492 Back To The Dwarven City
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“However!” Brunhild quickly said, looking around our group and finding Partner cuddling over my chest while Emeraldine rested her head over my shoulder. “Isn’t this a bit weird? Does your wife has two… erm, mistresses?”
“Ah, well, they’re also her wives.” Lucifer said.
“Hm?!” Brunhild looked at Lucifer with surprise. “Lucifer! A-Are you for real?!”
“What? What’s wrong with this? They’re good people, and they had saved my life several times already. Emeraldine is resourceful, intelligent, and nice, and Partner is… err, strong.”
“Oi! I am more than just being strong!” Partner angrily barked.
“This is a bit… Ah, I guess I am the odd one here, right? Maybe the times have changed.” Brunhild sighed. “Well, as long as you’re happy and not suffering, then I am okay with these things.”
“Well, even though I have Emeraldine and Partner with me, that doesn’t mean I love Lucifer less, Brunhild. Don’t worry about it. He’s someone incredibly precious to me, one of my three most precious things.” I said with a smile, however, I quickly looked at Takeshi and Laura… “Well, five…”
“Fufu, I guess you’ve got a big family, Maria.” Brunhild said. “I remember being more stiff back then but over the years of solitude, I guess I’ve grown too tired to get angered over such things. Anyways, it should be enough with addressing this any longer… We should quickly set up a camp somewhere… I can still sense Ants; they are still alive.”
“Yeah, and there’s a ton of miasma in this third floor, we need to quickly get to the second floor and camp there for the moment, or… well, just go back to the dwarven country? I don’t think it is too late.” I said.
“R-Right… I guess you could do that…” Brunhild said. She seemed nervous about that but didn’t said anything else.
Like that, we decided to quickly exterminate every single leftover Ant there was to gain juicy EXP, which I rose as an enormous army of Undead later. These guys will be my Abyssal Ant Squadron, and they’re around five hundred strong, mixed between Giant Goliaths, Workers, Generals, and Knights. They’re weaker after getting killed and turned into Undead of course, but if they end up leveling up and evolving they might recover their original strength.
For now, I also cleansed the surrounding dangerous miasma, and assigned Lancelot to take care of the Ants until we returned here. He seemed more than willing, and quickly decided to begin training the ants in the meantime, without wasting a second.
Meanwhile, we quickly decided to leave the dungeon by flying over Lucifer’s back. Brunhild had fallen asleep midway through, probably too tired after such an intense fight, she might be quite rusty as well, not only was she old but apparently she had not fought in hundreds of years, perhaps, so she wasn’t in the best of her fitness anymore.
When we reached the Dwarf Country once more, we quickly moved to Aquamarine’s manor and called Helga and the group of Dwarves over. The news about our dungeon clear had yet to be told to the public, as we were going to do everything tomorrow, for now, we were going to enjoy a good dinner to celebrate our victory, and also talk out about everything that happened there, and what we should do from now on.
“Incredible, so that Dungeon had a small Fragment of the Evil God…” Said Aquamarine, the old dwarf woman looked into her cup of wine with shock. “How big was it? And how in the heck were you able to destroy that?”
“Well I pretty much ate it…” I said. “A part of it still remains merged with the dungeon core, but now that it is mine, it shouldn’t revolt anymore.” I said with a nod.
“You ate it?!” Asked everybody except my party, Brunhild was not here, as she was currently sleeping inside a room for now, with one of my familiars guarding her in case she would want to play the mysterious one and escape to “leave us happy without her bothersome presence” or something that characters like her tend to pull out when you least expect it.
“Yeah, don’t worry, I’ve literally got a black hole inside of me so it got completely destroyed. I gained some power from it, but it is nothing too extraordinary. I’ve tried before and I didn’t got any of the crazy magic the Ant Queen was using, sadly.” I sighed. “There might be other requirements for it, or something I couldn’t quite get yet.”
“W-Well, that’s for the better I suppose…” The old dwarf said.
“Wow, I can’t believe there was something so dangerous there…” Helga said. “I can’t believe it, I… Ugh, my head…”
“Don’t worry, Helga. Everything’s resolved now, and we even got back a lost family member…” I laughed.
“So that Dragon Girl that had been wandering around was really his sister, how incredible. This world is very small when you think about it.” Sighed Aquamarine.
“Yeah, but she was very tired, so for now she’s sleeping in a separate room. I hope she can wake up tomorrow so we can talk more, although Dragons usually sleep for weeks, so I don’t know…” Said Lucifer.
“Hm, Emeraldine, could we make up a potion to give her more energy?” I wondered.
“Ah, something that could affect dragons?! I don’t know…” Emeraldine seemed a bit doubtful. “Maybe we could use some of the ores you’ve mined, some of them seemed imbued with elements she might like.”
“Ah, yeah, we used to chew on Ores back then, so they’re good for our health. Perhaps one of the things she might be lacking is all the nutrients that eating magic ores gave to her, perhaps she had been wandering around without eating for years…” Sighed Lucifer.
“EH?! But why?!” I asked.
“Ah, it might be because of us… We occupied the entire mountain after all…” Sighed Aquamarine. “Perhaps she didn’t really wanted to bother us and take away our resources… What a good woman she is… I’ll bring you a big haul of magic ores, name what you need! This is the least we can do for her! Brunhild has been our guardian for many years, actually. I believe it is thanks to her presence here that we had not been attacked by the powerful monsters roaming around the mountains, and might also be a reason why the enormous wyvern colonies always keep themselves away from us… It is the least I could do to thank her.”
“Ah, thank you for your generosity.” Lucifer said with a smile.
I could notice that he had a lot more life back to his eyes than before… I’m happy for him.
Brunhild seems very old and fragile despite the strength she showed back then, we need to take good care of this dragon grandma from now on, we wouldn’t want her to just die and leave my Lucifer all sad again!
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