Two and half months after Arthur left the dungeon core's room, Sophie cleared a room with level 51 monsters for the first time.
It was a commendable feat. Like all half-vampires, Sophie was a bloodsinger, so her magic was severely limited against lightning elementals. Moreover, she was a close-range warrior, and the elementals were hard to strike with a sword.
Fortunately, Sophie randomly received the light element for her skills when she reached level 50. Awakener light magic was pretty lackluster, but the element was powerful when evolving skills. She had even lucked up that four skills among the remaining skill crystals fit her build like a glove.
First, the active Piercing Thrust became Lightsplitting Strike when learned by someone with the light element. When Sophie used it, Fate applied a pinkie-nail-wide spell to her blade. At B-tier, the skill remained in place for 0.5 seconds, and she had yet to find anything it couldn't pierce, including a grand knight's armor.
Sophie could do a lot in half a second, too. As a half-vampire, every other stat point Sophie gained was automatically added to a stat she had picked among the options Fate had given her. She had picked agility, and it currently sat somewhere around 4,000 points.
The second skill was the weighted Self-Transparency, which had evolved from the Unseen skill. It was great against unsuspecting victims and useful in big chaotic battles. She could just remain invisible while killing. At A-tier, it had her so transparent that she became almost invisible, but an attentive observer would find her. Therefore, it didn't help much when she was the only enemy against thousands, like now.
The third skill was the one that truly assisted her in killing thousands of lightning elementals. It was the weighted Laser-Focus Strike that evolved from Precision Strike. At B-tier, it gave her attacks enormous precision, with little to no movement waste. No elemental could dodge her, despite being only as thick as lighting bolts and fast—though not as fast as her.
Sophie didn't have as much agility as lightning itself, of course, but she had plenty of skills that helped her on that front, including the B-tier Improved Speed that Arthur had once had.
Speaking of which, the prince had found that placing the life spell that made him faster on Sophie didn't work. Both spell and skill did the same thing and ignored each other. She didn't become any faster.
Arthur had decided to donate all his skill crystals to Sophie, which was why all her skills were at least C-rank, with many at B-rank and a few even A-rank. He had thought Tamara and Graham would oppose the idea, but they had been surprisingly accommodating.
He had enough wisdom to guess it had something to do with their impending departure from the dungeon and enough willpower to control his curiosity. They would leave soon enough. No need to rush.
Sophie dodged a lightning bolt with grace, her body twisting like a performant dancer, her skirt's movement making the motion mesmerizing. She was wearing a battle maid's armor, and Arthur could see underneath the skirt from his angle, but it was no issue. Battle maids wore armor on their legs, too, on top of the armored dress, which was kept as a larger, easier target that could be easily bypassed on purpose.
The last elemental in the room was right next to her. She wielded two thin short swords, and one of them pierced the living lightning while the other cut it horizontally. The monster would've dodged by a hair's breadth without the Laser-Focus Strike automatically correcting her attacks' paths.
The monster dissipated into nothingness, dead.
Yet, Sophie didn't relax. Tamara's training was much less honorable than Graham's. As soon as the elemental died, the maid appeared behind Sophie and struck her back.
They started a bloody battle right then, right there, with Sophie already tired.
Battle maids had to learn alertness and tenacity, and Sophie might need to train one in the future in case Tamara passed without preparing another. Both women wore the same silvery armored dress with black details. Tamara, however, wielded a shield and a spear.
The maid was fast, but not even a third as much as Sophie. She made up for it with defense. Sophie's Lightsplitting Strike could pierce the maid's shield and destroy her arm, but they had agreed not to do that after Tamara said she had only ten shields remaining.
Without that ability, Tamara became Sophie's worst nightmare. The battle maid specialized in protecting her charge or stalling for time while her charge ran away or they waited for help. Sophie was all about killing fast and leaving faster. Getting pinned down in one place might be her downfall.
Indeed, she almost got struck multiple times. Tamara had air for her skill element and specialized in controlling her opponent. She had a skill that compressed the air around a target. It was weighted instead of active, making it one of the most versatile of the kind that Arthur had ever seen. It didn't completely lock the opponent down but slowed them considerably.
Yet, Sophie was too fast. She always dodged by a hair's breadth or parried in the last second. She couldn't defeat Tamara, but the latter also couldn't beat her.
Unfortunately, that worked in the battle maid's favor.
