Jack wobbled a bit on his way to the Grinding Hall.
His dungeon had many levels, and his family lived in the last ones. Recently, his sons and daughter had asked him and Elicia for some private space, so they got their own levels to manage as well.
Indeed, Sandro even had a small Dark Elf village on his domain. Elicia and Jack were against it at first, but after seeing how the small ones lived in the middle of a beast-filled wilderness, they allowed for it.
However, most of the dungeon was still inhabited by beasts only. Beasts which would constantly reproduce, spawn and re-spawn. Then, after a long while, once the dungeon was filled to the brim with the most powerful species, Jack and Elicia would send them all downwards, redirecting the Beast Horde to the Grinding Chamber - basically, a humongous cavern with nothing except a vast expanse of barren land.
There they would grind for Exp points in order to increase their Main Levels and get more Stats.
At first, six months were enough for a good monster wave to form. Then, the dungeon expanded to the point where it touched the land. At that time, the time needed for Jack and Elicia to grind a few levels decreased a lot.
However, that was then. Both Jack and Elicia got pretty bored of expanding their dungeon eventually, and it became more of a necessity for grinding than something fun.
These days they would expand the dungeon by copy-pasting a few templates, and then be done with it.
The only exciting moments would be when they found a new dungeon on their way. When two dungeons meet each other, a Dungeon Battle would happen - the Dungeon Cores would try to stablish dominance upon each other by depleting the other’s mana, and the winner would become the new Central Core - while the loser would become a Subordinate Core.
Of course, there had never been any real possibility for the Ultimate-Ranked Dragon King’s Dungeon (second) to lose to any dungeons except, maybe, the Demon Kingdom’s one.
Since Jack and Elicia had deemed invading the Demon Kingdom a bad choice, they obviously avoided expanding in that direction.
However, new dungeons, specially the wild ones, were always fun to explore. Jack and Elicia would take the kids and stroll around killing Wild Beasts and looking at the Dungeon Layout. Sometimes they would even copy one of the dungeon’s sections - if it looked nice to reproduce later on.
Of course, some were bound to be on the hands of either players or intelligent beasts - animals, magical beasts or even NPCs which had received souls but hadn’t had contact with civilization.
On these cases, Jack and Elicia would negotiate with them, and either let them be or incorporate their dungeons to them, while making them Subordinate Dungeon Masters.
At the moment, from the 5.547 Wild Dungeons taken by Jack and Elicia, only 5 had decided to remain independent from the beginning until now, and all of those were ruled by level 60+ players of the first generation.
The 10.000 mana/month reward for subordination was more than enough for everyone else to submit, so, even those five only did so because they were either wary of subordinating themselves to someone else, or just plainly didn’t care and wanted to “play” with their dungeon without worrying about subordination and whatnot.
So, without them even noticing, Jack and Elicia had taken over more than half of Another World’s underground.
Still, that wasn’t enough.
A hundred years of grinding made it so they had to pack this humongous dungeon to the brink before summoning all (or most) of the creatures back to the Grinding Hall, and them killing them on a full five-days uninterrupted massacre.
One might imagine how large such cave was, and how much Jack and Elicia had to grind, seeing that Jack’s breath, a hundred years in the past, had been enough to destroy a whole island already.
In total, ten years of accumulation would roughly generate one Main Level for both Jack and Elicia.
Enough to increase their stats by an extremely small margin, but, still, enough as a way to kill time a bit.
That said, Jack and Elicia weren’t directing themselves to the Grinding Hall in order to grind for themselves.
The next Monster Wave would need five years to be ready, so, both wouldn’t have the chance to let out some steam.
Instead, it was time for something way scarier to happen: Their child would reclaim its Past Life memories.
***
Jack didn’t bat an eye while looking at the scorched ground in front of him. Instead, he looked at his dear son.
Sandro.
The small boy had grown into a respectable young man, but one wouldn’t be able to judge by looking at his dragon form. Only after a while could someone understand how to judge a dragon according to its body and age.
Still, Jack was nervous.
The truth was, neither him or Elicia knew what Sandro’s past life was like. They obviously didn’t kill anyone to grab their souls, but they did buy the boy’s soul from a Wandering Neuromancer.
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At the time, Jack had casted all kinds of Lie Detection spells on the Neuromancer, while also taking a sneak peak at its memories. Surely, he wasn’t a Soul Slaver, and surely, he had bumped at Sandro’s soul while in the wild.
It was a fairly common profession back on the first years of Another World: Since great NPC massacres hadn’t happened yet, and since many players had died to wild beasts and had their souls trapped in them, people with high skill and the desire to make some money would hunt these beasts, kill them as humanely as possible, and them retrieve the souls.
They would also take in wandering souls which were either floating around or about to enter an NPC settlement.
Then, they would sell these souls for people who wanted to have kids but didn’t want to count on luck to have a soul finding their children and reincarnating on them.
Jack paid the man with a lot of gold, jewelry and a few mana crystals. One could just imagine how painful it was for him to give his gold away, and how much he and Elicia wanted to have kids.
Still, what now?
Once Sandro reclaimed his past life’s memories, would those overwrite his own? Would he still remain Jack and Elicia’s dear son?
Or would his past life overwrite everything, leaving them with a complete stranger which only thought as its time being their dear son as a fleeting dream?
Such situations had happened before in the past. Many parents would rush their children’s growth in order to make them powerful enough to have a voice in society, and then end up with a stranger living in the house.
Of course, the more powerful the body and the longer the time the person lived with their parents, smaller would be the chance for such a thing to happen.
