Reaching the Dungeon entrance Leon found the surrendered troops all formed up outside its entrance. The Tier 3’s in charge were waiting to enter as they had no idea what was down there, and they were nervous about sending their troops even to the first floor without a guide. Which was actually very smart of them. Although Leon was very concerned about the Breach and how fast it seemed to be progressing. Already he could feel the Madness Affinity mana in the air slowly becoming denser. It was already almost 50% of the way to reaching Tier 2 density. The breach wasn’t even close to being formed yet, but already the mana seeping through was far in excess of the natural ambient mana here.

Leon, still carrying Nadia led the way. He needed to get everyone down to the tenth floor. The only problem floor for everyone would be the Ocean Biome floor due to having to get everyone across the ocean. But the Dungeon was being weird. Upon entering the first floor Leon instantly knew that even the Dungeon was concerned about the Breach. There were no monsters in sight. Nowhere on the floor was populated at all. Leon hadn’t seen much real proof that the Dungeon was a conscious entity, but he was pretty sure that it was. He whispered a ‘thank you’ to the Dungeon for letting everyone pass through unmolested.

The Ocean floor was a pain in the ass like he had predicted. And it took a little over an hour to get everyone to the closest stairwell down. Luna for some reason stuck right by Leon the whole time. He didn’t know why; she wasn’t obligated to be near him. She just was there.

“This Dungeon is different from any that I have ever heard of.” She commented as they descended into the 8th floor.

“Yeah, I’ve heard that a lot from the Mentors.” Leon said, “I am pretty sure that any dungeon that is fed enough of a variety of monsters and animals would end up like this one though.”

“How much animal life did you all feed it?”

“Umm… I kind of lost track after 2 million different species. Suffice it to say, it was fed everything necessary for multiple ecosystems.” Leon said off handedly.

“You were the one who was controlling those monsters back on the pier weren’t you.” She almost phrased that comment as a question.

“Yup, I make them. Didn’t have enough time to get them to Tier 2 before you all came. Also, would have been nice to be able to get custom made armor for all the trolls.”

“Trolls? Those Humanoid monsters are called trolls? You realize that is insulting to actual trolls. Several of my friends are half trolls.” Luna said.

“So what? I made them; I get to name them. If an actual troll gets offended by the naming scheme, I give to my monsters they can take it up with me directly.” Leon said, he didn’t like people who got offended on other people’s behalf for stupid reasons.

The entire group of surrendered soldiers and Leon made it to the Tenth floor after only a couple of hours. It was incredibly odd to not encounter a single animal along the way. Also very pressing was the Madness Affinity mana that was permeating the air. Even ten floors deep into the Dungeon Leon could feel the Madness mana nearly breaching Tier 2 in density.

At the decent to the next floor Leon found Malorie waiting for him.

“The rest of the Mentors are acting as shuttles moving everyone down to the 20th floor. Once all of the others are down there, we are going to do the same for everyone else here. Do you know what Affinity that mana is? It may give us a clue as to the Tier of the realm the Breach is going to.” Malorie explained as Leon walked up her carrying Nadia, “Also, what is wrong with Nadia?”

“Well, Nadia made her Containment Block a few days ago and apparently her soul is taking forever to recover from it.” Leon said as he adjusted Nadia in his arms. “The Mana’s Affinity is Madness. How would that help to determine the Tier of the realm the Breach is going to?”

Malorie’s eyes went wide as she took in Nadia’s disheveled appearance before responding.

“Breaches have been used in the past to discern the hierarchy of different Affinities. The realm of Fire Affinity for example is a Tier 1 Affinity. Breaches there basically don’t do anything because the mana there is naturally at Tier 1. It’s a sort of unofficial ranking system. The highest Tiered Breach ever recorded was Sun Affinity at Tier 515. That Breach turned the area around it into a smoking crater nearly 15,000 miles wide. Obviously, it was done in a safe environment and for research purposes. I have no clue what Tier Madness would be at.” Malorie said with concern. “Also, what in the Spheres possessed Nadia to make a Containment Block? She’s not even supposed to know about them.”