Sophie was tired; Tamara was not. Awakeners had a lot of energy, but it wasn't unlimited. Without Sophie's blood magic assisting her on that front, she would have long been incapable of moving a single muscle.
Fortunately, she always found a novel way to bypass Tamara's magic defenses.
Their armor prevented them from using prehension on each other, and basic combat theory was all about creating an opening in such defenses. Without the Lightsplitting Strike, Sophie had to get creative, especially because the same tactic never worked twice against Tamara.
The most noteworthy attempt to date had been when she slowly soaked the ground with her blood, excavated it, then sprung the trap. Tamara had fallen down and gotten buried, and Sophie had removed the maid's helmet after a furious exchange of skills and magic.
This time, Sophie used a different subterfuge. She was getting slow from exhaustion, and Tamara's spear pierced through the half-vampire's vambrace. It barely cut the latter's skin, and Sophie didn't immediately heal herself. Instead, she let her blood flow seemingly randomly at the maid.
Tamara knew something was coming because she was facing a bloodsinger, but she couldn't dodge the blood. She eventually used a skill to push it away from her, and Sophie finally stopped bleeding.
From there, Sophie sneakily and slowly made the blood drops return to Tamara's armor without the latter's notice. If she rushed it or the maid noticed what was happening, she wouldn't be surprised. And as Arthur learned soon after, that tactic required the enemy to be caught unguarded.
Finally, Sophie got satisfied with how much blood she had smeared on the maid's armor and cast quick spells. Her blood became thin but effective shackles on Tamara's limbs, body, and head.
Tamara didn't have a weighted Intent Denial skill, but she had an active Intent Erasing Wave that cleared all prehension magic around her. Unfortunately, Sophie had used spells. Her air skills weren't as effective against spells, either.
Tamara was locked in place.
That wouldn't keep going for long. Sophie's magic didn't have enough mana and was relatively weak. Tamara was already strengthening her body with biomancy and would break free after a moment.
That moment was all that Sophie needed. Tamara could think fast and had combat experience but was surprised. There was a tiny delay between understanding what had happened and reaction. On the other hand, Sophie was already heading toward her enemy when she cast her spell.
Despite Tamara being locked in place, Sophie couldn't take advantage of any opening in the maid's armor. Most enchanted defensive equipment kind of elongated their physical defenses into their surroundings, covering for openings such as eye slits. Sophie's short sword would find as much resistance between Tamara's plates as if she struck the plates themselves.
However, there was a fourth skill that made it matter less.
The active Explosive Speed body skill had evolved into Lightspeed. At B-tier, it made Sophie 2.5 times as fast for half a second—on top of the passives that already increased her base agility. Tamara's armor was good, but not enough to resist thousands of attacks in the exact same place—which Sophie accomplished thanks to Laser-Focus Strike.
Before attacking, Sophie gave up on a dozen milliseconds to swap her short sword for a long mythril dagger that Arthur had built for her in secret. She had hidden it in one of the maid uniform's large pockets. While pulling it out, she also pushed a string of blood from her hand into a sneaky, tiny tube-like structure hidden in the middle of the blade. It went from the handle to the tip.
Sophie aimed her dagger at the space beneath Tamara's helmet. While the enchantment made the armor as resistant in that patch of nothing as in a plate, Sophie was still hitting empty air. Her dagger was only stopped but not damaged. It broke through after a few hundred attacks.
Such an obvious loophole wasn't so easily exploitable. A battle maid's uniform was special. Hers rose to cover her neck when she put her helmet on. It was also enchanted for defense and could break incoming weapons. Unfortunately, it was still made of cloth and just short of being enough to damage mythril. It also wasn't as resistant as the plate armor. Lastly, there was no rule against damaging it because it had a self-repair enchantment.
A hundred strikes later, Sophie's dagger penetrated Tamara's neck—and that's when things got ugly.
Enchanted armor prevented enemy intent strings from going through and kept working even if the armor was slightly damaged. Usually, only a large enough opening could make it the enchantment incapable of covering a nearby area.
Usually.
When Sophie's blood, still living and connected to her, got through the armor and into Tamara's body, it was still considered part of her body. The armor's enchantment could do nothing against something physically going through it.
Part of the ensuing magic combat was weird. Sophie and Tamara could prehend the same drop of blood without their intent strings snapping.
