Morburn

Hiro’s POV:

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After bonding with Alice for a few hours, we left our cave and went towards the training ground. The elves were still fighting when we arrived. Isil was at the same place as before, so it wasn’t hard to find him. “Hi, captain Isil! Do you have a moment?” Alice greeted ahead as we stopped in front of him.

With a slight twitch of his brows, he sized us up and then followed our example. “Hello, and I have.” It’s true that Alice was a bit too… direct with him, but we didn’t like honorifics. It felt stupid!

“I’d like to ask you if you know anything about dungeons in the nearby areas. We want to discover them. Maybe we can get something good out of it,” Alice continued with her questioning.

Hearing what she said, he pulled out a crystal. This was similar to the Energy Crystals that operated the spaceships. But this was a different type as this wasn’t used for storing energy but memories! And it was called Memory Crystal! Surprisingly… He put it in his palm for a moment as he closed his eyes. A few second later, he threw it my way. As I caught it, I consumed the knowledge stored in it.

This was easier than talking, indeed. He stored every information in it about the dungeon on this planet. This wasn’t such a high realm where there would be more dungeons on the same planet. Even that was a wonder that out of the five planets, five had dungeons on them. We haven’t met many cultivators at the ninth stage, but we would be stupid if we were to think that they were rare. There are millions of them, but most of them are at the center of these leading clans.

Opening my eyes, I thanked him, which after Alice talked in my place. “Thanks. I also have another question. Why don’t you elves unite into a single clan and city? You would be able to defend yourselves better in that way, don’t you think?” Tilting her head to the side, she couldn’t help but ask.

With a slight frown and a nod, Isil answered. “What you say is indeed true and it would be great but this planet is huge and there are clans among us that are powerful enough to protect themselves. Those clans gather most of the powerful cultivators and they don’t want to waste their times on protecting the weak. We elves aren’t that much different from the humans at some points. We too have greedy and selfish people.”

With a nod of my head, I agreed. “I didn’t doubt that even for a single moment. There is no such thing as good race and bad race.”

As his face turned slightly melancholic, he talked - “You know, after living for so many years, I also got quite sure of one thing. I’d do the same thing in their place. But since I’m old and not that strong, I’m stuck here. Although it’s nice here, without knowing the bright side of this familiar and loving way of life, I’d probably sit on the top and not bother with the weak. Not being talented has its good side as well, it seems. Haha.”

Alice smiled upon hearing his monologue, saying - “Surely, that is true. Now I understand your problem, though... what if these greedy leaders were to have an ‘accident’ and die?”

Seeing Alice’s evil grin, he furrowed his brows before he started grinning with an equally evil grin. “I don’t know. Maybe that would help, but only if we have a powerful leader who can unite us. I don’t really like your idea, but you should look for a powerful elf in the main city, who could be the new ruler.”

Seeing him faking his dislike, I laughed at his reaction. “Hahaha- You are saying that yet you are helping us so easily…” Not saying anything, he turned around and went back to spar with the others. Seeing the elves sparring once again, we turned around and left the place.

[Should we bring Max and Ellery with us?] I questioned Alice as I embraced her waist.

[I don’t know. Let’s tell them where we are going and if they want to come with us, then they can… But they can’t come with us to the dungeon at planet Lystrion. We will go there alone. Only the two of us! I want my alone time with you!] She answered obstinately while looking deeply into my eyes. Giving her a deep kiss, I answered with an okay.

Upon entering Elamir’s house, we found them sitting at a table chatting with Ellery and Max. When Norfindir saw Alice she jumped up and ran to her, grabbing her hands. I really don’t get what’s up with her. Why does she love Alice so much? [H-Hey! Pull her off of me or something. What’s with this touchy girl? She wasn’t like this when we saved her!] Alice pleaded to me to save her.

[No… she was like this when we met as well, though you should ask her about this, not me.] I answered, caressing her back.

Standing up quickly, with a slight bow, Vandir greeted and questioned us. “Good evening Miss Alice, Mr Hiro. Can we help with anything? Or did you decide to stay here? We welcome you anytime!”

“Ehm- no and nothing. We just wanted to ask Ellery and Max if they wanted to come with us into the dungeon on this planet. If not, then you can simply stay here or go wherever you want to…” I answered while scratching the back of my head.

“Oh? We would be happy to go, right Max?” Standing up, Ellery questioned Max, while looking at his sitting posture.

Following her example, he stood up, saying - “Where you go I’ll go since I’m your bodyguard. But on a side note, I’m also interested in going with you, so if you don’t mind my presence, then I’d like to join.”

