After the military vanished, I went over to Myria and whispered to her inquisitively.
"Um, isn't Atlantis supposed to be a secret? I thought you didn't want anyone to know you're a princess from Atlantis?"
"Oh, they don't know I'm from Atlantis. They only know I'm from overseas. They don't have the authority to know which kingdom I'm a princess of." Myria smiled, but there was a sense of guilt over withholding the information. "But my father wouldn't allow me to come to the surface and live like a normal person. He was afraid I would be exposed to all sorts of danger. Atlantis has all sorts of secret connections with the surface world – we have seeded operatives here and there to weave our influence and power into the highest hierarchies, so that we can call upon resources for anything we need."
She then snickered. "We are an important trading partner that provides all sorts of resources that can only be found in the deep sea, so…yeah. The higherups and governments of the surface nations would definitely treat us very well."
"…oh. That makes sense."
I was still in disbelief over what had just occurred, but since it was to our advantage, there was no point questioning it. I couldn't help feeling relieved. It was difficult for me to defeat someone of Long Zhuo Fan's level, so General Jiang's appearance was just in time.
"That's a relief!"
"Man, I was worried for a second!"
"I'm glad you guys are all right!"
The various participants gathered around us, checking on our wellbeing and offering their support. They were ready to stand with us when Long Zhuo Fan attacked, but didn't get to do anything because I had already mobilized the Asura statues, and Jiang showed up before they needed to sacrifice themselves, but I never forgot their courage when they stepped up.
"Yeah, good thing it ended without any casualties." I breathed a sigh of relief.
"I must say, you dodged a bullet there!" Xu Hui said with a nod. "I didn't think the Long family would be this despicable!"
"What 'strong eat the weak' bullshit." Wang Di snorted, folding his muscular arms over his broad chest. "It's pure nepotism! They only use that when it benefits them, but when there's a stronger girl than his daughter, the father intervenes to alter the outcome."
"That's how people work. They like twisting words in order to justify their own rationale."
"Hmph. Let's see how they can raise their head in society again after we expose them."
"Yeah! I have it all on recording! I was broadcasting the whole thing live!"
"Hah! They'll never be able to appear in public again! And that's assuming the military let them go!"
"After bragging and showing off her status, it turns out that the one she was mocking and looking down on is a real princess! What irony! This is karma at its finest!"
In any event, with the Long family forcibly removed from their manor, we no longer had any reason to remain. So we dispersed after exchanging pleasantries and went home. Over the next few days, I learned from online news that the Long family had been imprisoned. Long Zhuo Fan was locked up in one of the most secure prisons in Hua Xia, kept in a cell layered with high level spirit arrays that suppressed his cultivation. It would be a long time before he would be released.
Most of the other Long family members were released because they didn't participate in the murder attempt, but their wealth, property and status were confiscated. Most of them no longer wanted anything to do with the Long family, and a few applied to have their family names changed to avoid the social stigma that was now plaguing them.
Long Fan Xue didn't have to go to jail, and she didn't have the luxury of changing her family name, unlike many of her clan retainers who had original family names prior to joining the Long family. Instead, she was subject to humiliation, and whenever she was out in public, struggling to survive because no one would hire her (and she was expelled from the university for the sneak attack, which was interpreted as attempted murder), people would point at her and gossip.
"Isn't that the vixen who tried to steal a princess's fiancé, yet was shameless enough to brag about her so-called superior status?"
"I watched the video. Even though she lost convincingly, she still tried to launch a sneak attack on the princess when her back was turned."
"How despicable! Not only is she a sore loser, she's a thieving vixen who preys on other women's men! Better keep our boyfriends away from her!"
"Hah! No men will want her now, not after what happened to the Long family. They lost everything. Their wealth, property and status. They're a disgrace now."
That wasn't true. When she couldn't find a job, Long Fan Xue had to sell her body. There were rich, powerful men who were more than willing to pay for her to be their mistress, and she had to put up with whatever humiliation they subject her to.
How the mighty had fallen.
Honestly, I didn't care about all that. I had more important matters to tend to, such as the dungeon. after the debacle with the Long family, I went home and locked myself in my room. once I ensure everything was secure, I teleported to my dungeon.
-Congratulations on completing the mission. The user has been granted a new territory in your dungeon. -
The system immediately awarded me with the promised reward. At first, I felt a little underwhelmed, but when I saw the new garden in my Deep Sea Palace, I was impressed. The Phantom Stumps and Tree Revenants had settled in a spacious cavern put aside as a garden, and they were forming their own forest there.
"Excellent." I studied the small garden that they were slowly grooming to become a forest. "I'll see if I can capture other grass type spirit beasts and have them populate the forest as well. And guys, don't go overboard with the curse."
"The Tree Revenants and Phantom Stumps you brought back will be very useful," Long Wang told me, looking impressed. "Their Forest Curse ability will trap invaders and trespassers in all sorts of realistic illusions, confusing their minds and hindering their paths in here. It was a great idea to forge a contract with them."
