We made our way back in just half the time it took to make it to the dungeon. It wasn’t apparent how much the Prince was slowing us down until he wasn’t here anymore. Which was a surprise, I didn’t expect the culprit to get punished, but if the king viewed the situation the wrong way, he might blame the people who took his son into a dangerous dungeon break.

It was illegal for him to not help, but rules didn’t really apply to the powerful, he could have easily ignored it and went to tell others about the break to justify not going, and if he didn’t go, we may not have had to fight the dungeon boss as we’d have arrived that much earlier, but that was looking at what happened after it already happened.

The real surprise was the dragon, yes, an actual fucking dragon who came back with us because she liked the taste of my food. It was extremely terrifying and also exciting at the same time. Dragons tended to stick to themselves, and it had been hundreds, if not thousands, of years since someone killed a dragon on our side of the continent. And I had a hunch it was a much younger dragon than the one happily eating with us now that we made it home.

I had grown again, killing the boss got me over the next threshold, and I waited until we made it home to choose my level fifty skill.

New!

Puzzle dungeons- Creating labyrinths, puzzles, non-offensive traps, and secret passageways takes fewer resources

Dungeon teleport- Create a portal that your party can use to traverse the dungeon. Can only be used once per week

Dungeon designer- Reaching friendly reputation with a dungeon increases the starting reputation with other dungeons

Landmark creation- You can add one landmark per dungeon; each landmark will also function as a safezone, and will provide a landmark-specific bonus

Resource crystals- Learn to create health, stamina, and mana crystals from the energy of the dungeon. The crystals will slowly dissolve outside of the dungeon

Lay on hands- Use a large portion of mana to heal significant injuries

A.T. Golem- Learn how to create an all-terrain transport golem

Plant/Herb symbiosis- Gain 50% of farming effects toward your herbs and 50% of herb effect toward your crops

My first thought was to go for lay on hands. After so many close calls, having a sure-fire heal like that, that could possibly regenerate limbs, would be extremely helpful. But I got to thinking again. There was no way something else bad was going to happen on this level again anytime soon; it would make more sense to focus on skills that would help me level faster again.

That narrowed my choices down to dungeon designer, landmark creation, A.T. Golem, and Plant/Herb symbiosis. I was leaning more toward the symbiosis trait as it would make growing herbs much easier. Herbs did provide a huge chunk of my farming experience, even though they were difficult to grow, so allowing them to grow more easily and faster would only increase the experience I could gain.

That would also affect my main staple plant, the Dandedan(herb dandelion). I created and still haven’t sold any of the products created so far. Now that I hold onto the salve and potions, and outsiders have seen them, it means there is no reason to hold on anymore.

I picked the symbiosis skill and moved on for now. I was happy with my other skills as they covered a huge amount of differences, and curious what some of them did, so I was excited to eventually unlock them. The Knight and Mercenary leaders both left to explain what happened to their own factions, while the random knight stayed behind.

It was going to be a long slog to level now after I burnt through all that experience from the dungeon. Most of my wives with offense-based classes were nearing the end of the uncommon class, making their way to rare because they gained twice as much experience as we did. The trade-off is now that it was over, their leveling speed was going to fall off a cliff unless they moved to a harder dungeon.

Things calmed down, time kept going, and life moved on. Sophia and Leaf gave birth. Roka and Milly were pregnant; after they gave birth, all my wives would have. Tems was on her third pregnancy, and Silk was pregnant again. I sold all the built-up potions and salves we had stored; it brought in another thousand mithril, which let us upgrade everyone to gold.

Even Leaf’s scimitars were upgraded, just in case we have to fight again. She had gotten too complacent, and now that she was halfway through the rare class, and the strongest combatant in the village, she might need to pull her weight. She had surpassed Marcus because of my stat boost; it still might come down to a coin toss, but I’d lean more toward Leaf winning because of her luck bonus.

I grew more laid back. After everything I’d been through, I knew I would be able to sacrifice myself to save my wives, because that was what I did with that boss. If we hadn’t gotten extremely lucky and with the behemoth almost killing itself, we might have all died there, but I’d have given them a better chance by finding out about the breath attack before it was used on a group of us, since I pulled the boss's threat.

We had gotten extremely lucky over and over again, and now I only saw the boss spawning as a positive, because it gave most of my wives a huge chunk of experience we wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. The Dragon lady moved in, then quickly moved out as we were too loud in the bedroom. She lived close by at the edge of the town in a hole in the ground.

I brought her food once, and going inside took a minute to walk down the steps and into a royal chamber where she lived. Her name was Mara, or at least that was all she was comfortable saying. Dragons would only give their true name to people they trusted, and it was extremely rare for them to do so. She was nice enough, it was weird living next to a dragon. At the same time, it was weirder that my wives and the townsfolk were fine with her living so close by.

Sarah even joked about us getting together, but I didn’t see it. I saw the look in her eye, and it was more judging than anything. She eyed me like a predator would prey, that’s why I felt so skittish with her around, she had made no signs of doing anything extra, but I had the feeling she was waiting for me to slip up, and then she’d eat me.