That was only possible because their elements were different. When that happened, whoever had the initiative had the advantage. Tamara had made her entire body, including her blood, "remember" its exact form and functioning from the beginning of the fight. Sophie had to spend a lot of mana to try to counter that, to make Tamara's blood behave erratic, but Tamara could just spend more mana to insist on her view. The half-vampire was already tired and couldn't get on a mana-loop. Her blood mana was the only thing keeping her in combat.
Sophie knew that. She had already lost one such combat before and came prepared this time. She did prehend the blood in Tamara's body, but only as part of a pincer attack. The most important part was Sophie's blood.
The thin blood tendril became a lethal spear that moved from Tamara's neck to her brain.
Tamara had a dagger piercing her neck and was engaged in a full-body battle against Sophie's prehension. The latter started and stopped prehending Tamara's blood multiple times every instant. Lastly, Tamara was still strengthening her body to break free from the shackles. Those factors piled up and distracted the maid, who didn't notice the thin tendril piercing her flesh.
Sophie stopped when her pointy tentacle reached Tamara's skull. Technically, enough vitality and the right magic could heal even a damaged brain, but sometimes, there were complications. You didn't mess with an ally's brain in a spar.
Tamara finally broke free from the blood shackles and jumped back to disengage.
Sophie had acted fast, and it took the maid a moment to notice her internal damage. Only then did she understand she had already lost. Another moment later, she looked at the dagger, then gave Arthur an ugly stare—which he only noticed thanks to his domain.
The maid turned back to Sophie and sighed. "I taught you well."
Sophie laughed in triumph. "I did it!" she cheered.
It was her first victory—
Suddenly, Graham appeared out of nowhere behind her. That was the first time the grand knight joined the festivities. He held her by the neck with one hand while his other hand pulled her helmet away. Once the helmet was gone, he lit both his hands aflame.
Sophie screamed as her skin burned, and Graham immediately released her. The damage was superficial enough that her vitality started healing her, but Arthur immediately prehended Sophie's body to heal her.
He became upset with his knight but understood this was a combat lesson. People got injured during those, and protecting Sophie would only make her weaker. She had screamed more from the scare than pain or damage.
The prince healed his suitress in instants.
The battle was over, and the women removed their helmets. Only Graham liked to keep his head protected all the time.
A sour Sophie stared daggers at the knight, who had a snarky smile under his helmet. Tamara was smiling triumphantly. Clearly, she had planned for it with Graham.
"As I was saying," the maid started. "I taught you well. You engaged me in information warfare with great success. You could've killed me. You even had an ally assist you with equipment. Unfortunately, I caught wind of your movements and also got some assistance.
"You cheated," Sophie said. "This was supposed to be one-on-one. I only 'bought' equipment. You brought another person into our fight."
She crossed her arms and pouted adorably. Like Tamara, she was sweaty, her hair stuck to her face, but it didn't make her even slightly ugly.
Fate, she was beautiful.
Tamara was already using a maid skill to clean their sweat. Arthur didn't mind at all. Dry Sophie didn't lose to sweaty Sophie.
The maid chuckled. "Don't be a sore loser, girl. You did learn well. So well that I had to cheat! You learned to fight even exhausted, and I just showed you that even an enemy that underestimates you because you're tired might still have a backup plan. Or that someone else might take advantage of the situation after the fight. Or even that even a supposedly honorable opponent like me might cheat
Arthur and Sophie had already been taught that in one of Tamara's "classes," but living through it would be a much better teaching experience than just knowing about it.
"Be alert, always," the maid concluded. "You never know when you might get attacked—or who might attack you." She looked at Arthur from the corner of her eyes. "And maybe, the next time you 'buy' a hidden weapon to surprise your enemies, also convince the smith to assist you."
Arthur chuckled. "How are you feeling?" he asked Sophie.
He asked about her injury, which had disappeared, but her bad mood dissipated as she gave him a victorious smile.
"I did it, Archie!" she said and approached. He was a few dozen yards away, at the edge of the other room. "I cleared the room alone! f I remember well, we bet on a date wherever I want, correct?"
He smiled back. Sophie really wanted to sail the seas. The Golden Kingdom wasn't a coastal country, so she had never even seen it. Arthur had—unfortunately so.
The prince had sailed when he was five and still remembered how sick he had felt. He wouldn't get ill if he tried again, not with his stats, but they had been playful bickering about it for a while. At long last, Sophie would get what she wanted.
The prince sighed theatrically. "Ah, the woes of romance. But I shall endure for the perpetuation of the species. The things I do for my kingdom!"
