Chapter 43

Behind the large throne in the Vampire Queen's hall, there was a hallway behind an unobtrusive door. Behind that door was another hallway that led forward before turning to stairs heading downwards. At least these stairs weren't as long as the ones to get in the dungeon. We spent nearly half an hour trudging down the stairs, I was lucky Bella's healing was so effective. If I had to make this kind of trip while injured it would have been even more exhausting.

At the bottom was a basic looking chest in the middle of a raised platform. It was long and flat, more like a long trunk than a stereotypical fantasy chest. Past it was a portal that looked like the entrance of the dungeon and floating above our heads was the dungeon's core. It looked like a rough glass orb with multicolored lights swirling inside, occasionally these motes of light left the confines of the orb before dissipating. I didn't even need to use mana sight to see how much mana was leaking off this object, I could feel it.

"Well, first thing's first. Lets check the chest," I said.

Torien checked the chest for traps once again, mostly a formality at this point but I still wanted to be cautious, especially in a dungeon that trapped us in here in the first place.

"No traps Lilith. Not that I expected there to be." Without any hesitation she opened up the chest and like she thought, nothing bad happened. I peered in the chest, inside there was a book, a full looking pouch, and a long staff that looked like it was made of glass.

"Any chance any of this is cursed?" I asked.

"Man, for someone who gets distracted in combat you seem to be a worrywart," Morrigan teased.

Torien smiled wryly. "Normally we would need someone to identify this stuff for us but I'm sure Mimi can handle that."

"Hmm, the book is called a 'Book of Recollections' it's an artifact that lets you perfectly remember anything written in it as long as it's open. It's also a soulbound artifact so it needs to be attuned and can only be attuned once."

Morrigan picked it up and flipped through it. "Hmm I've seen things like this before. They don't tend to go for a lot of money but this is also the largest one I've ever seen. Unlike weapons, being soulbound could be seen as either a benefit or a detriment for this item depending on who you're talking to. If one of us decides to keep it though, it wouldn't be able to be stolen."

That book sounds really useful to me...

"I would guess that it's worth around 30 gold or so, ...if you can find a buyer," Torien added.

"Next up is a bag of gold, yummy looking gold!" Mimi said excitedly.

Torien scooped it up and began to count it out while we moved on to the last object.

"Last item is a 'Staff of Manaflow' it says that it gives the user increased control of the ambient mana around them and allows the user to store some attributed mana inside of it which allows the user to automatically convert some of the surrounding mana to that attributed type. It is also a soulbound item."

Morrigan gasped loudly making Torien pause what she was doing and look up. Damn, that staff is like, perfect for her. It would not only make what she usually does better but also shore up her biggest weakness. Morrigan started to reach for it but hesitated and put her hand down.

"I-if it wasn't soulbound I would want to use it but... it's probably worth too much to justify binding it to me... W-with this maybe we could put a dent into our purchase price... if we're still splitting up the money half and half..."

We all looked at Morrigan silently for a moment. Torien scratched her ear. "Well... It might be hard to find a buyer in this town. Maybe... we could trust Lilith to find a buyer and bring the money back?" Torien looked over to me with a very complicated expression.

If this item had been bad for all of us then it would be easy to sell. If it wasn't soulbound then I could keep it and lend it to her. Instead it's the worse of both worlds, an item that she can't afford to use and is probably only more valuable for it.

"Maybe with this... we could help Lilith buy us..." Torien said quietly.

The silence lingered in the air for bit. I decided I didn't like this somber mood and decided to move on. "How about this. For now, you two can have the gold to put toward your debt. I'll hold onto these two artifacts and see if I can sell them. It won't be much of a loss for me right now."

"There's twenty-four gold here... That's less than the split we discussed but considering we probably wouldn't be able to sell those in Traehall I think it's fair. Does that sound okay to you Morrigan?" She nodded silently. I felt bad, her usually bubbly self was crushed right now... And I couldn't really do anything about it.

I felt like kind of an ass here but I figured the best way to move forward was to just refocus on our task. "Well, back to our mission. What do we do about that?" I said pointing to the large floating crystal in the room.

Torien looked up at it. "We need to destroy it and take the remains to the adventurer's guild to prove that we destroyed a demonic dungeon. On the bright side there's supposed to be a pretty good bounty associated with that as well."

I nodded in return. "I could probably give you my cut of that as well if it evens out our shares."

"It would probably help yeah. Not that most people would have even been half this generous with our split."

I put the book away and started wrapping the staff up in cloth. The staff looked pretty fancy even at a glance so it was best we didn't show it around everywhere. I could feel Morrigan's sad eyes as she watched me wrap it up and attach it to my bag.

"Oh..." Bella hesitated. "What about Mimi, doesn't she get a cut? She was the one who actually killed the final boss..." Torien and Morrigan looked at each other frowning. Unfortunately, Bella made a good point.

"Mimi, since you just joined us can we leave you out of the split this time? I don't want to take any more of their share..."

"Sure, I don't care. I just wanna go with you guys! You guys seem way more fun than this boring place."

The twins let out a silent exhale of breath, they probably were pretty happy with how much they made on this trip and didn't want to complicate it with a share for the mimic we only just picked up. Maybe they thought of her as more of a tamed monster than an actual party member too. I haven't really gotten a chance to get to know Mimi yet but she seems as intelligent as any of us, I don't really want to think of her as 'just a tamed monster' even if that wasn't too far from the truth. Well, I guess she's a Succubus now though, I came here as a demon, does, or rather did that make me a monster?

I sighed. I don't really have time to follow down this line of thought right now.

"Alright, now how are we supposed to destroy that thing anyway?"