“Umm. Well, I kind of told all of the girls about it. When I told her I’d made over Eight thousand of them already she figured it wouldn’t be that bad and went for it.” Leon gestured to Nadia with his chin, “Now here we are, she’s been like this for nearly a week.”

“This is why the Guild conceals certain information!” Malorie snapped, “You are just a monster apparently. I have no way to explain how you could have made that many Containment Blocks so quickly. Nadia will be lucky to fully recover within a month.”

“You know, If the guild just made everything about advancement common knowledge, people would probably have found a way to advance and do these things more safely and with more preparedness.” Leon sighed.

“Not to interrupt… But should you be talking about this stuff in front of me and my men?” Luna asked almost like she was regretting her decision to speak.

“They said you’d taken the entire enemy forces as your Right To Retribution Leon. I didn’t really believe it at first.” Malorie commented, “Honestly, it doesn’t matter what we talk about in front of you dear. We are all very likely to die within the next, oh, 24ish hours. And even if that wasn’t the case you lack the knowledge base to understand what we are talking about.”

“Are you calling me stupid?” Luna spoke, taking on an aggressive posture.

“No, I am saying that you are uneducated. Not demeaning you for it or anything. It is not your fault. You lacked the resources where you came from. But that means that anything sensitive that I talk with my pupil about in front of you is likely to just fly completely over your head.” Malorie said.

“I kind of feel like you are just adding to the insults there Mal.” Leon said, “But lets just calm down and get everyone moving. That mana has already reached Tier 2 and I have no clue what its going to start doing once it get even higher… the rate that its increasing in density seems to be accelerating.”

“Now you mention it. Let’s go. The dungeon seems to have vacated all of its monsters. Didn’t even know that was a thing that Dungeons do. I can show you the way there… but the stairwell is going to split everyone into groups of 5 across all of the different entrances to the next floor. There’s a lot of them. So, get everyone prepared to move out.” Malorie said.

It only took a few minutes for Luna to give out instructions and for Malorie to tell everyone how to find the stairwells down to the next floors. Then she grabbed Leon and started sprinting down the stairs. It was very uncomfortable. Leon was desperately holding onto Nadia, while being physically carried at speeds that just didn’t make sense.

Even his sphere of perception was blurring everything due to the speeds that Malorie was achieving. The only things that he could really understand that were going on within his sensory range was that Luna was managing to keep up somehow. And that the ambient Mana was shifting to a higher density as they moved, however, the mana from the breach was getting weaker as they progressed. Leon noted the Madness Mana wasn’t even present anymore as they reached what he assumed were stairs leading down to the next floor.

After hours and hours of nauseating speeds. Malorie dropped Leon and Nadia unceremoniously onto the floor of a massive room with only one entrance.

“This is the end of the 20th floor. From our scouting before, we found out that this floor separates everyone into groups of five people in identical rooms. If someone leaves then comes back, they find themselves in a different room, alone.” Malorie said.

“Wait, you all have been scouting the Dungeon?” Leon asked.

“The Mentors jobs are to train you all into becoming the best. By scouting ahead to see what the danger ratings are we can prepare you all by changing our training up top to compensate for the dangers you will face while exploring. Why do you think that you only ever saw like five Mentors at a time outside the Dungeon?” Malorie spoke, “Not only do we scout we also have watch rotations to shadow our students who are delving we try to keep ourselves hidden from you all and only intervene by reducing numbers of pack animals or using a ranged attack that you wouldn’t notice to protect you all. Mentors are as much bodyguards as teachers. Now, I am going back up there to help gather your spoils of war. Stay here and wait until the Breach has gone off. If the Dungeon survives, hopefully everyone down here will to.”

“Be careful. You may be an Elite Tier 3. But that Madness mana out there is giving me bad vibes. I don’t know if it will cause any strange effects. But I would guess that it may start driving people crazy.” Leon said.

