Previous | Table of Contents | Next
Chapter 109
Wait… a slave… she’s a slave! That’s right, I’m a Slave Master! I had always used the skill with the intent of helping my slaves with status buffs, but the main job of a Slave Master was to rule slaves. I equipped Slave Master instantly. Wait, would any Slave skills work on a Slave that wasn’t mine? There was only one I could even think of. That was the Slave Taker skill. I hadn’t used it on Lydia yet, and she technically wasn’t my slave.
Could I even steal a ghost as a slave? Could I steal from a dungeon boss? Could a dungeon boss even have a slave? She was a ghost, so she was probably a slave when she died. Did a slave seal follow you even in death?
All of these thoughts went through my mind in the span of half a second. She was raising her hands, ready to send more blades of death flying at me. I could see myself being torn apart just like that Ghost Knight. I refused to be defeated in such a manner. Lydia and Miki were still depending on me. Death wouldn’t cause Miki to die, but without my buffs and healing, she might still struggle. Even with her spiritualist skill, she was still a bit weak. They needed me. I couldn’t die!
“Slave Taker!” I shouted out.
A crest suddenly formed on the elf girl’s chest. The attack was such a surprise that she could only let out a scream, her casting being completely disrupted. I pumped more mana into the Slave Taker ability. However, I was quickly realizing that there was a resistance. More than that, she was still screaming. She was collapsing to the floor, her transparent body flickering strangely.
In the past, Slave Taker had always been a willing process. The Slaver Figuro even said it was easier on them than flat out removing a mark and reapplying it. However, that assumed that they wanted to have their slave mark taken. Resisting was completely different.
“What are you doing to me?” She screamed, writhing on the floor.
I wanted to weaken my attack, but I knew I wouldn’t get a second chance. Remembering how dangerous this ghost slave was, I pushed forward with my magic. Pulling out a mana potion, I downed it while keeping more mana pumping into her, wrestling her mark away from the owner.
I had a feeling the owner was exceptionally strong. It was just a feeling, really, but I felt that if he had truly wanted to resist the slave being taken, at my level, it wouldn’t have happened. Instead, I felt a strange bit of encouragement, like her Master wanted her to be set free. It could have just as easily been me trying to justify my own actions, but the only resistance seemed to come from the Slave herself, who, while a higher level, was still already subjugated.
With another mana potion down, the mark began to change, turning into the familiar symbol that I grew to familiarize as my own. Once the mark clicked into place, the ghost girls body began to shrink. Suddenly, two giant wings almost 3/4th the length of her body exploded out from her back. Her eyes snapped open and she shot me a hateful glare.
Jumping up, she exploded into the air. Her wing spread out. They were beautiful glittery things with a constantly changing rainbow-like reflection depending on where you looked at them. They flapped excitedly in the air as she pointed at me, her face full of fury.
“You… how dare you! What have you done to me? Where is Master? Why can’t I feel Master? Have you hurt Master?”
“Celeste… I am your Master.”
“No… that’s impossible!”
“Search your feelings, you know it to be… wait, I thought you were a ghost?”
“Eh?” She looked down, and then at the wings flapping behind her. “You… you knocked out my illusion! Die!”
“But you’re so tiny…”
The big breasted girl looked identical to how she looked before, but, in reality, she was only about 18 inches tall. Her wingspan included; she was only about the size of a cat. Her breast, in reality, was the size of two mosquito bites, even if they looked humungous proportionally.
“Tiny… how dare you…”
“So, you’re really not a ghost?”
“Hmph!” The girl flapped her arms angrily in a way that looked way less threatening on a little creature. “Fine, perhaps I should reintroduce myself. I am Celeste, Lord Karr’s House Fairy and keeper of this mansion!”
“You’re really alive then?” I asked. “I mean, that was 20 years ago…”
“Fairies live a long time okay? Thousands of years to you meager humans!” When she noticed me nodding with interest her face turned red. “Stop looking down on me just because I’m a fairy! Humans always look down on fairies. I’m really scary, okay! If you don’t leave, you’ll make me real mad!”
Ah… I made her cry. Perhaps I did look down on her a little too much.
