After the meager fight and cleanup of the demon’s minions, the freed villagers started picking through the caravan’s desirables. The animals will either be converted to beasts of burden or sold, the wagons and other materials will be used to strengthen the village infrastructure or sold and the slaves would be freed. This caused a multitude of issues. First is the elves, of which one of which was a princess and one of her guards. In fact, she was the one that was pleasing the demon count when Will told him to leave. This put Hollow into a particular political situation. On one hand, she freed an elf princess. On the other, said princess has been missing for almost a full year and was meant to be used for a political marriage. On top of that, her home was through months of travel of human lands that were at war with elves or plainly had them as slaves or at best third rate citizens.
The next issue came with some of the dwarves and humans. They had no home to go back to. They were legal slaves. One of which, a gladiator, would only acknowledge Will due to the strength he showed by borrowing from the dungeons insane reserves. Which he collapsed from exhaustion once his task was done.
By far the biggest headache Hollow had to deal with was the devilkin. Who by some method or another teleported straight to his core room to settle the debt of freeing him. Why the devilkin was enslaved in the first place, a desperate deal for power he mistakenly made not knowing the full nature of who he was bargaining with. Hollow solution, have the devilkin help the other freed slaves either return home or settle in. What Hollow did not expect was for the devilkin to use some of his mana stores to set up a network of teleport hubs, with his dungeon village as the key point to them all.
———-
Days to months to years passed by Hollow. His small dungeon village grew, and grew, and grew. It took less than a century for the second kobold to have children and the last took only a few centuries more. While he had become happy with his descendants a weight of tiredness started to fall onto him. Politics, conflict, war, and so much more that comes from becoming larger and more powerful. Worse the fear of losing the last percentage of durability paralyzed him into the most basic forms of support. After a particularly bloody war with their neighbor, who once was his first allies, Hollow had enough.
“ Loyee, can you come by?”
It was a simple request and the goddess was not entirely busy with only dungeons as her domain. The statue Hollow’s core rested on took a lifelike appearance and a gentle smile.
“ What is it Hollow? You have not called for me in some time.”
A blue transparent screen appeared above the core.
“ I am so tired Loyee. Of the wars and conflicts. All I ever wanted is a quiet and peaceful life. But it seems every day now blood is being spilled on my lands.”
Loyee’s smile disappeared and turned somber to his words.
“ That is the nature of mortals. Conflict is in their blood. Their desire for greed and power is unrivaled even to the gods.”
The screen starts to face down toward the dust that was once his core.
“ All of my children are dead. None by old age or happy circumstance. My legacy’s true origins all but forgotten by that greed and desire. All Boss does is watch over an increasing hoard and no longer gets to interact with any visitors. All I am is a source of conflict and misery. It is painful to see it come to pass over and over again. I am at my limit. I wish to pass on and be with Will and Marleen and my kobolds and all the others. Could you do this for me Loyee? Could you use your power over dungeons to destroy what remains of my core?”
“ I guess he never did figure it out why I could never kill him.”
The blue screen turns to the statue of an old man reading a book, however, this one had a lock on its binder, preventing it from being opened.
“ What do you mean Krypt?”
Krypt shakes his head looking at the book.
“ I have spent a long time thinking of how I should ease your passing. If it was as simple as destroying your core, I would have said so from day one. But you are the personification of a dungeon menu. It would be like destroying a fundamental law of the world, like gravity, or water.”
“???”
The statue on Loyee’s other side started moving.
“ Seriously, Hollow, you never pondered how you existed?”
This caused him to pause and consider it.
“ Well, I did for a few centuries, but between coming up with new traps, making games between my personalities, and the masturbating…”
Diana rolls her eyes as Loyee giggles a little bit.
“ So now you know that that crystal is just a worthless husk to you, what are you going to do about it?”
Hollow focused on his core for the first time and found it was just inert crystal dust. Then he started pulling on his mana reserves. Not even taking a noticeable amount, he reformed the crystal, larger and more pristine than it was before. The three gods looked shocked at what he did.
“ What, it is so surprising I feel nostalgia about my core?”
The three gods start looking at each other before Loyee speaks.
“ Hollow, you just put enough mana into your core to create a thousand newborn cores. It would take me centuries to create that amount of mana.”
This caused the blue screen to turn back toward her in thought.
“ Loyee, I have an idea…”