Sophie giggled. "Humanity shall be ever in your debt, Your Highness."
"So it shall," he replied, looking haughty in the distance.
Sophie finally got to him and embraced him. "I anxiously await the day we'll sacrifice ourselves to help populate your kingdom," she whispered.
The closer they got to the time limit in the dungeon, the bolder Sophie became. It crushed Arthur's heart. She fully believed the king would force them apart when they left because she wasn't worthy and sought to experience many things with him before. They wouldn't go too far, of course, not outside marriage. But she found great pleasure in teasing him.
And both found great pleasure in using their Senses Beyond Senses trait to see each other's skin in places that should also be kept unseen until marriage.
What could the prince say? They were young, curious, and in love. Only their willpower prevented them from doing anything more than looking, and he considered what they had a good enough compromise.
"Me too," he whispered back and embraced her. "I love you, Soph."
She smiled, radiating overwhelming happiness. "I love you too, Archie.
Arthur knew his father wouldn't separate them. There was no need to. The prince would win the war by himself, and there would be no need to marry into any House for support. Sophie would also assist and become a heroine. Everyone would bless their union, which his father had already approved.
Yet, he couldn't deny he still had a hint of doubt in his heart.
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So, he had wanted Sophie to level up as much and grow as strong as possible. That's why he had stayed as long in the dungeon as possible before leaving and had improved four of her stats—strength, absorption, magnitude, and efflux—by around 500 points each. He hadn't even touched on his strength and agility these past months.
To convince everyone to stay, the prince had used the excuse of understanding and improving his power for a guaranteed win. While it had made him stronger, it had been mostly for her. Or rather, for them.
Two and a half extra months meant over half a day on the outside. How many had died for his selfishness? Yet, as he felt her smile and heard her profess her love for him, he knew he would do it again if given a chance.
"You were awesome!" Arthur added after they separated. "You can move so fast! And I was doubtful about this battle dress at first, but it also makes you look good while you defeat your enemies. Then again, I guess I have yet to see you wear anything that doesn't make you breathtaking."
She giggled again, and he could feel her happiness—physically feel it in the chemicals inside her body. Sadly, that was rare. Sophie was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen but had self-esteem issues. She liked the compliments but never fully believed him.
Arthur could change how her brain worked to make her more confident, but he had decided that was not alright.
If he started affecting people's minds, would those people still be them? Sophie's struggles were also part of her. It wasn't a disease, only a personality trait, inconvenient for her as it was. No one was perfect, and Arthur wasn't about to turn everyone into perfect puppets—which would only be his version of perfection.
The prince had once considered letting people decide whether they wanted to change parts of themselves, but he decided not to. He didn't feel comfortable with it and owed nothing to no one except his father. It was his power, gained with his sweat and the sacrifice of who-know-how-many resources.
"His Highness is correct," Tamara told Sophie. "I couldn't have cleared this room by myself. Congratulations."
Sophie only smiled politely at that. The maid's compliment meant nowhere as much to the half-vampire as Arthur's.
"Well," the prince said, "this is it, folks. Everyone, give this place a last look. We're getting out of this Fate-forsaken place."
They still had fifteen days remaining, but no one wanted to risk something unexpected forcing them to stay longer than planned.
No one spared even a second to look at their surroundings. They all wanted to leave as fast as possible.
They all missed the sky.
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The journey to the dungeon's first room took only a few days. Arthur massacred everything in the way, and they slept only for a few hours as anticipation pushed them forward.
Everything went without issue until they reached their destination. There, they found three unexpected things:
A strange construct, novel enchantments, and a girl.
Externally, the metal construct looked simple. A thick tube had been tucked into the ground and provided it with support. On top of the vertical cane rested an arm-wide metal box with an attached horizontal tube. Lastly, three tiny black round pieces of glass were embedded on the bottom of each side of the cube.
The three metal parts were enchanted for extra durability. He knew nothing about enchantment but felt the metal was extra resistant. Their walls were also thick.
Internally, the thing was much more complex. Arthur could only feel the metal, but he could see the mana.
The connection between the support tube and the box was invisible to his domain's senses, but he saw the "connecting device's" mana. It was spherical, surrounded by enchanting runes. He didn't know what it was made of and had no idea what the enchantments did, though.
Multiple thin metal wires came out of the sphere. Each individual wire was surrounded by an unknown substance that formed a thin long tube. The entire set of thin wires was bound together by a bigger tube to make it look like a single wire. It went from the sphere to a metal piece Arthur could only call a marvel of magic. The thumb-sized cube had dozens of hair-thin enchanted metal layers on top of each other.