I told them that they were welcomed, but at that time, Alice couldn’t hold it any longer as she asked. “Norfindir. Can I ask you something? It’s not because it’s annoying but because I’m curious. Why are you so touchy and why is it only with me?” Seeing her slightly furrowed brows, Norfindir loosened her grip on Alice’s arm.

[At least you didn’t lie to her.] I pointed out. Looking at me for a moment while thinking, Alice answered. [Well, I’m not annoyed by it, but I became curious about it… though I’d rather carry my own child, that can wait. I want to provide my child with a safe environment!] Somehow I felt a strange happiness budding in my chest, knowing that one day I’ll be a father and I’ll have such a beautiful wife. I’m the luckiest~ Other guys can go and have their empty sex - which is only for the enjoyment - with random women. I’ll stay with my loving wife for eternity to come!

Hearing Alice’s question, she looked at her with sparkling eyes as she spoke. “The truth is that I’m doing this because it feels good! When I first saw you two I felt a familiar feeling from Miss Alice. I don’t know why this is, but when she touched me I always felt happier and even my cultivation speed increased slightly. When I’m in her presence I feel as if I’d be looking at my god. I can’t describe how this feels, but… it’s as if I wouldn’t be able to disobey her or go against her will. I feel a deep reverence for her!”

“Eh!?” Alice let out such a sound upon hearing Norfindir’s surprising words. As she put her hand on her chin, with a thoughtful face, she asked - ”Hmm I have an idea about this. Could it be that you have some dragon blood inside you?”

Tilting her head to the side, with an unknowing face, she said. “I don’t know about. Maybe my parents?” Turning around to look at her parents with inquiring eyes, she asked. At this time, Vandir looked at Alice, as she started spilling the beans.

“Uhm… The truth is that my father was a dragon… He was a two-star divine beast. It’s probably because of his blood was inherited by me and as it turns out, my daughter as well. Since we saw yesterday that you are divine beasts, I think that it has something to do with this. And I’ll be honest with you… I’m trying to restrain myself, but I feel envious of Norfindir because she can touch you…”

Since we still didn’t say anything, she continued. “I don’t know what kind of divine beasts you are, but considering that we want to surrender ourselves to you so deeply, you probably three-star divine beasts?” Her sentence turned into a half question. Seeing her hopeful eyes, Alice talked.

“You probably don’t know it as you aren’t divine beasts yourselves. They have inherent memories of who is above them… Our kind is called True Divine Beasts. I am a Dragon God and Hiro is a Twelve Headed Hydra. When a lesser being of our own race meets us, they will naturally feel reverence, respect, and love for us. I wasn’t sure how much this can affect them, but it seems like it does a lot… though it might be because your blood is mixed.”

“Dragon God? I’ve never heard of such a being. But I can feel it, so I’m not going to doubt it! S-Should I call you Her Highness?” Vandis questioned me with her head slightly bowed down.

Waving my hand panicked, I told her. “No-no-no! Just call me Alice. I don’t like honorifics either… Just stay as you were.”

After telling them the truth about ourselves, we left with Ellery and Max in tow. Using our spaceship, we arrived at the dungeon’s entrance in a few seconds. The entrance of this dungeon, which was called Morburn was inside a volcano.

It was time for us to advance once again! I’m sure that other people would spit on us and kick us if they were to hear me saying. Especially after finding out that we have advanced two stages in a single month… But they are they, and we are we. No one can force their common sense on us!

Upon going through the huge doorway and what welcomed us was a world of lava and hell. This wasn’t surprising, as the surface was the same. We immediately left the resting room and after walking downwards about fifty meters on the stairs, we reached the first floor.

Morburn had thirty floors with many powerful monsters, but as always, the first floor was the weakest. The monsters at this level were only at the second stage. After killing every imp, we found the boss, which was no different than the mobs. Except for that it was bigger in size and was towering at two meters, almost reaching my height.

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After a quick swing of my hammer, it was smashed into a bloody pulp. It transformed into a Fire Elemental pill. This was very similar to what we got in the second realm, but this was a weaker version of those. This would complete only a part of our elemental bodies. But since our bodies were finished long ago, we gave it to Ellery and Max to share, however they wanted to.

We went to the second floor where about half of the monsters were at the third stage. These weak monsters had no chance of stopping us so we literally walked through them. We rushed through the first floors easily. The bosses were mostly dropping these fire elemental pills while some of them dropped herbs, which could be used to increase the power of some of the pills and one of them even dropped weapons!

This was surprising to see because it has never happened before, though probably it’s not that rare. Maybe the other dungeons didn’t drop weapons for us because they knew that we had better ones in our possession. In those two weeks when we were waiting for Wick to come, we also gained quite a lot of Uridium and we made weapons for Ellery and Max as well.