“I will be careful. But the Dungeon seems to know that something is wrong. The monsters are all gone, and its mana is fluctuating like crazy right now.” Malorie said, “After everyone has gotten down to the 20th floor… Hopefully that will be enough to save us. Although I believe that the Guild will be instituting some new rules about how to handle The Founder Periods after this stunt.”

With that said she turned and sped off. Leaving Leon, Luna, and Nadia alone in the massive room.

“If you could keep up with Malorie you should have been able to beat me easily in a fight.” Leon said as he settled down onto the floor with Nadia clutched to his chest. She was whispering to herself nonstop in a way that was highly concerning to Leon.

“That was just running. It’s easy to move fast when you are strong. It’s harder to apply that strength in a way that doesn’t just cause you flail about.” Luna said. “The way that you were fighting takes advantage of your physical strength without being uncontrolled. Our kingdom doesn’t have any martial arts meant to take advantage of the physical strength of a Tier 3. At Tier 2 everything doubled right?”

Leon nodded.

“Well at Tier 3 everything triples. And its multiplicative. At Tier 2 you are at a minimum double what you were… At Tier three you are essentially six times what you were at Tier 1. But add to that the effects of Titles, passive skills, and Traits? The real value of that comes out to several times more than a mere multiplication of your base strength by six. But your body still weighs the same. All of that to say that, as Malorie said, I am uneducated in how to properly use my strength. Or even my skills. I didn’t realize how bad it was until coming here. There is more to being powerful than just being able to lift 10 tons.” Luna explained. Her voice held tones of shame and a lot of confusion. Like she was piecing together what she was saying as she spoke.

“Well, that explains why the Guild almost never loses a Dungeon Town. Better training makes their Tier 2 fighters able to take on Tier 3’s who are not well trained. Still, if you had managed to hit me even once I am pretty sure I would have died.” Leon said.

They lapsed into an awkward silence after that. The only sounds were Nadia’s incessant mumbling. Leon had no clue why Nadia was acting like this. She’d been getting better the last time he’d seen her. Maybe a few days away from making a recovery. Now she seemed to have lost her mind. Maybe the Soul damage along with exposure to Madness Affinity Mana had done something to her. He didn’t like it one bit.

“How did you reach Tier 3?” Leon asked after the silence got to be too much.

“I was Tier 2 for a very long time. I was a member of the army, steadily working my way up the ranks. My Lightning Affinity is very high, along with an Affinity for Body Mana. I managed to achieve a high enough level in my skills that one day I realized I could take them to a higher place. Like an epiphany of sorts. I combined my five highest skills into a Trait. And in that process, it pushed me into Tier 3.”

“What is your trait if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Body of the Valkyrie.” She said, “It is not the most impressive Trait. But I have been working on the Skills to make a Mind trait ever since then.”

“Resistance skills… How many do you have? Or has your Trait eaten them all?” Leon asked.

“Trait eats them. Along with physical enhancements and the like. It makes it hard to keep track of everything, I think I have somewhere around ten maybe fifteen resistances.”

“I’d say work on getting more of those once you can. If I am right… There should be somewhere around Eight and a half thousand different resistances.”

“And how would you know that?”

“Because I have affinities for 8,646 different types of mana.”

That caused Luna to stop dead. She looked at Leon like he was some sort of alien for a few moments.

“I find that impossible to believe. The most I’ve ever heard of one person possessing was 10.” Luna said like she was chastising him.

“Believe it or not, it is true. That’s why I know what that mana is that’s coming out of the Breach. It is one of my Affinities. I recognized its feeling instantly. Madness is… It’s not Insidious, but it is also not benign. It is honestly the most unsettling of all my affinities, even the ones that I would consider to be downright Evil are not as… Strange. It is like it cares deeply about everything, yet at the same time cares for nothing. Reasons, logic, intent… none of that has anything to do with Madness.” Leon trailed off as Nadia suddenly decided that right then was a good time to go from nearly catatonic to screaming her head off and squeezing the life out of him.

