The Forty Eighth

[POV CHANGE TO THETIA]

Back when I was a mere ancient dungeon and didn't even have an avatar to project myself and enjoy wonderous things like food. I never imagined at the time that my current master would conquer that dungeon, take the guardian ice dragon for himself, and take me into an entirely different dimension. The massive amount of mana flowing in the air in my Lord's world allowed me to reach leaps and bounds in power. From the very moment he brought me there I began constructing my new dungeon, building large amounts of floors and monsters, creating my avatar, and my own special rooms to cater for myself and his clan. The more powerful I became, the more knowledge I absorbed about the world outside this dimension and this dimension itself. I gained the most entertainment whenever one or multiple of the clan members entered my dungeon. I enjoyed watching them struggle to reach new heights, so I just made it harder for them and they came out happy at their newfound strength. I kind of wanted to see them fail for a bit before succeeding though but, whatever will make them grow faster will make me happy in the end. My greatest entertainment however, was when Lord Nemesis entrusted me with doing physical training for Nora. It let me get a kick out of seeing her reactions each time she had to fight a monster that was clearly supposed to be much stronger than her. Although I was reprimanded by my Master for being too hard on her I still gave her a hard time, in moderation. I felt there was a special place in my core for Nora though even if I treated her badly in training I still catered to everything else she needed.

In all my time here however, nothing could have prepared me for what happened earlier. When I felt Master Nemesis' presence approaching my dungeon it made me happy to welcome him here. I rapidly teleported to the entrance to meet him. When he reached the place though I felt something different, it wasn't feelings of admiration or happiness. I felt pure fear from the very center of my core. He was letting out a pitch black aura, so dark that it would make the void look like a puppy in comparison. What made me scared however wasn't the aura since I felt some of it during his training. It was his eyes, they weren't the beautiful golden and blood red eyes he always had. They were a bottomless black, void of any emotion at all. When I tried to talk to him, he just ignored me and rushed into my dungeon. Something was deathly wrong and I started trembling at the thought while quickly flying after him. He completely disregarded any structure by destroying it and he annihilated any and all monsters in his way, regardless of the type or level. It's not like I can't respawn all of the monsters and rebuild all of the structures but at the pace that Lord Nemesis is destroying it all I couldn't keep up. So I decided to just chase him and try to devise a plan to deal with whatever this problem is. I attempted to appraise him but I just received a headache instead. For the first time in my lifetime I wasn't able to appraise someone, this only added to my anxiety and fear of the situation.

An hour into my Lord's rampage in my dungeon I felt another presence enter but I didn't have time to identify it as I was telling my strongest monsters on each floor to fight him and the weakest to hide for their lives. Time went on like that for a long period, while Master Nemesis didn't even reach a fourth of the way through my dungeon. If it's one thing I'm relieved about it's the fact that I make lots of floors each day . I won't be able to do that for a while though because it will take me some time to recover all of the damage dealt to my dungeon. Once Lord Nemesis reached a fourth of the way through my dungeon it didn't help my stress levels at all as he kept rampaging through everything. On the next floor he reached, there was a nice hot spring and my Master just slowly walked into it. After a few moments he cleaned off all the blood that covered his body and his aura of mana calmed down. His eyes started to shine, then they regained their original appearance. Once he regained his composure, he passed out in the spring. I quickly took him out of it and laid him down. I hope from the depths of my core that this doesn't become a regular thing, it's too damn scary! As I was thinking this, the second presence caught up with us.

[POV CHANGE TO NEMESIS]

When my consciousness came back to me I found myself lying on the ground with Elaine and Thetia staring at me. I scrambled my thoughts together to try and recall what exactly happened. As I stood up Thetia brought me a drink while Elaine gave me some food. Thetia started to explain what exactly happened and the fact that we are pretty deep into the dungeon even if it's not the halfway point. I took a look at my own status and saw that there was something there that wasn't before. It was called The Curse Of Imperium. The details were that if I used up to much of my power at once I would go berserker at an unknown time. Why does this damn thing have to be so vague though? It doesn't tell me an exact amount of power, a skill use limit, or anything like that. When I asked Thetia about it, she had never heard of it before and it seems like it would be extremely difficult to remove even for me. In order to fix the fact that I ran amok in Thetia's dungeon I fed her about 1/4th of my mana pool after I recovered. I'm gonna have to be careful about how much mana I use from now on. When we stepped outside of the dungeon it was already night time and everyone was waiting outside of the dungeon. They were relieved to see me ok, Nora and Divinus tackled me while crying. I sat on the ground, patting their heads to calm them down.