Ellery was using a staff, while Max was using a spear. Interesting pair if I do say so myself. Since the weapon the dungeon dropped was useless to us, we stored it away. Maybe we will sell it, give it away as a present or something like that… After consuming lots of Fire Pills, Ellery and Max also completed the fire attribute in their bodies, so at least the high temperature wouldn’t have an effect on them. Even if they were to fall into the lava they could simply walk out.

Of course, our armours and clothes wouldn’t burn either. This was because when our Elemental Bodies were completed, every element appeared around our bodies in the form of invisible and immaterial aura. This aura covered a small area around us, protecting our close surroundings as well. We reached the sixteenth floor quite quickly where the monsters were at the sixth stage. At this place, Max didn’t have a chance to move further.

With a slightly ashamed and sad face, he said. “I should turn back. I’m a burden ever since we descended to the fifteenth floor. The monsters are too powerful for me here. I’d rather move up with two floors and train there against the monsters that I’m able to kill.”

The monsters on the fourteenth floor were at the fifth stage, but since he learned how to use the Gold Energy to attack, he was able to fight and kill monsters at the fifth stage. Although he had to fight seriously, giving his all, he was still able to do something. Meanwhile here, unless he wanted to suicide, he could only stand and watch.

Luckily, Ellery was only one stage ahead of him, so she had a chance at saving the moment. “Ehm. I’m not too much of a help either at this point. If not now, then on the next floor I’d turn useless, so I too am going to go back to the fourteenth floor with Max.”

“Alright, good luck in that case!” I said with a smile as I crossed my arms in front of my chest. Nodding once, they turned around and left.

As we were going downwards the floors were getting bigger and bigger in size. The last boss we killed was a monster, called Hell Charger, which looked like a unicorn, except for that it was black and it was covered in flames…

It dropped an item called Jagged Bell of Rage and Cool. Alice tied it around the handle of her katana. This bell was quite a useful thing as it was affecting the mind of our opponents. When the bell rang, it would anger our enemies.

If they were to charge in mindlessly, it would make things very easy for us. Meanwhile, it calmed the mind of its owner. With each step Alice took, a gentle giggling resounded in her surroundings, causing a soothing feeling in my mind.

We went to the next floor where we found monsters at the seventh stage. This time we had a harder time even while our battle forms were activated. This floor was full of these three-headed dog-like monsters called Cerberus. They were about four or five meters tall and all of them were at least at the peak of the sixth stage, but some of them reached the early seventh stage.

The Hell Charger we killed was the latter, so it was similar in strength to the monsters here. Slowly killing our ways through these monsters, we realized that things were getting harder as we had to transform two times to escape. This was because the other monsters always noticed us and when too many of them surrounded us, we had to run away…

We were in one such case right now… Unfortunately for the monsters, I had more heads than them. I happily tore off their limbs and heads, causing the blood to spray on the ground and us. There were no more than five of them left.

In our monster forms, we quickly ravaged the whole group of monsters. While we were fighting we felt our auras quickly rising and swirling. We were very close to breaking through so we charged at another group of monsters. Our energies started rotating at a higher speed, increasing our strength. The swirling Dragon and Hydra energy inside our bodies quickened our thought processes.

We didn’t have to wait for long before we finally broke through to the next stage and reached the sixth stage of Domain Space Realm! We were getting closer and closer to reaching the fourth level of the World Founding Realm! After breaking through we felt the pressure on our bodies decrease as their domains didn’t pressure us with a hundred and forty but seventy golems of strength. The poor monsters quickly died at our hands, having no chance against us.

After breaking through, we were able to descend to the lower floors of the dungeon since killing monsters at the eighth stage wasn’t a hard task and we were able to kill even monsters at the ninth stage, though only at the early stages. Afterwards, we went straight to the boss which was called Pit Lord. It was a monster which looked similar to lizards but it had a beak-like mouth with two wings on its back. It also had a two-edged blade, which was quite surprising because we hadn’t seen monsters with weapons before.

Since we advanced, it wasn’t hard to kill it even if it was at the early eighth stage. This time the drop was nothing serious. It simply left behind its weapons, though it was slightly upgraded. Two runes appeared on it...

Hpmh. My Alice can do runes a thousand times better than this shit.

[Maybe you are getting way too comfy. Others would be happy to get a weapon like that,] she shook her head.

[Who do you want to lie to? I can see it on your face when I look at you, you are looking down on this sword!]

[I-I didn’t say that it’s good. I just said others would be happy to get it,] she averted her eyes.

Giving a big kiss on her face, I hugged her before picking it up. [Haha- okay let’s take this back as a present for that Ri-Ril- What was his name again?]

