My Dungeon Life: Rise of the Slave Harem

“So, I really can’t break through the door.” I muttered.

“Should we look for this boss?” Celeste asked.

“Finding an invisible boss, I supposed that fits within this dungeon’s theme. There are so many ways dungeons can circumvent the rules. Are the rules established by the council?” I wondered out loud.

I had always known that dungeons had certain rules they had to follow. One such rule is that there had to be a means of getting from the entrance to the boss room. They couldn’t just barricade themselves up. If it did happen, it could only be maintained temporarily, and such barriers became more and more brittle the longer it happened. As a dungeon master, I felt an intense discomfort when I had tried to shut my dungeon up. It gave the feeling of holding your breath. I could only hold it for a brief amount of time.

However, such a rule could be circumvented in a boss room. As long as the boss still existed, your progress could be impeded. Bosses existed every 5 levels, with a miniboss on the 5th level that roamed freely, and the main boss that took up the entirety of every 5th floor. Of course, then there were also the rules regarding safe rooms. They existed roughly every 4-5 floors. Mobs didn’t seem to notice them and would walk right past them.

Bosses were aware of them. However, entering them could cause damage and weaken a boss, so they avoided them. To a mob, they would either lose their mind or be destroyed based on their strength. Essentially, safe zones didn’t have miasma, and creatures attached to the dungeon were repelled by their safe rooms.

Those were the rules for the standard leveled dungeons. Then, there were the open-level dungeons like Twilight Dungeon and the soul dungeons like the Illusory Sword Dungeon. One could become an academic and spend a lifetime learning about all the rules and subsequent exceptions to the rules. I supposed the same could be said about life. Life was messy and didn’t follow clear-cut rules. The only thing about dungeons that seemed definitive is that they fed on mana and converted it to miasma to sustain themselves. Well, my god-tier dungeon didn’t do that, so even that had exceptions.

The reason I was working through such questions in my mind was that Celeste was giving me a blank look, and I had a feeling she wouldn’t be able to help in such a conversation. Maybe I should have dragged Elaya with me. At the very least, she could explain why she didn’t mention anything about a dungeon council before. Although it was possible that new dungeons under a certain age weren’t approached. It was also possible that the new Widow’s Dungeon was controlled by the Demon Lord. They seemed to have been warned against my dungeon too.

The point was that while dungeons had rules, these rules weren’t necessarily set in stone and exceptions could be made. A boss that couldn’t be seen and who you had to defeat might be one such exception. The boss could be a fly on the wall impossible to see or a microscopic bacteria. What if the boss was a water bear? How could I go about defeating that? I had no such clue if that was possible, but that certainly gave me thoughts for the future.

In the meantime, I could fill the entire room with destruction and hope I got it, but some instinct inside me decided that this method probably wouldn’t work. That would be the first thing he’s thinking about. Thus, I had to come up with another option.

My body began to glow as I accessed my dungeon blessings, resetting my skills and then optimizing for strength. Once I reached that state, I attacked. My blade struck the floor with a resounding boom. The floor exploded open, creating a hole in the ground.

“Ah! Master figured it out!’ Celeste declared excitedly.

I just decided to test the floor. The door might be reinforced, but it looked like he didn’t reinforce the entire room. The pair of us jumped down to the 11th floor. If he was honest when he said 20, then we only have 9 more to go.