Fate had taught Arthur some spells that were as complex as those enchantments, but it was the first time he ever saw compounded three-dimensional enchantments. It was theoretically possible, but no enchanter had ever accomplished it before—that he knew of.
The enchanted cube looked like the contraption's most critical component. It was connected by other wires to the pieces of glass. The glass was also enchanted.
The cube was right in the middle of the larger metal box, kept in place by an internal frame of an unidentified material. It had a separate space for the sphere, cube, glass, and wires connecting them.
All the leftover space was filled with finger-sized metal cylinders with sharp conical tips. They were placed in rows, bound by metal links to their neighboring ones, in a kind of maze that ultimately led to the horizontal tube. Springs and levers throughout the maze ensured the cylinders could get to the horizontal tube.
The part of that tube inside the metal box was surrounded by a complex enchanted system of metal parts. Arthur could tell it pulled the cylinder from its links, placed it on the tube, then pulled the next cylinder up to a "waiting position;" it was the next in line to enter the tube. Indeed, one of the cylinders was already resting inside the tube, in front of what looked like a small metallic battering ram poised to hit the cylinder on the flat bottom.
The metal links were such that each link connected one cylinder to the next. If the two cylinders they had been holding were gone, they were left purposeless and separated from the rest. A small diagonal dispenser going from the horizontal tube to the bottom of the metal box would see them get disposed of in the dungeon. There were no metal links outside, and the box was filled to the brim with cylinders, so the construct had likely not been used even once yet.
Arthur had never felt death intent from objects. Even weapons were only tools. It was the people wielding them that produced that intent.
Yet, he felt a vague sense of death from the construct.
It had been made to kill. It served no other purpose. It didn't seek to kill him, but something else.
The intent came from the enchanted cube in the middle, and Arthur concluded that it could make decisions, probably based on what the pieces of glass detected.
The thing was most likely an automatic weapon meant to kill monsters, almost surely to protect the girl in the room.
The nineteen-year-old brunette was lying unconscious on a thin mattress in a corner. She was an unawakened human. Her long hair was wavy, a trait from the south, but her black eyes were stretched at the corners, like the people from the far east. Her skin was a beautiful bronze that fit her well.
Arthur felt her life and the chemicals affecting her. She had been doped with a lot of sleeping substances that would see her unconscious for days. Another substance kept her body from using too much energy or losing too much water. She had also consumed a novel, slow-release, highly nutritious wet ration that would keep her fed and hydrated for as long as she remained asleep.
The reason for all that was obvious: she was severely ill.
She had emphysema, a chronic disease that had made her almost defenseless against the pneumonia and multiple respiratory tract infections ravaging her respiratory system. Her lungs were already incapable of adequately supplying her blood with oxygen and were about a week away from being incapable of obtaining oxygen at all.
Curing emphysema wasn't easy for the average biomancer. Below level 40, only a specialized healer could accomplish it. The girl clearly had no access to one despite the amazing enchanters that had produced the weapon protecting her and the alchemists that had developed the things she had consumed.
By itself, that might make some sense. Magic and technology never developed equally in all areas. There was more interest and effort in producing weapons than healing a disease that afflicted only the unawakened or awakeners with too little vitality.
However, one thing shattered everything Arthur believed in: the girl had obviously been placed in an induced coma with slowed vital functions to survive a little longer.
That made no sense if he were in a dungeon where time ran faster than the outside. It only made sense if time ran slower in there. That way, she could remain in a coma for a few days here while a long time passed outside, and a biomancer could arrive in time to save her.
Arthur wasn't stupid. In fact, he had way more points in wisdom than most people needed. As soon as he started having time to rest, his mind was free to think of things other than magic.
He had noticed the hints that something was wrong.
But he had refused to pursue the idea. He had willingly blinded himself to the truth. Maybe unconsciously, it had been another reason he had wanted Sophie to grow as strong as possible, but he had never dared to face those whispers and reach a conclusion.
The hints came from the simple fact that his father had spent way too much on the prince.
Tamara and Graham had done an excellent job of playing it down without making Arthur feel ungrateful, but they had let out snippets of truth here and there. Getting the tens of thousands of skill crystals for Arthur's 120 skills to reach at least A-tier, on top of acquiring specific rare skills, could bankrupt a medium House. Giving Sophie so many good skills, too, many of them D-tier—before Arthur added his own crystals to the pile—was unthinkable.