“The whispers.” Nadia screamed, “Don’t you dare take my whispers.”

Nadia may not be physically large, but she was far stronger than her slight frame would suggest. Her sudden assault via hugging like she meant to pop him like a grape was terrifying. Her eyes were glassy and strange. Like they were vibrating, not focusing on anything in particular. She was squeezing Leon so hard he couldn’t breathe. Leon didn’t know what to do. That was when Luna suddenly came to his rescue, prying Nadia’s arms away from him. As Nadia screamed about Leon stealing her whispers.

“It’s ok Nadia, I don’t want your whispers you can have them.” He gasped out the second he could breathe again.

Instantly Nadia went from hysterical to calm, looking at Luna with a deeply confused expression. Then her eyes lit up and a smile split her face.

“Hello there! I’m Nadia. What is your name?” Nadia’s voice was wavering up and down in an odd way.

Leon didn’t know what to do. Madness had obvious affected Nadia’s mental state. As she and Luna started having a rather strange discussion where Luna was just rapid fire answering strange, seemingly random questions from Nadia. Luna looked mildly terrified as this was going on, but neither of them knew what to do. If Nadia decided that both of them needed to die, Nadia was going to kill them both. He still had one Centipede monster left that he could use as distraction if Nadia fully lost it… That actually gave him an idea. What if he stored Nadia in his Utility Pocket? It worked with his monsters because they were technically things that he owned.

“Nadia…” Leon called out to her.

“Yes Leon?”

“Are you mine?” Leon asked, “Like really mine? Would you let me do anything I wanted with you?”

Nadia blushed at the question. Which was something he’d never seen her do. Then she started giggling and bouncing up and down. Then she looked over at Luna, then back to Leon.

“That’s not something we should talk about in front of guests, is it? Oh wait! Was Luna a gift?” Nadia started babbling about how much she loved her gift. And started poking and prodding at Luna.

Leon cleared his throat to get her attention, “So? Are you mine?” he asked reaching out a hand.

Nadia was about fifteen feet away from Leon, staring intently into Luna’s face. When suddenly, she was standing in front of Leon with gorgeous smile. Nadia’s Affinity was Movement. She was Fast when she wanted to be. And apparently right then she’d wanted to be.

“Of course, I am yours Leon. What a silly question to as-” Nadia didn’t finish her statement because she was suddenly inside of his Utility Pocket.

“Ok what in the Celestial Feces was that!” Luna shouted.

“I put her into my storage skill.” Leon said, “That was incredibly dangerous. Madness somehow… poisoned her mind. I think it’s because of the soul damage. I only hope it’s not permanent.”

“Ok that was utterly terrifying… Wait you have a storage skill that can safely store people?”

“No, it can safely store anything that I own. That is why asked her if she was mine.”

“Rather convenient skill… Now what?” Luna asked.

“I guess now we wait out the Breach. If we live, we live, if not. It was nice knowing you.” He spoke, “By the way can you feel the mana already reaching us? The surface must be covered in Tier 5 mana already for it to be this strong down here.”

“Now that you mention it, I do detect that nauseating mana drifting through here.” Luna commented, “Though until you pointed it out, I couldn’t feel it at all… Am I going to go insane like your girlfriend just did?”

There was a slight not of panic in her voice. “I don’t think so. You didn’t happen to recently suffer damage to your soul, did you?” Leon asked.

“Not that I am aware of.”

“Well, I am pretty sure you’d be aware of it if you had. I’m also pretty sure that Nadia went insane because of the mana and her extensive soul damage.”

“How did she damage her soul?”

“She made a Containment Block for her Movement Affinity Mana. Basically, you take a piece of your core and fashion it into a container for your particular mana type. It helps you draw in and compress mana much more quickly than usual. But it is dangerous, painful in an indescribable way, and apparently makes you weak to the effects of strong single affinity manas in the environment while recuperating from it.” Leon explained. He really didn’t see the harm in telling Luna about these things because he was pretty sure that everyone was going to die here. The Madness affinity mana was on the cusp of reaching Tier 3 twenty floors down into the dungeon already.

