Chapter 19: The Phantoms' Dungeon And Training Of The Mind
Right now all four of us are sitting around the campfire eating dinner while Shiro the White Earth Dragon I tamed five days ago is sleeping behind me, I have spent the past five days fighting Shiro as training, and she liked it a lot, she was a Dragon at the end of the day and all Dragons are battle junkies, and both Shin and Loti are able to kill Earth Dragons 1 on 1 right now, Shin made use of his special equipment and learned how to reflect the damage caused by the Earth Dragons back at them and after they tire themselves he would attack them with his greatsword and kill them, and on the other hand, Loti would keep her distance from the Earth Dragons and would attack them using her magic arrows formed out of a magic attribute that is opposite to the Dragon's one and would keep doing that till the Earth Dragon dies.
"Today is the last day for us here and tomorrow we will head back to Arnos and from there we are going to head to the place where your last training will be!"(Ryo)
"Last training?"(Shin)
"Yes, you two are strong enough to hunt normal monsters found on quests from the guild, and right now you two are able to kill monsters that require special ways to kill, the Earth Dragons, and will be able to learn how to kill other monsters that require some special ways to kill them by yourselves if you follow what we did here, and the last thing that is left for you two to train is your minds, or more specifically, you need to learn how to figure out that you are being lied to or when someone is trying to trick you at least and to learn how to withstand mind magic attacks from phantom type monsters and demons at most, and for that, we will be headed next to the uncleared Dungeon in the Deadly Swamp, the Phantoms' Dungeon and will have you sit in each floor and let the monsters attack you till their attacks stop having an effect on you before moving to the next floor and doing the same there till we clear the whole dungeon"(Ryo)
"Eeeeeehh?!"(Loti)
"What?! We sit there and let the monsters attack us nonstop without fighting back?! We will die like that!!"(Shin)
"Don't worry about that, all of the monsters in that dungeon are Phantom type monsters, and they can't attack physically, everything they do have zero damage to one's body"(Ryo)
"Then why was the dungeon not cleared long ago if that's the case?"(Shin)
"That's because the Phantom type monsters have different means to attack, and those means to attack are far more dangerous than any physical attacks, they attack by either breaking one's soul and driving people to kill themselves or by driving people mad and making them kill each other"(Ryo)
"Why shouldn't I worry then?! That's the worst possible place for anyone to be! No no no! I'm not going in there no matter what happens!"(Shin)
"Hahaha! Don't worry! I'll just tie you up and throw you in there, and whenever you lose your mind I would fix you up and throw you back in there again!"(Ryo)
"Noooooooooo!!"(Shin)
In the morning of the next day we packed up our things and I took out my carriage from {Storage} and changed its paint and removed my crest from it and then made a special saddle for Shiro and fitted it on her, after that, I connected Shiro to the carriage, and we took off towards Arnos, Shiro kept looking around her the whole time, it seems she was happy to get to see the world outside of the Dragon Canyon.
After traveling for some time we finally reached the vicinity of the town and the aftermath of a battle happening was visible all over the place, once we were close to the town's wall a lot of guards appeared on top of the wall and the gate was closed shut. It seems that they are being cautious of Shiro, they might think that Shiro is here to attack them or something, for that I jumped out of the carriage and stood on top of her head and started waving my hand at them, that calmed them down and opened the gate, and we were let in without any problems.
"So you actually did it! You really did tame an Earth Dragon!"(Manda)
"Yeah, and we four together were able to hunt more than a hundred Earth Dragons in there! So how many do you want to buy?"(Ryo)
"Just one is enough for us! And so with that, you guys finished the quest assigned to you! Could you give me your guild cards?"(Manda)
"All three of us? You mean me too?"(Ryo)
"Yeah, but what I want is your second card, not the original one! You took the quest as the B rank adventurer Ryo and not as The Divine Blacksmith, that's why we need to change your rank to make your second identity more believable"(Manda)
"I see"(Ryo)
After giving him our cards he took them and left his office for some time and when he came back he had different cards with him plus a metal card, my second card came back to me silver in color indicating the rank S, and for both Shin and Loti their cards came back to them red in color indicating A rank, and the metal card was the permit to enter the Deadly Swamp I asked him for in my letter.