Grand knight armor wasn't cheap, either. Neither was a first-class sorcerer's robe. And Arthur bet a battle maid's armor was even more expensive than both because it had an added cost for secrecy. Yet, they had brought a lot of them. Tamara had lost a hundred shields and still had ten remaining.
Divinations were also expensive, but the king had bought enough to trust and make decisions based on their content. Then, he purchased the prohibitively expensive and rare potions to let four people remain in the dungeon for ten years. Potions to grow a lost limb were also not cheap, yet Arthur had been given a couple of dozen.
All that together wouldn't bankrupt a High House. However, it would force them to sell many assets, pushing their development back at least a dozen years. It might even permanently cripple them if the political scenario was unfavorable.
Not the king, of course. The king had the kingdom's coffers at his disposal. He shouldn't suffer from a lack of funds.
Shouldn't.
Arthur's father was king, yes. But a king with glaring security issues that had seen a grand knight turn against him because they were sure he would lose the war. A king who had spent money on an expensive artifact to protect his wife from that same betrayer. A king ruling over grand knights that refused to speak the bare minimum to a first-class sorceress, causing a commotion in the palace in a time of war.
A king who was going to lose a war and knew it.
Who knew how many more resources had been invested into Arthur's growth in places he couldn't even—
Arthur froze.
Oh, Fate. No. Not that.
The king...
The king had fallen.
Arthur's father had reached an agreement with the dungeon core; that's how that "special area" had been created.
Dungeon cores didn't understand long-term risk and reward. Arthur knew that intimately—he had lived it during his ascension. Even threatening them was useless. The only way to force them into an agreement was to overwhelm their sense of short-term greed with enough resources. But even then, they would betray you unless you convinced them to take a soul vow, which required unspeakable amounts of resources when a level 95 dungeon was involved. The best even the king could accomplish was to have the special area available only after the final bosses died.
In fact, how would the king know about that area if he hadn't at least talked to the dungeon core? Arthur doubted the entirety of the kingdom's army could kill those dragons. Well, maybe the army did have enough people and strength for that, but the losses wouldn't make it worth it. That was why the dungeon was sealed in the first place instead of destroyed.
"How fast?" he demanded of no one in particular. Arthur was confident that he already knew the answer, but he asked it anyway.
Sophie realized something was wrong. He had suddenly tensed, and his voice was gloomy. "Archie?" she said, looking worried at him.
Tamara and Graham said nothing.
"How fast?" Arthur demanded again. His voice was lower this time, almost a whisper. It was filled with the threat of violence.
He wouldn't hurt his people, of course. But he was angry, and his body was a honed weapon. He instinctively readied his muscles.
"One hundred twenty-two times faster, Your Highness," Graham replied somberly.
Over one hundred times; that's how much faster time ran inside compared to the outside world. Tamara's body was as tense as Graham's, so she knew the truth, too.
They had stayed almost ten years there.
Over a thousand years had passed on the outside.
If Arthur were a commoner, he might've fainted from the shock. If he hadn't survived his stupidity, he might've entered a doom spiral now. If he didn't have over twelve thousand mind points and the willpower that came with it, he might go crazy.
Instead, he was filled with deep sorrow. It felt like his heart was torn from his body, leaving only a sense of loss behind.
Tears filled Arthur's eyes as he turned to Sophie. Her confusion and worry made it clear she had no idea what was going on. She would have it the worst.
"Chairs," Arthur ordered, and Tamara obeyed at once. She put an armchair beside Sophie and another beside him, both facing each other. "Sit, Soph," he said as softly as he could.
"Why are you crying, Archie?" Sophie asked as she sat. "What's going on?"
Arthur grabbed her hands within his, tilted his torso to stay close to her, and stared into her red eyes.
"I'm sorry, Sophie. They are gone."
"Who?" she asked, more confused by the second.
"Everyone," he replied.
His parents. His people. Maybe even his kingdom.
They were all gone.
To be honest, Arthur felt somewhat disconnected from his parents after so long. However, their memory had fueled his every action. Returning to them, making his father proud, and winning the war had been his goals.
If not for Sophie, he might actually go crazy now despite—
He froze in shock again.
Fate! Sophie was part of the puzzle even now?! His father had used the poor girl, separated her from her father against her wishes, just so Arthur could survive this dungeon relatively sane?!