Chapter 110
{Celeste has become your slave.}
{Name: Celeste
Class: Elemental
Job: Adept Wind Magician (Slave) — 10
Unlocked Jobs: Enchanter — 2, Tinker — 3, Novice Magician — 50, Apprentice Magician — 25
Race: House Fairy}
I had to whistle as that information popped up in front of me. Celeste was many levels higher than any of us. Although there wasn’t a ton of difference between each level of Magician, they showed her evolution as a character. She was now an Adept Wind Magician, which explained her brutal wind attacks.
I recalled hearing that adept was the state they differentiated into a type of magic. Only truly great wizards were capable of learning them all and being Full Adepts. I suspected that the way to do this was to not switch to Wind Magician. Even though it was a stronger job, you needed to keep leveling apprentice up. You would then unlock all the of the other magic, and only at level 50 would you have the full adept. Well, that was my theory.
I also noticed that she had Novice Magician and Miki had Basic. Perhaps that had to do with training. Without training, you’d be a basic, moderate, or master magician. With training, it’s a novice, apprentice, adept, and so on. We just managed to retake the library. I was planning on visiting it sometime this week to look at such things.
“Are you ignoring me!” The girl finally yelled, her face still very red.
“I really do want to leave this place.” I sighed. “I took you as my slave because you were going to attack me. However, if you help me leave, I’ll free you as my slave.”
The fairy flew up to me and then stuck out her tongue. “Who says I’d help you! You can’t just take me from the great Lord Karr! I won’t have it! I’ll definitely see you dead!”
I sighed. I really didn’t want to do this, but this slave was being really annoying and not at all reasonable. I didn’t think she was a bad person. She had chosen to help me when she didn’t know who I was. However, she also had some holes in her memory from being enslaved to a cursed dungeon for 20 years, and her isolation had done some things to her mind. Suddenly, I found myself glad I had the Slave Master job.
“Slave Order!” I declared, holding my hand out to the fairy. “Help me get out of this dungeon and protect my life!”
“I won’t! Ahhhhhh!” She fell to the ground as the slave insignia began glowing, far smaller than it had been on her full-bodied person.
“Celeste!” I cried out, falling to the ground as she writhed on the floor. “Just obey!”
“I w-won’t!” She said tearfully, the symbol on her chest growing even brighter.
“Please… don’t keep hurting yourself,” I said, starting to cry.
“Karr is my only… I love… ahhhhh…. No…. ahhhh…” She was still writhing on the ground.
“Stop! Please, is killing me really that important to you?”
“No…” She cried. “I won’t… serve… anyone… but… him…”
Make a slave do whatever you want my ass! This was simply torture!
“Stop Slave Order!” I finally said, nearly choking.
The emblem finally stopped glowing. The girl collapsed on the ground. A moment later she smiled, and then passed out, flopping on the ground with a light thud. My heart was beating so fast I could hear it in my ears. I was breathing hard and sweating too.
I pulled out my storage ring and looked inside. There they were, just as Figuro had promised. It was a slave removal dye. He gave me a pack of ten, even though I only had two slaves to free. I pulled it out and then put a drop on the fairy’s chest. Her light grew brighter and brighter and then it suddenly shattered.
In an instant, she was no longer a slave. She made a few grunts and noises of pain, but she had already passed out. Her dreams wouldn’t be sweet, but the pain was nothing compared to what she faced thanks to Slave Order. I suspected it was because she was such a powerful Magician that she could resist Slave Order so much. That… and maybe an extreme will. It might have eventually gotten the desired results out of her, but it wasn’t in my heart to carry on that way.
Grabbing my backpack, I froze and looked down at my storage ring. Sighing and rolling my eyes over forgetting the convenience of some magic, I stashed everything into my storage ring. Feeling a lot lighter, I turned around and looked down the stairway into the deeper part of the dungeon.
Oh, to heck with it. I will defeat this dungeon, here and now, or I will die trying. I needed to find out what happened. What drove that fairy to that state? Who was Karr really, and what happened to Old Chalm? The answers were down there, not up here. It was stupid, but I didn’t have a much better chance trying to escape the dungeon. Who knew how deep I was anyway? I could just as easily be on the 98th floor as the 2nd. In that case. If I was on the 98th floor of 100, wouldn’t it be dumber trying to head up? I walked down into the darkness, leaving the unconscious fairy behind.