The pair lapsed into silence again for a long while. Leon was concentrating everything he had on feeling the ever-growing density of the Madness mana around them. Then he noticed something interesting. His Soul Shield skill. The Madness affinity mana was getting through it and he was absorbing into the Containment Block for it. But Soul Shield was doing something to the mana before it entered his body. He was observing this strange interaction for several hours before Luna suddenly stood up and started pacing.

She was mumbling to herself as she walked around the edges of the massive room, they found themselves in. Leon switched his observations over to her. The Madness affinity mana was doing something to her aura. Interacting with it in some way. After nearly thirty minutes of pacing around the room Luna finally stopped and walked over to plop down directly in front of Leon staring into his face.

It was kind of unnerving. It was like she was either contemplating killing him or fucking him. And Leon couldn’t tell which was which. He already knew that he could fight her, but it would definitely be tough.

“Miss Everthorn, are you alright?” Leon asked after she had sat there for five minutes, unmoving except for her face which kept going through different emotions.

“I don’t know.” She finally said, “Does it feel hot in here? I feel hot.”

Leon glanced around but didn’t feel anything out the norm. His body was comfortable in a lot of temperature extremes though.

“I’m not particularly warm, but I may not be best judge.” Leon said, “Heat resistance is pretty high leveled.”

Luna ignored him and stood up, then went pacing the room again. Leon focused back on what was happening with his soul shield and what was happening in his core. But he kept a bit of his senses trained on Luna to make sure no funny business was going down.

About six hours later the Madness affinity mana density spiked to Tier 3. As soon as that threshold was crossed, Leon noticed the interaction between Luna’s Aura and the mana change. It was worming its way deeper into her aura like a parasite. It only went a little way into her aura before stopping, but her behavior immediately changed. She went from pacing the perimeter of the room to complaining that her armor was hot, then, she started striping.

As nice as the view was, it was also more than just a little concerning. So, Leon did what he had to do. He teleported using Quantum Blink, right behind her, and popped her into his Utility Pocket. He’d known it would work because technically by law she was his property due to the Right of Retribution.

Now alone, at the bottom of the Dungeon. Leon found himself thinking about his family. About the other girls and how they were doing. Were they also succumbing to Madness? Why wasn’t he affected the same way? Was it his Soul Shield? Or was it that he had a Containment Block for it?

On another note, Leon had never been in an environment that had Tier 3 mana everywhere. It felt like he was in a pool of molasses. And it was now eating away at his Soul Shield like an acid. It wasn’t doing a whole lot. But it was concerning because the mana seemed to be getting even more dense.

Leon retreated into meditation and began focusing on every little detail of what was happening in his body. The mana wasn’t interacting with his aura like it had been with Luna. It was just behaving like normal Mana as soon as it passed through his Soul Shield. The skill was actually leveling up like crazy right now. In fact, all of his Soul related skills were advancing, yet he couldn’t tell exactly why.

Something about Madness affinity was pushing his Soul Skills in ways that were forcing them to get stronger. He wasn’t feeling much in the way of strain, or anything like that. So, he wasn’t sure about what was going on. As he sat there trying to understand, Leon couldn’t help but realize that it was pointless. The Mana density around him seemed to have grown to what he would imagine was nearly halfway to Tier 4 in density, if the mana was this intense without the Breach having actually breached the dimensional membrane yet then the other side had to have mana of such a ridiculous density it was going to be like setting off all of earths nuclear weapons at the same time… But worse.

Leon shook off the feeling of despair and began focusing on Meditation again. Mainly to distract himself. That was when he gained a new skill for the first time in a long time.

Congratulations

You have gained the Skill: Heresy Resistance+ lvl.1

Leon wasn’t sure what Heresy Resistance was, but it was obviously different from all the other resistance skills he’d gained so far. It must be a Soul resistance thing. Otherwise, his Trait would have eaten it. At least if he made it through the Breach, he’d have gained something out of all this Madness.