Arthur felt angry with his father and furious with himself because he was thankful for that. He couldn't have done it without Sophie. He wouldn't have wanted to. She made it all worth it.
Whatever awaited them out there, he could face it as long as she was by his side.
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Arthur explained everything to Sophie as kindly as he could. She was shocked, to say the least. She cried in his arms, then kept silent as Arthur talked to Tamara and Graham.
They knew little more than what he had already guessed. Tamara had assumed the same thing as him about the agreement with the dungeon. All but confirming the king had fallen was a brutal hit for everyone.
Charles Boria V had left one last Royal Decree for everyone to read after they left the dungeon. Arthur expected his to contain some truths but chose to respect his father's command. He would only open it outside.
That was all Arthur could do to honor the man who had even fallen for his benefit—and whom he would have to denounce, as required by League law.
"Tamara will heal the sleeping girl, then we'll leave," Arthur declared.
"I agree, master," Tamara replied.
The maid had become incredibly humble after the reveal. She hadn't lied to him after truly becoming his servant but had hidden the truth from him. He had agreed to it, and she had believed it was for the best, but it still hurt her. She had gotten very, very close to betrayal, which went against everything she believed in. She felt like a weight had left her shoulders, but it left bitterness in its wake.
Unlike Tamara, Graham hadn't gotten even close to treason. He had known the king was dead, but it didn't automatically make Arthur his new liege. First, Arthur had to declare the late king dead. Only then could the grand knight swear his allegiance to him. The exception was if Graham had seen the corpse himself
In theory, Graham should have informed Arthur of his father's likely passing, but his late liege had forbidden him, and until he swore a new allegiance, he was beholden to the old king. It was a gray area. Arthur's father had taken full advantage of it.
Well, not anymore.
The prince sighed and stood up, turning to the knight who had been taciturn the whole conversation. "Well? Out with it."
"Is Your Highness ready to declare His Royal Majesty deceased?" he asked more politely than he had ever spoken to Arthur.
"Yes," Arthur said with a heavy heart. "The king has passed."
A crown prince needed to personally verify the information or get it from a trustworthy source before doing that. He considered Tamara reliable enough when she said a thousand years had passed outside, and he knew the king didn't have enough vitality to live that long.
He also knew better than to hope the kingdom was still around after a thousand years. That's not how countries worked. Moreover, Tamara and Graham had insisted it would lose the war no matter what.
Oh, all sorts of wonders could've happened, but Arthur knew better than to hope for it. After all, what would people say if they found the prince of nowhere to be a rambling lunatic?
Fate, he felt no sense of belonging anywhere anymore.
What was he supposed to do?!
Arthur sighed. No use growing anxious about the future. He could only figure things out after he left the dungeon and read the Royal Decree. He would cross that bridge when he got there.
From Graham's slower mind perspective, Arthur had just declared the king dead. A bit of mana inside his body just shrunk and disappeared. His soul vow to the late king had just dissipated.
Then, the grand knight immediately removed his helmet, put a knee to the ground, and bowed deeply.
"I, William Graham, swear fealty to Arthur Willoughby Naerith-Tracey Boria the Third. My blade is yours to command. My life is yours to take. Your will is my fate. So it shall be for as long as you live, and may you live long."
Arthur took his orange sword from the hilt—it looked better than the plain metal one—and rested it on Graham's right shoulder.
"I, Arthur Willoughby Naerith-Tracey Boria the Third, take William Graham as my lawful vassal. You shall become the blade that'll kill my enemies and the shield that'll protect my people. For as long as you live, I shall wield the power I hold over you with responsibility for the greater good of all."
Graham swallowed audibly and concluded his part of the ritual. "I swear to Fate that, should you accept me, I shall obey your every command except if it ever goes against the chivalry code as I know and understand at the time of this vow. I may refuse to kill the innocent for you. I may refuse to act against my family for you. I may refuse to go against what I consider right and just for you. If you accept and trust my conscience, take me into your service, knowing it shall be my guiding light while I serve.
"I shall be your vassal to the day you release me of your service. I shall be your vassal to the day I see you pass with my own eyes. I shall be your vassal to the day you are declared gone by a rightful heir, and I believe them. Whichever comes first.
Arthur removed the blade from the man's right shoulder and rested it on his left. "I accept your pledge. May Fate be my witness. We are bound to the end of my life."
