“Master, are you sure this is okay?” Miki asked worriedly.

“I need to check on the dungeon and find out what happened,” I answered. “Besides, I can escape quicker and easier on my own.”

“It could be a trap.”

“It won’t be.” These words came from Elaya, and when everyone glanced her way, she continued. “I don’t know all that much about Dioshin. However, I do know that King Roth is a lion. Although it isn’t a good idea to make assumptions based on their kinship, lionkin do have a fair sense of pride. Setting traps is something he considers beneath him.”

“Either way, if he did have a trap, that is all the more reason I don’t want to bring everyone. It will just be Alysia and me. Don’t worry. I have Slave Communication. You can also come through my soul world if needed. In other words, it’s better if everyone didn’t come with me.”

The girls finally acquiesced, and I opened up a portal. I opened it directly into the boss room of Matty’s dungeon. I reckoned that it was probably the safest place I could go. No one else could open portals into dungeons as I could, and I didn’t believe this King Roth knew all too much about me. I also wanted to touch base with Matty as quickly as possible. So, it seemed like I should cut out any middle man and go right there.

I stepped through the portal and closed it behind me. Immediately, I could tell that something was wrong. The place looked like it had seen combat recently. There was a lot of damage to the walls and floor. A column had been destroyed, and there was rubble strewn across the room as there had recently been a fight to the death. The miasma was also extremely weak. I took a step, and that’s when my foot crunched. I looked down to find fragmented pieces of glass.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I frowned, crouching down and lifting a piece of broken glass. When I realized what I was holding onto, I couldn’t help but let out a gasp. It was dungeon lore. It was a piece of Matty’s Dungeon Lore. Looking up at the ceiling, I could see a chunk ripped out. Someone had seemingly torn it directly out of the wall and destroyed it. It was reminiscent of when I had come to this place, except I had given the lore back to him.

I reached down and grabbed more of the pieces, but they felt strangely lifeless, like the story they once belonged to no longer meant anything. Perhaps, I could put the pieces back together. To do that, I’d need to absorb the lore though. I reckoned it’d be the only way I could figure out what happened here. Just as I was about to change my jobs so that I could absorb, I heard the sound of someone moving.

I threw the pieces into my soul world and then followed the noise behind a pillar. That’s where I saw Matty. He was sitting with his knees up, his face buried in his lap. He was rocking back and forth and seemed completely despondent.

“Matty… what happened here?” I asked.

“They killed her… they killed them all… they took everything…” I realized he was mumbling quietly to himself as he rocked.

I kneeled and grabbed him, growing more anxious by the second. “Matty! What happened?”

He finally looked up, his eyes hollow, his face wet with tears. “They took everything! They took mom!”

“Mom?” I frowned for a second until I realized what he was talking about.

He had considered the maid mob in this dungeon is a mob. I didn’t know much about Matty’s dungeon except that he had lost his family, and in some way, he had made the dungeon his new home, and the people in it his family. When it came to dungeons, he was unaggressive as could be. He did simply quiz challenges, and in general, his traps were nonlethal unless you were unlucky or stupid.

“Who did this?” I asked.

“They did… they…”

“Show me.”