"For Ryo, the titles Dragon Slayer and Dragon Tamer are added and for Shin, the title True Knight was added and for Loti, the title Magic Sniper was added! Plus I have sent a notification to all the adventurers guilds in the kingdom about Shiro, that's why from now on, what happened today when you came back will not happen again"(Manda)
"Thank you"(Ryo)
" "Thank you very much!!" "(Shin&Loti)
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Inside the Great Church in the capital of the Holy Theocracy, inside a meeting room sat the Pope of the Holy Light Faith who is also the ruler of the Holy Theocracy at the head of a circular table and around that table sat the Twelve Chosen Heroes of the Holy Light Faith and right now they are discussing the condition of the main church in the Kazar Kingdom and the fact that the number of believers in that country is getting less and less.
"This all happened because of that brat! We should just kill him and everything will be back to how things should be!"(No.5)
"How~♪? You say we should kill him, but how exactly~? He is an SS rank adventurer, you know~♪! He is the only human to reach that level~"(No.3)
"What are you getting at?!"(No.5)
"All I~a~m saying is are you up for it~? Are you sure he is not stronger than all of us here~♪?"(No.3)
"You dare say that?! As if this great me is weaker than some random brat?!..."(No.5)
"HAHAHAHA!! I agree with the 'Great me Old man'! we are the Chosen Heroes you know! As if some guy is stronger than us! It's so funny I can't stop laughing! HAHAHAHA! Don't you agree, Sensei!"(No.4)
"I don't, both of you two are getting way ahead of yourselves! You don't even know how the adventurers' ranks work! And here you are claiming to be stronger than an SS rank like this!"(No.1)
"That's right, you two are barely at A rank, leave alone The Divine Blacksmith, even regular S rank adventurer could defeat both of you single-handedly without your Holy Armaments! Even me and One could hardly be considered S rank and the guy we are talking about right now is SS rank"(No.2)
"What's the difference? If you two are not strong enough to beat him then we can just all work together to do that…"(No.10)
"I am afraid it doesn't work like that! SS is the only special rank among the rest!"(No.1)
"What do you mean?"(No.10)
"SS rank is given to those who exceed common sense, those who are impossible to measure their strength! In short, SS rank adventurers are true monsters who no matter how strong you are they are stronger than you!"(No.2)
"That is all just a bluff!! The adventurers guild must be saying that as a bluff because they fear our power-!"(No.5)
"No, it's the truth!"(Pope)
"Pope-sama"(No.1)
"Those known as SS rank adventurers are all bona fide true monsters! The two SS rank demonkin, king and queen of the demonkin Kingdom, to put it in simple terms, they are immortal! And that is not some kind of title but true immortals! They both are more than a million years old and no matter what happened to them they will just laugh it off as if nothing happened! I myself 10000 yours ago during the Age of Gods, attacked the king and cut his head off when they came attacking our Gods but all he did was pick up his head and placing it back where it belonged and walked off as if nothing happened, they both are of the race, True Vampires! And the Giant SS rank is Giant of size even for the giants themselves! If he laid down you could build a whole country on top of him! And more than that, he has the power to move the world, he is able to make a whole country sink into the ground destroying it or separate a whole country from the rest of the world like what he did to the dwarf's country! He separated that country from the mainland turning it into an island and pushed it far away to protect them from us when we decided to attack them to take their Orichalcum and learn how they processed it 8000 years ago!"(Pope)
"Even I didn't expect them to be like that…"(No.1)
"And The Divine Blacksmith is one of such people! …..So now how do we deal with the situation in the Kazar Kingdom?"(No.2)
"The second prince was sent here to study in the Royal Academy, Right? Then all we have to do is have Althalos Carac take responsibility for his failure to understand the true strength of his opponent and picking a fight with an SS rank adventurer like that! And we will do that by cutting our ties with him and let the Holy Light Faith be destroyed in the Kazar kingdom once, and after that, we can just reintroduce it again under the rule of the second prince with the guidance of a new Cardinal! But for that to happen we need the second prince to take the throne, so during his stay here we must establish a friendly relationship with him and offer him our support to take the throne from his brother…."(Pope)
They continued their meeting for some more time, but what was clear after the end of this meeting is that the Twelve Chosen Heroes are split into two factions, the first one believed the Pope's words on the SS rank adventurers and believed that they should never pick a fight with an SS rank ever or their whole religion and country will be annihilated, and the second faction who didn't believe the Pope's words and are itching to pick a fight with the SS rank adventurer known as The Divine Blacksmith to prove to the world that they are way more powerful than some lowly adventurers, and sometime in the future the second faction will declare war on The Divine Blacksmith bringing ruin to the Holy Theocracy….