Mana left Graham's body, then returned, binding him to his words. The mana came from a spatial fissure that Fate created inside the knight's body and returned to the man's soul. Arthur couldn't feel souls. They were neither alive nor dead but something else.
The prince took the sword away and sheathed it. "Rise, my knight."
Graham obeyed. His face was conflicted. He wanted to die, but here he was, bound by duty to keep serving.
As he had said, his life was Arthur's to take now.
"Shouldn't we talk to her?" Sophie suggested with a weak voice. "The girl, I mean."
Arthur shook his head. "The priority is reading my father's Royal Decrees. We don't know her and shouldn't trust her. We'll heal her because it's easy and basic human decency. If we feel we should talk to her after reading, we can just return to the dungeon."
Sophie nodded weakly. She hadn't really suggested anything. She was simply confused about everything and seeking comfort in having silly questions answered.
That was another reason Arthur wanted to leave as soon as possible. He, too, wanted to see the outside world. It would help all of them fully feel the weight of their new reality.
Sophie needed it more than anyone; she had cried but seemed to still be in some sort of denial. The prince might've eased her into it if they were elsewhere, but he believed the benefits of leaving that Fatedamned dungeon were much greater than the shock she might receive.
Tamara struggled to heal the sick girl. The maid couldn't work around the substances affecting the patient's body. She ended up having to drain them, which caused the unawakened to breathe haggardly and have fits of bloody cough every few seconds.
Even with the medicine gone, Tamara had to slowly, very slowly, work on her healing. The diseases and complications were just within the range of her abilities.
Meanwhile, Arthur learned what the weapon and its individual parts were called.
His Wise Inspection trait had been useless until now but might become pretty henceforth. It was at 2-8, meaning that if Arthur looked at anything non-stop for 12 minutes, he would learn its name in all languages he knew. He might even get alternative names for the same language depending on how many people used those names. Then, the more he looked—not necessarily uninterrupted this time—the more he would learn about it. It would take him two months to learn an object's composition and how it was produced.
In the League dialect, the strange weapon was an "automated defense turret," a type of "gun." He cheated the trait by looking at its internal components using his Mana Sight passive spell. The gun had things like a trigger, charger, barrel, and muzzle.
The cylinders were rounds or ammunition held together by a belt, the name for the collective of the metal links. Each round had a primer, cartridge case, and bullet, and a round could also be called the latter two, cartridge or bullet. The case held powder.
The sphere was an automated mechanical joint. The wires were high-speed data transmission serial buses, also called HSDTSBs, or just TSBs for shorts, or even simply cables. The glass bits were positional monster sensors or just sensors. And the thumb-sized magic cube was a micro-processor or just a processor.
Most interestingly, Arthur kept staring at everything while thinking about what it all might mean, and after around an hour, he got new names from them. HellSlayer 33X Black for the entire turret, MechKnee v9 for the sphere, TSB 8 cables for the serial buses, UncleShock MonsterGlass 13A for the sensors, K77 Armor-Piercing Explosive Shells for the rounds, and Shaman S19K229 for the processor.
Arthur had also been taught the elven and high elven languages by Tamara. Everything had similar names in both languages, sometimes even the same, as if the elves never bothered to localize those items' names from the League dialect. However, the names he got in Carnan, the human language, were more like a description than proper names.
The turret was a long-range defensive automatic weapon, the cylinders were combustion projectiles, and the processor was a math-based high-speed logic-based instruction-bound calculator. They didn't sound as fresh as the names in the League dialect but gave him much food for thought on what each thing actually was or did.
Sophie tightly hugged Arthur's arm silently as they waited for Tamara. Such an intimate display was improper, but he wasn't in the mood to care about it. His suitress needed the emotional comfort that only that level of physical contact could grant her, and he would provide it. To be honest, he also needed that.
Fate, there wasn't even anyone around to point fingers at them, to begin with!
Tamara used mana-expenditure management skills that impressed Arthur. Her mana reserves hadn't even lowered by a tenth when she was done, despite it taking two hours. In the end, she was successful.
The girl was breathing easily and sleeping like a baby.
"Let's go," he commanded after Tamara cleaned herself with one of her skills.
Graham went first, closely followed by Tamara. Arthur was supposed to wait but wasn't having any of that, not with the time dilation. He wanted Sophie to leave that place as quickly as possible.
He gently placed his free hand on top of one of Sophie's, which was clenching his upper harm, clenched it, and led her outside.
Almost ten years after entering the dungeon, they finally walked out of it—and into their fate.