Morrigan raised her hand a little. "Mind if I do it? I want to blow off some steam..." Her voice seemed calm but I could see her knuckles tightly curling around the shaft of her staff.

"Uh sure... just make sure not to hit any of us in the crossfire." The three of us stepped around the corner to stay out of Morrigan's way. Purely for her benefit, no other reason at all...

I watched fire mana start to swirl and coalesce around her, the air became thick with heat as the mana collected in large balls of fire all over the room. I was a bit worried she would be hit with splashback but I noticed the area immediately around her was completely devoid of all mana, like a barrier.

Before I could finish inspecting the way the mana swirled around her, the balls of fire blasted against the large crystal. I had almost expected the crystal to be vaporized from the sudden force but instead all of the fire exploded outwards. When the fire and smoke cleared all that had changed was the large dungeon core now had a large crack on it. A crack that began to spread. Morrigan quickly ran over to us and hid by the stairwell while the crystal began to fracture more and more, ultimately exploding into different kinds of mana that flew out all around the crystal, hitting the walls and remains of the room.

Then without any further build up, the once floating chunks of crystal were suddenly affected by gravity again. The large pieces of dungeon core looked like glass slabs but fell to the ground with large thunks rather than crashing noise I had expected.

[Your party has destroyed the Midnight Castle Dungeon]

[You have acquired the title Dungeon Destroyer][Dungeon Destroyer - Exceedingly Rare Title]The bearer of this title has destroyed the core of a dungeon and has released the stagnant mana back into the cycle. The bearer of this title will forevermore be infused with the mana of a dying dungeon, do more damage to others inside of a dungeon, and better resist the fatigue of miasma.

[You have acquired the title First Explorer][First Explorer - Rare Title]The bearer of this title was the first ever to enter a dungeon. Be it a young dungeon or a grand labyrinth sprawling across the world, the bearer of this title will be always be able to feel the presence of a nearby dungeon. The world's magic now imbues the bearer of this title with a magical sense for nearby dungeons.

[You have acquired the title Early Intervention][Early Intervention - Exceptionally Rare Title]The bearer of this title has destroyed the core of a dungeon before any others had fallen to it, both protecting the lives of their kin and the cycle of mana in the world. The bearer of this title will forever more be infused with the pure mana of a dying dungeon not touched by the mana of others, it will turn the magic of other dungeons against it, making the bearer of this title receive less damage while inside the influence of a dungeon or miasma.

These new titles seemed really good, and would clearly help tackling more dungeons in the future. It would first help us find dungeons, and once we were in it, we would both do more damage, take less damage, and be less fatigued by being in the miasma. These three titles alone would basically make us some of the best people to tackle dungeons in the future.

"You guys got the titles for that too right?" I asked.

Everyone nodded to my question while we headed over to the destroyed crystal. The core had fallen in eight large pieces. I filled my bag with the chunks but they were really heavy even for my 50 strength. I did have 30 unallocated points now but it felt a waste to dump them in strength when what I really wanted to do was experiment with magic more.

I had been worried the portal would close all of a sudden or we would have to rush through once the crystal was destroyed but Morrigan told me that dungeons don't just collapse right away when the crystals are destroyed. They slowly wither and decay until they fall apart. Apparently you can still find ruins of dungeons around and there are even cities built into once active dungeons, especially when a dungeon forms above ground. Without a dungeon core, the dungeon is unable to spawn any more monsters and the ones that remain will either kill each other for the remaining miasma or starve to death as the miasma fades. It's not impossible some of the monsters could try and leave the dungeon but without the presence of miasma they're unlikely to want to do so and they usually don't notice the dwindling miasma until it's basically too late for them.

Most of this info kind of just went in one ear and out the other as I waddled my heavy ass backpack through the portal behind the other girls. The sensation of walking through a portal was eerie but stepping out into the open again felt refreshing in a way I didn't expect. The air felt fresh and the wind felt soothing. I hadn't even noticed it but the stagnant mana in the dungeon was actually something you can feel, from the way Torien spoke, even if you aren't that attuned to magic.

I sat down next to a nearby log and leaned my heavy backpack against it while looking at the entrance of the dungeon we had been trapped in. The carved out dungeon door was still as out of place as ever but it already had begun to lose its luster as the magic surrounding the entrance slowly drifted away from the walls it once clung to. Bella and Morrigan were inspecting it and talking about the mana in the area. Bella hadn't learned Mana Sense yet so Morrigan was trying to explain it to her using the dying dungeon door as a useful instructional tool.

I looked up at the sky. It was already near sunset. We had spent so much time in there that two days had passed while we were delving, despite it not feeling like it at all. In some ways it felt like we hadn't been in there that long but at the same time the whole situation was so stressful that I wouldn't have been surprised if it had been longer.

Torien sat next to me and put a hand on my shoulder. "Hey, I know I voted against going in there but I think all things considered we did pretty well. You probably helped us out a lot with our debt and the reward for not only finding a demon spawning dungeon but killing it should be pretty good."

Torien looked at the sky and I could tell she was trying to put her thoughts in order. I sat quietly and waited for her to continue. "I'm... sorry. I probably shouldn't have said anything about helping you buy us. You're the first person in a long time to actually acknowledge us as people. That really means a lot to me, to us. But I don't want to put that burden on you. It's not fair to you. I don't want to take advantage of your kindness with our sob story, I-"

I reached up and placed my hand on top of hers as I cut her off. "I've already decided that I'm going to try and buy you two out. I was already considering it before we came out here but going through that dungeon together really solidified my resolve on this. I'm pretty sure I can raise the money in time."

I could hear her voice catch in her throat, almost making her sob. "I hope we can raise the money before someone else gets to us first," she said quietly. I squeezed her hand as the sun fully set over the horizon.