[Ah! Rilmaiwel! Even though I’m not supposed to forget things as a cultivator yet I can still forget people like him. His presence is too weak....]

[Pfft- We are so cruel... Laughing at him like this. But it’s good so I don’t care! It’s not like we are talking seriously,] Alice stood up with a straight back.

[Yeah but let’s go. Maybe the next boss will give us something good.]

It didn’t happen like that as a boss at the ninth stage didn’t appear only after three floors later. The monsters after the sixteenth floor were similar to its boss as they too had these lizard-like monsters. There also appeared many human-like monsters with weapons. Only when we reached the nineteenth floor did we find a boss at the ninth stage, though we had got to get to it at first. It was an interesting floor as it was full of exhibitionist succubuses...

“Should I close my eyes?” I asked laughing.

“I don’t think you are interested in these succubuses, are you?” she raised her brows.

“You too can feel it…”

“I know,” she stuck out her tongue. “I was just kidding. Let’s teach these bitches the right manners.”

These humanoid monsters were at the eighth stage, so it took much more time to kill all of them, even though we fought them in our monster forms. Considering that we were only on the nineteenth floor yet we found a boss at the ninth stage, I guessed you needed about fifty cultivators at the ninth stage to reach the end of this dungeon. Since we didn’t intend to play around with it, I quickly spammed Hydro Mind on it, while Alice blasted the space around it and sent the monster to the otherworld.

We were at the sixth stage, so we were able to use it Hydro Mind quite easily. Although our strength increased only to five hundred and forty-six golems of strength and our lifespans to eight hundred and fifty years, the toughness of our bodies increased by a lot! This was because when we transformed into our monster forms, our physical strength grew only by forty percent instead of a hundred and fifty. But we had three hundred and ninety golems of strength in our human forms!

As we’d continue to grow, the difference between our battle forms and monster forms would continue decreasing. Currently, we had four hundred and twenty-nine golems of strength in our battle forms.

It always increased our strength by ten percent while the strength we gained in our monster forms was going to decrease at each stage until reaching twenty-five percent at the ninth stage. After the devil boss died, there came a stream of energy out of nowhere and transformed into lines of text in the air.

What?

[I guess this is a riddle,] Alice clarified my confusion.

“I wonder what'd happen if we wouldn't be able to solve it. But I’m not going to be the one to try it!” I said.

“I never was, am always to be. No one ever saw me, nor ever will. And yet I am the confidence of all, to live and breath on this terrestrial ball. What am I?” Alice’s pleasant voice mused in my ears as she read it aloud.

[This is interesting. What is it? Light?] I thought before realizing, [But no one ever saw me. So it can’t be.]

[I’d say darkness but that’s not really about confidence,] Alice muttered.

[Hmm~~]

[What about future?] she asked.

[Future? That could be indeed. It’s always going to be, it can’t be seen and it can be the confidence of all. Okay, let’s try this!] I transformed back into my human form as a Hydra doesn’t really have vocal cords. Maybe I could form something with wind magic but this was easier.

"The answer is ‘The future’,” I said.

“The answer is correct. You shall be rewarded accordingly,” a voice came from all around us.

Soon the stream of energy transformed into a pendant. As soon as I picked it up, information flooded my mind. The treasure was called Binding Clock. It was able to bind and paralyze anyone who didn’t have much stronger mind power than yours. All I had to do to activate it was to send a tiny amount of mind power into it.

This was a perfect treasure for us since we would be able to kill anyone with Space Breath in this whole realm if they stayed unmoving. Our mind powers were already that of a ninth stage cultivator’s so not even Pat Cooley could escape death if she were to face us one on one as long as this Binding Clock was in our hands!

There was also another great thing about the pendant. It was a growing artefact, which meant that if I bound it with my blood, then the power of the pendant would evolve with mine.

“Fuck, Yes! This is great!” I said happily.

[Yes it is, but if numerous people come at us, then it isn’t going to help too much. Though it might be enough to kill at least the strongest from the group,] Alice pointed out.

“Don’t be so pessimistic. Why would groups of people attack us?” I asked.

“I don’t know. But doesn’t that happen all the time?” she tilted her head to the side.

“...”

“You’re right,” I hung my head.

This time I kept the treasure and bound it with my blood. After some consideration, I tied it to my wrist under my armour. “This should do it for now,” I mumbled.

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While they were advancing in the dungeon, others were working hard to find traces of them. It’d still take quite a lot of time for Wilhelm to find them since constructing their complex auras out of some remnant Space Energy was a hard thing to do. Afterwards, he’d have to find which planet they are staying at, but that was the easiest part!