Just because there were deep dwarves didn’t mean that I was necessarily in their territory. It also wasn’t clear if Garnet and Terra were near the deep dwarves’ territory when they were taken. They had been on the run, and it wasn’t clear how long or how far they had gone. As for the dwarves, even an area near their territory could create such enemies. Although that assumed there was a dungeon present.

I also was never exactly clear on when a dungeon generated undead and when a dungeon generated the actual product. In the case of the Twilight Dungeon, the human beings were all represented by skeletons and undead. Meanwhile, in the Bandit’s Respite, it was clear that human beings could be generated as dungeon mobs, and there was also Mina’s Dungeon, where the undead was a clear result of a necromancer at work.

Perhaps the difference was that the humans died inside Bandit’s Respite, so their lore was registered while they were alive, and in the case of Twilight Dungeon, it was only their dead bodies that were absorbed. As for the demons, didn’t they spawn from the demon lord’s castle? It was possible Aberis used pieces of the demon lord’s castle to spawn Twilight, so it only made sense that the demons were their actual appearance, while the bodies of the battlefield were already dead before being consumed by the dungeon.

In that case, did this prove that there was a dungeon involved? Was that dungeon the reason that the deep dwarves came to the surface? I wasn’t so naïve to believe that the deep dwarves came to the surface in some kind of power grab. It seemed like they had tried several attempts to breach the surface, only to be tossed back by Osteria, Esmore, and Dioshin each time. They were running from something.

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Was that the same something that now had Garnet and Terra? I didn’t know, but I had to do my best to save them regardless of the threat. For that, I needed lore. I needed information. The creatures of the Deep weren’t exactly full of words, but that didn’t mean the mana they contained might not have the answers I needed.

We continued, fighting increasingly more deep dwarves. They came in many forms, from nights to commoners. Those that didn’t have beards were likely once women. There seemed to be less of them. Was this because it was the men who fought on the borders while allowing the women to reach the surface. It wasn’t hard to imagine what happened to those women, captured and slavery. Perhaps animalkin maintained such youthful appearances because they all had a bit of Deep Dwarf in their bloodline from sex slaves.

Of course, the deep dwarves weren’t the only undead I faced. Various animals were undead, and also undead goblins, trolls, and various monsters of the deep. It didn’t matter much what form they came in because they all had the same weakness, my White Mage spells.

“We should be getting close,” I predicted after finishing off another group of undead. “The boss will be close to hear.”

“How do you know?” Alysia asked.

“The mana is getting richer. It seems like wherever you are, mana makes the world turn around. Bosses will pick the place with the greatest mana to make their home.”