“What is Silvthril?” I asked, scratching my head.
As a Dungeon Diver, something called the bane of all dungeons naturally caught my interest. Naturally, without knowing what Silvthril was, I couldn’t really grasp what Malacrum was either.
The old mage snorted, but thankfully, Siti was willing to explain. “Silvthril is a rare mineral. It is found very deep underground. As a result, it can only be forged properly by Deep Dwarves. It repulses miasma and creates a great deal of damage to anything composed of miasma. Someone who had a Silvthril dagger would be able to conquer dungeons with ease!”
Siti seemed extremely excited when she spoke about it. It was almost like she was talking about it from personal experience. As for me, I quickly understood why Silvthril would be so useful. It was essentially anti-curse metal.
“Okay, I’m not sure what you mean by Malacrum being the opposite though. I’ve heard of soul daggers, daggers that can damage a soul and kill the person, giving them no ability to reincarnate. Is it like that?”
“The soul daggers are actually copies of the soul-reaving dagger. They were discovered initially in dungeons where a soul-reaving dagger held memory.”
“It’s . Dungeons are curses based off a story. They are composed of the soul fragments and memories of things that ultimately existed, but if they can’t gather the proper sources to create an exact replica, they create a copy.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen that before.”
I was naturally talking about the unnamed giant boss in my dungeon, who was allegedly created based off Xin. Supposedly, that giant contained almost none of the original Xin’s soul, which is why it was a such an exaggerated form of the original woman. So, what she was saying was that powerful objects could also create copies of their original selves.
“So, soul daggers are mined from dungeons?”
“If they were easy to obtain, don’t you think everyone would use them?” Her eyes flashed.
It was a horrifying thought. The soul dagger could kill anyone permanently. It destroyed their soul, preventing them from being resurrected. There were only a handful of things in this world that were capable of killing a soul. Many soul attacks could wound or dislodge a soul, killing you and requiring a Resurrection, but for something to kill both the soul and the body, it was definitely something to be feared.
That left us with the soul-reaving dagger, the original to the template used for soul daggers. I was extremely wary about such an item.
“What is it capable of doing?” I asked cautiously.
“Malacrum can only be gathered from the deepest parts of great dungeons.” She explained. “In that respect, it’s almost unobtainable. As to how it is forged, no one even knows. However, there have been a handful of soul-reaving artifacts discovered throughout history. One such artifact was the basis for this dungeon. The hero who defeated it decided the dagger was too dangerous, so he left it in the dungeon’s treasure room, and left the dungeon to wither and collapse on it over the years, burying it under the earth. We’re here to recover it!”