Chapter 111
“Exorcism!” I shouted, my hand out stretched.
The ghost screeched as mana tore it apart from the inside out. It turned to attack me.
“Quick Attack!” I blurred, moving way faster than even that Knight on the floor above could move.
The ghost died right there, disintegrating before my eyes. I let out a breath of relief. See? It wasn’t suicide? Who ever said I couldn’t fight for myself? Now that I was back in my recently fixed Leather armor, I was in good shape. I also reset my dungeon points, and then redistributed them. There were two one-point skills in general that I had been eyeing for a while now. Especially after I had died, I had considered giving up portal and map.
The skills were Exorcism, a powerful ghost spell that did heavy damage and debuff to ghosts, and a sword called Ghostbane that seemed to be able to do high spiritual damage on top of physical. I disliked the idea of summoning a material item with dungeon points, but desperate situations called for desperate measures. Ghostbane with Divine Aura was a very powerful weapon, and as long as I could surprise attack the ghost, I could take them out with ease. I didn’t give up map though. Double experience was the skill that I dropped. It hurt to give it up, but giving up reset was out of the question, and map was too important to navigating this labyrinth.
Map combined with Sense Life, and I could even visualize the monsters ahead of me. It was seriously OP. By the way, there was a time-stop inventory in the dungeon point system too, but it was considered a second-tier item and thus it was a 5 pointer. There were higher tier ghost items too, including a ten-point necklace that just repelled ghosts entirely. Exorcism and Ghostbane just happened to be the only two I could afford.
Furthermore, as long as the ghost didn’t physically attack me, my high spiritual resistance from my White Mage class also kept me strongly resistant. If there was more than one ghost though, I’d cast Holy Circle and run. The hallway-like paths of the dungeon were very small. Holy circle could completely block the path. In other words, I used it to stop the ghosts from chasing me. As long as I kept running, they’d be blocked and have to go around. With that, they almost certainly lost track of me and I could escape. Suffice it to say, I was equipped well in this dungeon, despite my initial brush with death.
I attacked another ghost. This one had the form of a soldier, which I interpreted as being a bit higher level. He wasn’t as intimidating as the knight from the floor above, but he was still troublesome. I hit him with Exorcism, followed by a quick attack. He turned around and started attacking me. I sanctified the ground while backing up and dodging his spiritual attack. My Basic Swordsmanship wasn’t enough to overwhelm his fighting speed. The only way I could get a hit on him was with my Quick Attack skill. I changed White Mage to Slave Master, and then leapt at him with another Quick Attack.
{Slave Master has increased to level 7.}
{Bond Slave has been unlocked.}
I let out a breath. It wasn’t what I was hoping for. I was hoping for slave locator or slave communication. I had been trying to level Slave Master this way hoping I could earn something. Yeah, I was going down instead of up, but being able to trace Miki would be useful if I reached a dead end. Just being able to communicate with my girls would be nice. They were probably starting to wonder where I was right now. Lydia was certainly worried.
There was a movement that caught my attention. I glanced over and noticed a head poking out from the corner.
“Ee!” She suddenly ducked back.
Yeah… that weird House Fairy found me about an hour after I left her unconscious and had been trailing behind ever since. She hadn’t attacked me, but I still worried she could. I could cheat and fight ghosts with my DP system, but I had nothing to stop the fairy if she decided to attack me again. Still, I didn’t regret freeing her.
I decided to take a quick break to allow my mana to rejuvenate. As I did so, I started going through my jobs and skills again to see if there was anything I could use to help gain an edge in the dungeon.
Checking through my jobs, I slapped my head. “Of course, True Dungeon Diver.”
It was only level 1. It would be very easy to gain 4-5 levels quickly. It was a higher tier job too, so I had high hopes for it helping me. Maybe, it even offered a means of escaping dungeons. Once I started thinking about my job and skill system, I put other things out of my mind, and had already ignored the girl, who was watching me sneakily again. I finally continued on, navigating by the use of the map and my sense life. Behind me, a fairy followed.