The Portal opened and I stepped through. As I walked out into the hall, I was immediately greeted by demons walking by. So, the demons had managed to conquer the other fort. This one was too valuable for them to destroy. Well, destroying their fort cost them nothing, because they started with two forts and in the end, they ended with two forts as well. I listened to two of the demons speaking.
“When they conquered this fort, those stupid humans never realized we had an entire contingent waiting underground in a hidden cellar. You should have seen the look on their faces when we did the same thing to them they had done to us. When we opened the doors and they looked on in confusion as an army was let right into their newly acquired fort, it was hilarious.
“That was probably the quickest turn around in ownership I have ever seen!”
The two men walked away, but I wore a scowl on my face. My Sense Life should have detected if there were any soldiers under us. I had looked over the Map carefully. The only two options were that the cellar had some kind of anti-Sense Life enchantment, or that the dungeon was interfering with Sense Life as it did with Portal. In dungeons, Sense Life usually couldn’t work through too many walls, and certainly wouldn’t travel to other levels. In that same way, it’s possible the dungeon wasn’t letting me use Sense Life like the real world but was treating the cellar like another level.
Either way, I now knew that I couldn’t depend on Sense Life anymore. It was unreliable. I began walking down the hallway in the other direction, and the two demon soldiers didn’t pay me any mind. I was in the proper uniform and I even had the karma of a soldier. Other than the fact that the soldier whose karma I borrowed was supposed to be in another station, there was nothing suspicious about my presence here. Considering the day they had yesterday, with this fort being lost and retaken, and numerous reinforcements coming from the Capital, it was easy to get lost in the crowd.
My goal here was the same goal I had in the other fort. I wanted to identify the safe room. It took about ten minutes, and I did try to keep my distance from any patrolling soldiers just in case which made it take a little longer. I eventually stumbled into the safe room. A glance at the mural, and I truly felt like the dungeon was mocking me.
The mural depicted the princess being captured and taken away by the Demon Prince. However, instead of being taken away from a lascivious demon, he was being taken away from the commander as his fort fell around him.
I didn’t know what to think about that. Xin had already been in all of these safe rooms, so my theory that they formed when the first person entered them seemed to be false. Then again, maybe every cycle, the murals reset, and it was the first time for this cycle. At least her trials didn’t reset after each cycle.
I had to wonder if I had entered this room before I had returned, would I have been warned about this, or would the mural have presented something else?
I shook my head. It didn’t matter what the lore said anymore. I was tired of trying to make sense of it. What I needed wasn’t to figure out what this dungeon meant. What I needed was to gain enough strength and defeat this dungeon for good!