“It’s not like I want you to stay or anything, but will you be coming back?” Matty asked as we reached the exit to his dungeon.
Although he was acting like the pouty child he appeared as if he seemed slightly anxious. As for the witch companion, she was behind him, her chest resting on his head as she looked at me innocently. I suppose I could understand their sentiment. I had charged through their dungeon, took the dungeon lore, and forced them to submit, and now I was taking off. They were probably anxious about their future existence. It was weird thinking of monsters having these feelings, but after all of those close to me who had come from dungeons, I realized I needed to start changing how I thought about dungeons.
“Oh, yeah, I probably shouldn’t take this.” I pulled out the dungeon lore I had been keeping in my pocket.
“You were going to take it out of the dungeon!” He cried out. “You were going to kill us all!”
A dungeon couldn’t live without a connection to the core. My dungeon seemed to exist without a true core, but it was using my soul as a conduit or something. I wasn’t exactly planning on attaching my soul to this dungeon, so the lore would have to stay behind. I tossed it to him, and the boy panicked as he desperately caught it.
“Y-you bastard!” He cried as he snatched the thing and started soothing it like I had somehow hurt it.
“You mentioned something earlier about a dungeon master council before. What is going on with that?” I distracted him with such a question.
He stiffened for a moment, and then let out a sigh. “I suppose I’ve already said too much. The Council of Dungeon Masters was set up by the Primordial Labyrinth. It’s intended for any master who has created a Karmic Soul.”
“Does that mean the Demon King is part of this council?”
He shook his head. “Only dungeons that have proven to be able to survive and don’t upset the balance of this world can join. The Demon King’s aggressive takeover rendered him banned. The same could be said of that dungeon to the north.”
I blinked at those words. So, they did know about Aberis and the Widow’s Dungeon.
“What about me? Am I banned?”
He looked at me for a second and then shrugged. “A warning was issued about your emergence, but the basic truth is you’re too new to be banned just yet. Most dungeons have a wild few years before they stabilize and form a Karmic companion and master. Well, not every dungeon forms a companion. Instead, they get taken over by a powerful creature. Those dungeons are quite pitiable, as the dungeon master’s desires wouldn’t align with the dungeon.”
It made sense. There were dungeons like Mira’s Dungeon or the Widow’s Dungeon where the dungeon formed a master who slowly became more sentient until they had a soul of their own. However, there were also dungeons like The Bandit’s Respite that got invaded by a powerful miasma user who conquered it and became the new master. Calypso repurposed her dungeon to go against its original goal, although it did resist in its way.
“Do you know when such a thing would be decided?” I asked.
“The Dungeon Master Assembly.” He responded. “Once a year, all of the dungeon masters have a large gathering where important decisions are made. This is also when new dungeon masters who seek them out can become members.”
“And might I ask, when is this next meeting?”
“Three months,” he answered, and then cried out in alarm. “You’re not thinking of going, are you?”
I licked my lips. “You never know. A lot can happen in three months.”
This 𝓬ontent is taken from f(r)eeweb(n)ovel.𝒄𝒐𝙢