Chapter 137 Making it to the south
As we cleared back through the dungeons, I could already tell the damage the undead had done, as I couldn’t feel the unconscious feeling from being inside a dungeon. It was eerie, seeing monsters and undead and knowing that if we weren’t here, they’d have made it to the city and assaulted it before we were even aware of the threat.
Even if we wiped out the undead, the multiple dungeons going berserk would send continuous waves of enemies until they destroyed our country or the dungeon was destroyed. What was a real threat ten years ago was a trivial one, as we destroyed three berserk dungeons on our way back south, all forming disgusting abominations of half-undead creatures to protect themselves, which was far easier than the dragon dungeon we crushed.
It was still a slog. Every inch we cleared back was hard-won through countless bodies. Levelling this quickly shouldn’t be possible; it should take an entire career to reach rare, only the top elites would ever reach epic, and legendary was so rare it practically guaranteed you any position you wanted, even king if you fought hard enough for it. And we were going to easily reach it; my combat class wives would be hitting epic before the end of the campaign.
I wouldn’t; I’d fall short of rare, possibly reaching close to max, unless we fought far stronger enemies, but after killing the elites, I didn’t see it happening. Levelling as a non-combat class was supposed to be a slow and steady process; we weren’t supposed to have these life-or-death fights multiple times in a single life, and yet, here we were again.
It was unreal; an entire decade of diligently grinding got me less experience than a few weeks of fighting against the undead, and we still weren’t done. Tems rode atop another abomination. A giant, undead bull with most of its skin falling off protected the corrupt dungeon we were currently inside. This boss wasn’t just one of these bulls, but four, and we were already on the last one.
She hacked at the spinal cord before riding it to the ground and giving us all a tooth-filled smile as she said. “That’s two for me, I beat you, Silk!” Silk, who hadn’t really participated, made the contest with Tems so she’d do more of the work, only half-heartedly agreed. “You sure did. Way to go, Tems.” Tems was much smarter than she was when we first met, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be tricked into things like this.
She viewed Silk as her rival, and I don’t think Silk viewed her as one. They were too close, and it often led to situations like this where Tems would challenge Silk to something, and Silk would agree, but let her win more often than participating.
We pushed forward again, and at some point, the undead stopped appearing. Clearing through the destroyed dungeons felt eerie. I know there should be enemies here, but there was nothing. The world would take a long time to recover from the sudden loss of so many dungeons, and it might fall to me to place dungeons here if we fail at killing the leader and have to fall back.
We casually walked through the bottom half of the dungeons, rarely seeing anything, as the hardest part of these dungeons was gone from the undead wiping them out. Soon enough, we were in the southern part of the continent, somewhere no living creature had travelled for hundreds of years. It was… Surprisingly lush and green. When I thought of the undead, I thought of corrupted lands, but the land was far too big to fully corrupt.
Large plains of green, fertile fields, and no signs of human habitation were seen. It was incredibly perfect for growing new crops, and my mind began to change with the thought of taking this land for ourselves after we killed the leader. Spending the next year or so wiping out all the undead would also heavily boost our levels, and we could always fall back through the dungeons if we were ever overwhelmed or just wanted a break.
As a farmer, my mind immediately went to farming. Specifically, for all the routes, this would open up for the rest of the world. As of right now, if you wanted to travel from east to west or west to east, you would have to go through the north first, but once the undead were dealt with, we’d be able to travel through this far nicer area, all while avoiding the dangers of travelling through a scorching desert.
The area is mostly barren as well, not many monsters, but just the travel itself being the problem, whereas travelling south would be difficult at the start; going through dungeons always had some form of danger, but after getting through, you’d be greeted with a mostly empty continent that wouldn’t drain your resources as fast as the desert would.
And I could always make the dungeons safer… Once we dealt with the undead, I could make a single safe road by planting flowers all along a single path on either side. I was actually getting excited thinking about it… It might be the last thing I did with my life after all. Eventually, the bonuses my children would provide me would overwhelm my body; I’d either die from having too many stats, most likely in an explosive way.
I decided right then and there that was what I was going to do with the rest of my life. Asking my wives as we walked, looking for any signs of undead to kill. “So… What do you all think about taking this land over and trying to cultivate it after we deal with the leader? We can spend several years clearing this land of its undead problem and make it habitable by people again.”
No one talked right away as they all thought about what it would mean. Making a city, no, multiple cities, wasn’t something any of my wives, except for maybe Olivia, had any interest in. But killing undead, building something from nothing. All of them would get something out of it once we started. It was Milly who was the first to respond. “Think about all the herbs hidden all over the continent that we lost when it was cut off from humanity… It’s making me excited.”
As if a spark was ignited, they all began to talk. “Imagine all the good food we got here. I wonder if they have any crops we don’t have; got to keep an eye out.” “What about the materials? Think of all the new types of wood, stone, even ores we don’t have access to elsewhere.” “Do you think there are any libraries left in the old cities… Or did the undead burn them all to the ground?” “I don’t know, we’ll just have to wait and see.”
“That’s still years away. We’ll have to make travelling south safer first, and build another city right at the border here, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work.” “We should get Mara and Cynthia in on this. Cynthia was trained to lead countries already, and… Well, Mara is a dragon. She’ll have some ideas on how to rebuild… Probably.”
I cut them off. “Well, let’s not put all our eggs in one basket and make these decisions already. Let’s kill the leader, break up any undead armies still around, then start thinking about how we’ll fix this region.”