For instance, if someone remembered a past life in which they were blind, while on this life they had perfect senses, obviously their memories of that past life would be weaker than the ones of the present life - such was the situation for those who belonged to common races such as humans and reincarnated on powerful races, such as elves.
Also, those who lived many years with their parents would have a bigger amount of memories from living with them than they had about their previous life. So, if someone lived as a human for 18 years and then died and reincarnated as an elf’s child, living as it for 50 years, obviously the human part of their memories would be immensely overshadowed by those 50 years coupled with superior senses!
However, one could say that having a greater amount of levels and skills would also count as a factor, since one’s senses and brain would be sharpened by acquiring skills to the point where, amongst high-level players, race simply didn’t matter. Unless, of course, we were talking about such huge differences as between a goblin and a dragon. Only at level 100 would a goblin have as much senses and power as a dragon.
Regardless.
All of those were uncertainties. Surely the worst-case scenario wouldn’t happen. Jack and Elicia had their children as Red Dragons, and Sandro was a Red Dragon as well. Not only that, but a Red Dragon with half of a Dragon King's Bloodline, as one could see by the extra horns on his head and tail, as well as his size - double that of a Red Dragon of the same age.
It would be almost impossible for him to have had sensorial experiences which overruled those this body of his offered.
Also, they lived for 100 years already. Sure, most of this time was expended sleeping, but if one was to count, they had lived a good amount of years.
On their Wyrmiling years, Sandro stood awake for a total of 4 years. Since most humans’ sleep for a third of their day, that was the equivalent to 6 human years!
Then, on his Young years, he was awake for a total of 9 years - 12 in human terms. At that time, he was 100 years old already, and had lived the equivalent of 18 human years.
Now, being 130, he had been awoken through 2 other years, for a total of 20~something human years.
As for staying awake by grinding Sleep Resistance skills, Jack and Elicia had allowed him to do so ever since he was 75 - that is, 16 in human terms.
That, however, proved to be a challenge. A dragon’s desire to sleep becomes increasingly strong with age. Had it not been for the fact that Jack and Elicia had managed to overcome such desire while being a Demigod and Ancient dragon respectively, and they may had cursed themselves for making things difficult for their own children.
Still, if he had started earlier, he might very well gain too much Mental Resistance, and, in that case, he would almost surely remember his past lives earlier than necessary.
Of course, Sandro´s experiences and time awoken might be the same as the ones of a 21-years-old human, but his mind wasn’t.
For better or worse, his body and brain were wired differently. He had the hormones and brain of a teenie - that is, of a 10-years-old boy.
In a certain sense, it was like being a responsible driver, with a couple years of experience in driving, but having to drive a car that might get overly powerful or underperform at any unexpected moment. At certain times, he would act excessively emotional, and at others, excessively pseudo-rational, in those fits of limited sight so common at such an age.
His desires were also starting to appear and in 100 years or so he would probably be looking for a female.
Thus, some of the doubts Jack had about the whole process. A 21-years-old with the body of a 10-years-old, with all the emotional disturbances and so on it contained.
As much as he had had so many mentally-powerful years of existence, wouldn’t he look for safety and guidance on his past life’s memories?
Worst, what if what he found in them were memories of troubled teenager years?
- Are you ready, sweetie? - Elicia said, while gently patting her son’s head.
- Y…yeah. - The anxious Sandro answered.
[- Are you sure that’s what you want?] - Jack asked, a little bit of hope in his words. Maybe the kid would back up a bit?
However, his question only made Sandro’s eyes more resolute.
- Yeah! I… I will do it!
Jack sighed and sat straight right next to his son. His claw touched his back, and one could see a glimpse of gratitude on the boy’s eyes.
- Okay. Let’s start them. - Elicia said, while operating the dungeon’s control screen. Soon, a summoning circle appeared in front of them.
- Good luck big bro! Come back to us, okay?! - Said Sandra, the little sister.
- Yeah, don’t go getting all crazy! Mom wouldn’t like that! - Said Pietro.
A few seconds later, the summoning circle’s light dimmed. Inside, a humanoid being with lax purple skin, an anemone where its neck should be and a squid’s head on top, fixed to the neck by pulsating dark flesh.
The thing’s anemone tentacles twisted while it evaluated those in front of him. A few of those had eyes on them, while the others spread all around, some bigger than him. Its squid head opened upwards on a 180º angle to show its beak. The two squid tentacles amidst the anemone tentacles moved menacingly.
Sandro trembled in fear while Pietro gagged and Sandra put her wings in front of her head, lightly terrified. Pietro, looking at the state of things, couldn’t but only lightly spread his wings around Sandra, in a partially-successful attempt to make her feel better.
- Go on now darling. It might hurt a bit at first, but you’ll get all the Resistances you need very soon. Do you have the anesthetic potion with you?
- Uhm! - Sandro looked at the bottle at his hands. It was a strong anesthetic, as it had to be to work on a dragon.
Doing his best to control his fear, he downed the potion in a single gulp.
[- It’s fine. Me and your mother have done this plenty of times before. If anything, those tentacles even give a good massage!] - Jack joked, to what Elicia looked at him with cold eyes.
[- E.. ehe…] - The mighty Dragon King looked away.
- Ok… I’ll go now! - Sandro said, while forcing his tense muscles to get closer to the creature.
- Go on, go on. Mommy will be here all the time, if you want to give up, just say it!
[- Yep. Just say it and you’ll be back.]
- Tha…thanks mom. Thanks dad.
The young dragon approached the tentacles.