The girls all looked at each other, not completely convinced of my plan.

“Master, shouldn’t we at least go back to Chalm? We can bring back extra help. We can even dump an army of our own in here and rout the dungeon. The soldiers Raissa has been training have a good deal of experience in dungeons now.” Miki tried to encourage me.

“No!” I shook my head stubbornly. “We’re going to fight our way down the dungeon.”

“That’s just walking right into her trap!” Terra protested.

“We’ll overtake her trap!” I responded. “Look, she’s turned this entire region into her own personal mana trap. As the Dungeon Master, she’s collecting all of that mana and using it to create an army of never-ending Bandits. If we don’t destroy the dungeon now, then we won’t have a chance.

“As long as she has that dungeon, the Bandits will never stop coming. Furthermore, her own power will only continue to increase. She’ll keep spreading and spreading, and soon she’ll be just like the Demon Lords of the north. We can’t wait, because if we wait, then she’ll no longer give us this opportunity to get so close to the boss room. We have to bet everything on this. We must use our strength and destroy this dungeon. We have to cut off her lifeline. It’s the only way to defeat her. Do you get it?”

The girls slowly started to nod, seeming to come to understand my explanations. I didn’t know if it was because I wasn’t a man anymore, but I swore they used to listen to all of my orders. Maybe, I just didn’t have as forceful of a demeaner that I once had. Nowadays, they were much more prone to questioning me and second guessing my decisions. I already had enough problems sticking to one plan. I didn’t need them also questioning them.

“We understand, Master.” Lydia nodded.

I nodded as well. “Good, good. Then, Shao, can you please head to the 1st saferoom so that I can open a Portal and register?

She nodded and touched the kiosk. A few minutes later, I was back on the 1st floor where I remembered to check the mural before returning. In this dungeon, the murals might be very important. Figuring out why this dungeon existed would be a key component to us defeating Calypso.

“Master, what do the Murals say?”

“It speaks of an ancient tribe… I don’t know. It’s weird.” I murmured.

“What’s weird about it?” Lydia asked.

“Well, there are these people, shown in blue. They have blue skin. Then there are these people, who look to be human. The first mural shows the blue skinned people having a mighty civilization. It reminds me of the Aztecs or something like that.”

“Aztecs?” Lydia blinked.

“Ah, nevermind.” Only Shao would understand that reference. “It seems like these humans came out and attacked the blue people.”

Miki frowned. “Why is that weird, Master? It just sounds like some battle from long ago?”

“The weird thing is that it shows the humans… emerging from a dungeon!”

“What does that mean?” Miki asked, frowning.

“I don’t know, but I feel like… I don’t know… this dungeon feels old. Very old. It might have only sprouted up recently, but the lore that spawned it is ancient. For that to be the case… it must have been a very powerful emotion to allow it to persist until present day.”

Many dungeons seemed to form as soon as the instigating event passed. In fact, for some dungeons, the instigating event seemed to be involved with the formation of the dungeon, like in the case of Karr’s and Terra’s Dungeons. Other dungeon lore seemed to be like a seed, drifting along the wind and time only to finally settle and start growing. For example, I couldn’t even guess where Mina’s Dungeon sprouted from.

However, these curses did deteriorate with time, and so you usually wouldn’t find a dungeon forming from an event after a few hundred years or so. The longer it was, the more massive the event had to be to survive that long. I didn’t know if it was my Dark Priest of my Dungeon Builder jobs, but I had a light feeling that this dungeon came from a story from thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years ago. If that was the case, then the event that caused it must have changed the entire world!