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Right now we are sitting in my carriage being pulled by Shiro and heading towards the Deadly Swamp, it should take us only three days to reach the Phantom's Dungeon.
We spent five days in Arnos and during those three days, I opened a gear shop and chose the employees working there, Madi the Lord of Arnos was the first customer of the shop along with his children, they bought many types of weapons and armors, according to them, they bought sets to use and others to look at.
After three days traveling by the carriage, we entered the fogy and wetlands of the Deadly Swamp, right away as we entered the Deadly Swamp a huge horde of multiple types of undead monsters gathered around us and started attacking the carriage.
"Shin and Loti! Remain inside the carriage and don't come out! Seth and Shiro you two will be fighting the undead with me!"(Ryo)
" "Yes!" "(Shin&Loti)
"Yes sir!"(Seth)
"Grrrooourrr!!"(Shiro)
I jumped out of the carriage and unsheathed Scarlet and used his ability to engulf the blade with fire and used it to cut down the undead monsters in front of me, Seth jumped behind me and used Ryuken to clad his fists in fire and started punching the undead monsters one after the other, Shiro used the mechanism to disconnect herself from the carriage and started killing the monsters with her claws and breath attacks.
After fighting the monsters for half an hour we managed to kill them all and returned to the carriage.
"Sensei, the monsters didn't seem that strong, why did you make us stay in the carriage?"(Shin)
"To conserve your energy, did you forget that you two are to clear this dungeon with me?"(Ryo)
"I see…"(Shin)
"But where did all these monsters come from?"(Loti)
"These monsters are what remained of the people who tried to clear the dungeon in the past and died trying and mixed in them are the monsters that wandered in here by mistake and died turning into undead monsters"(Ryo)
"So that how they came to be…"(Loti)
"Yeah… for now let's head for our goal! Our goal is the Phantom's Dungeon at the center of this swamp! You can even see it from here, it's that pillary-tower you see in the distance! This dungeon is an ascending type dungeon where you go up rather than going down. This dungeon is made up of ten floors that act as a test to see if the challenger is worthy of fighting the Dungeon Master and getting the mountain of jewelry found at the top! me, Shin, and Loti are the ones entering the dungeon while Seth and Shiro wait for us here! Let's go!"(Ryo)
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Third-Person POV…
The group made up of Ryo, Shin, and Loti entered the dungeon's first floor and the first thing they did was sitting in the middle of the floor and waiting for the dungeon's monsters to attack them, and sure enough, that was what happened.
Ghost type monsters that look like a boney fish appeared from the walls of the dungeon and dashed towards the three sitting on the floor, the Ghost Fish monsters opened their mouths and chomped their heads.
As the fish attacked him, Shin vision changed and right now he was back home sleeping on his bed, "…That must have been a dream" is what he told himself and got up from his bed and walked towards the dining room to eat breakfast with his older sister, the last surviving member of his family.
After they ate breakfast together, they headed to the orphanage they managed, and they were greeted by a girl the same age as Shin named Loti, she is Shin's lover and was one of the children raised in this orphanage, the three went to check on the kids, feed them, give them some lessons on reading and writing, and once noon came they were supposed to make lunch together with them, but that was intercepted by a loud boom and the sight of the building's wall crumbling down.
