted me from my train of thought by presenting a magical scroll. She said it was a complementary gift that Kikesta gave to newly signed and newly crowned dark lords. She further explained that the scroll was a register and rankings list for all official adventurers in the entire known world. I thanked Gajie and asked her to express the gratitude that I felt in my stead the next time that she returned to the firm. Surely, this scroll would be an immensely useful tool in the future. If nothing else, it had some good entertainment value by allowing me to peruse through the details of adventurers powerful and weak alike.

Is it a bit off-putting that I’m relating my tale to you entirely as a monologue when there could have been more interaction?

Well you know, even the bible does something similar: relating centuries’ worth of time with a single line and explicating in detail the next ten years for an entire book. Okay, okay, I’m starting to get out of this state of sluggishness. I did mention that I felt a lot of time had passed even if it has only been a few days.

I decided to retire for the night, as the sun has long since set, and I deemed it beneficial to keep to a regular cycle at least for the time being. And tomorrow I will finally summon my first minions.