"Thanks. Now, I'll have to look for more grass type pocket…I mean spirit beasts. To spruce up my forest."
It was a little incongruous having a forest inside a Deep Sea Palace where most of the spaces were given over to marine life, and even a marine farm with seaweed and stuff, but…hey, it was my dungeon. I could do whatever I wanted with it.
Anyway, I guess it was still worth taking the mission if I had a bunch of new spirit beasts – three of them being Mystic ranked – and a whole new forest segment in my dungeon.
-That's not all the rewards for the user. The user has been granted the following summoning skills as well. Damage Buff: 20% increase in the damage of the summoned spirit beasts' attacks. Vitality Buff: 20% increase in the defense of the summoned spirit beasts. Sanctuary: Summoned spirit beasts resting in the dungeon will have their recovery process sped up by 100%. –
"What the hell are with these insane buffs?!" I demanded, my eyes widening when I stared at the holographic windows. I then threw up my hands, annoyed. "Wait a second, why are you only giving me all these summoner buffs AFTER almost ninety chapters and a year and a half later?! Shouldn't you be providing me a less potent buff near the beginning? 1% or 5%, slowly upgraded to 20% at this point?! Why am I only receiving these summoner buffs now?"
The system didn't reply, but I could sense its sheepishness. Shaking my head, I sighed and shook my fist at the dungeon ceiling. If this was a story, it was a badly written one where the author just made up whatever he could on the spot and didn't plan anything out in the beginning. The concept or idea of summoner buffs probably didn't even occur to him until almost ninety chapters later, when he was struggling to think of an appropriate reward for the latest mission, and it just popped into his head almost randomly. However, this was reality. And I guess they were right when they said that reality was often stranger than fiction.
Best not to think too much about it.
Long Wang looked at me sympathetically. "Don't worry, my lord. I'm sure you'll figure it out."
"Yeah." At least the system was giving me missions now. And it appeared that I had broken through to advanced Mystic rank too, so there was a definite upside to all this. I wondered what the next mission would be.
As it turned out, I didn't have to wait for long. When I went to the university the next day, the system pinged me just before I started to choose my classes.
This being a cultivation university, most of the lessons were devoted to cultivation skills and abilities. I was going to sign up for the combat and spirit beast taming classes for sure. The spirit beast taming classes, in particular, were a new course that had only come into being this year. You could even say that I was the one who inspired it, given that the cultivators developing that only started experimenting with spirit beast taming when they saw what I was doing with my summoned spirit beasts. It wasn't as if it never existed, but most people had given up on it because they thought it impossible.
So when it appeared that I had made the impossible possible, interest in spirit beast taming was revitalized again. I wasn't sure how I felt about that, but at least my summoning skills remained unique. Even if they successfully tamed a spirit beast, they couldn't summon them like I did. They didn't have my system or a dungeon of their own.
Can't have the protagonist cease being a special snowflake, after all. Ahem. Never mind.
Anyway, even though I had decided on the two main classes I wanted to take, the system had other ideas. Just when I accessed the website and was skimming through the course list, a notification window appeared.
-A new quest has been issued. An Array of Knowledge: Take a class on spirit arrays. Completion of this mission will grant the appropriate rewards. –
"Spirit arrays?" I raised an eyebrow. This was quite the interesting mission. Spirit arrays were pretty complex and I didn't have the talent for it. I had tried dabbling in it before, but their bewildering complexity and the sheer number of patterns and variations caused my mind to go blank. Nonetheless, I decided to give it a try because the system wouldn't recommend this mission to me without a reason. Taking a deep breath, I ticked the box for the spirit array classes. "All right, let's give it a try."
Funnily enough, the system didn't say I actually have to pass the class. It only said I was required to take it. I didn't have much hope of acing it, but I hoped I wouldn't fail. That would be bad. Still, I wondered what sort of rewards taking a spirit array class would give me. It should be something related to spirit arrays, surely? Otherwise, why bother asking me to learn them?
"Please go easy on me," I muttered as I headed to the lecture hall where the spirit array lessons were being given. On my way there, I caught sight of a subdued figure.
Long Fan Xue.
Everyone was avoiding her because of what happened. This was way before she left and was forced to sell her body (at that time, I didn't know she would be cornered to such an extreme), and before she received the official notice that she was expelled. But thanks to the power of social media and the Internet, everyone knew what she had done. They were whispering to each other as they stared at her from afar.
Alone and ostracized, Long Fan Xue hurried away with her head lowered, unable to meet anyone's gaze. I watched her run off, but felt no sympathy for her.
After what she did to Myria and me, she deserved everything that was happening to her. Speaking of which, if this was a Korean manhwa, the protagonist would sleep with her (apparently, it counted as "conquering" her) before discarding her like trash as revenge, but because this wasn't a sick Korean manhwa and the content was rated general audience, we would have no such nonsense here.
Personally, only an idiot would taint his body with a bitch like her.