"You Godless fools! How dare you shelter filthy Beastmen in your orphanage! We'll have you die for that!"(Holy Knight)
The Holy Knights from the church discovered that they were hiding Beastmen kids in this orphanage and came attacking them, Shin's sister was the first one to stand up and fight to protect those behind her, and Loti was next, and when Shin was about to do the same, part of the ceiling fell down on him preventing him from moving, he couldn't do anything but watch as the Holy Knights killed his sister, Loti, and the children around him.
He was about to lose his mind because of all the regret, anger, sadness, and desire for revenge when suddenly all of these feelings were gone along with the scenery around him becoming that of the inside of a dungeon with his teacher Ryo standing in front of him, Shin had difficulty breathing and was looking downwards while trying to gasp for breath, he looked to the side and saw Loti in the same condition as him.
The vision Loti saw was similar to the one Shin saw but their roles were reversed, in her vision, she was the one who couldn't do anything as the people she loved died one after the other.
Their teacher saw a similar vision, but he was able to break free out of it pretty easily thanks to his training with Mind Magic at the hands of the two True Vampires couple back in his village.
Both Shin and Loti went for the second try after catching their breath and failed again, inside the vision, you forget that you are inside a dungeon and a lot of your memories appear to be just some random dream, they both kept trying again and again and by the fifth time when they woke up, instead of shrugging the faint traces of memories they had as a dream they stopped and thought about them for some time before going to eat breakfast and starting their daily activities, and at noon came the Holy Knights attacking and when they were about to fight back they were prevented from doing so by the falling ceiling.
When looking at the Holy Knights fighting and attacking children without feeling any guilt whatsoever, some memories started to resurface in their minds, the memories of Holy Knights doing that same thing but were stopped and killed with a fiery sword filling their surroundings with painful screams, that was their teacher who is looking after them right now, and remembering their teacher made them remember what they gained from traveling with him and him training them, they both summoned their gear made for them by their dear teacher and shattered the ceiling pieces holding them down and dashed towards the Holy Knights and started killing them one after the other saving their loved ones, the lesson learned from this vision was to trust themselves and their memories and experiences.
When they came to they were inside the dungeon with their teacher smiling at them and the Ghost Fish monsters ignoring them, after short rest, they headed to the second floor and sat down in the center of the floor, this time the monsters appearing from the walls of the dungeon were Skeletons that had no lower bodies and were floating in the air with their upper bodies covered with a tattered piece of cloth.
The Ghost Skeletons went towards the three and held the three's heads in their hands, and this time they saw a vision of their partner betraying them, Shin saw a vision of Loti betraying him, and Loti saw a vision of Shin betraying her, they failed the first time and second time but were able to clear the vision the third time, the lesson they learned from this floor was to be extremely truthful with their partner and to trust them.
After another short break, they headed for the third floor and as always they sat down in the middle of the floor, their vision this time was them camping together with their teacher and when they went to sleep they started hearing their own voices talking to them, the voice kept telling them to betray their teacher and kill him, doing that will earn them the favor of the Holy Church and huge fame of being able to kill the SS rank adventurer The Divine Blacksmith, and them doing that will enable them to take all his powerful artifacts for themselves, they closed their eyes and thought about it, rather than feeling motivated to do what the voice told them they both started shaking in fear, just thinking about turning their teacher into their enemy was enough to make them cry thus clearing it in the first try, the lesson they learned from this floor was to never lose to temptation and to never turn Ryo into their enemy.
Their teacher was impressed with them clearing it first try and was praising them, but when they saw his face they both ran away screaming "I'm sorry!..", after calming them down and taking yet another short break, they headed to the next floor.
They kept going like that till they reached the top floor where the Dungeon Master resides, it was a huge room that was full of weapons of all kinds scattered all over the room, and in the middle of the room, a huge Wraith was floating and looking at them with a huge smile all over its face.
{Welcome to my room, Puny humans!}
"A Sword Eater, huh…"(Ryo)
*Author Note: Thank you DestroyerMon for proofreading this chapter*