Ascendance: The Rebirth Of The Unknown Gamer

As Aura stepped into the dungeon, he immediately regretted his inner joy, because this dungeon was obviously a labyrinth type, and Aura couldn't feel any monsters.

It was a maze filled with an absolute shitload of traps, a hell that he was about to walk straight into.

What's more, if Aura's ears were to be trusted, is that the walls were moving, making this even more of a stupidly annoying dungeon.

This dungeon would take a lot of time to clear.

---

In Farbridge, a certain girl was being transported to a slave dealership. This girl had black hair, with a pair of equally black cat ears poking out the top. She was dressed in rags, her tail broken and bent, one of her legs had been shattered, and would probably never recover. Her back was covered in scars from old whippings and her eyes had been torn out, painting a gruesome picture for onlookers. There was old blood crusted on her t.h.i.g.hs, and anybody with a pair of eyes could see her hands were just as broken as the rest of her.

This girl's name was Fiona, and she was not a cat beastman.

Fiona was an illegal slave, having been captured and forced into slavery, then used, abused, and thrown away, sold to a slave dealership in this cesspool of a city.

Fiona was a demon, a princess of her kind, but while she had been out on a journey, she and her guards had been attacked by bandits, her guards had been killed and she had been taken as their plaything.

Unfortunately, she had been disguised as a beastman when the bandits came, and beastmen were treated horribly by most humans.

She would have disguised as something else, but her actual form could only be changed so much, her tail and horns making it impossible to be anything else.

The bandits had tortured her, whipping her ruthlessly, breaking her bones at ever chance they could get, and only once she had lost the ability to fight back, to scream, had they r.a.p.ed her.

Even if her country could save her, her value as a princess had been sullied, her beauty marred, and her mind in shambles.

Fiona had no hope of returning home, she only hoped that her next master would treat her well, or that she'd die of infection before she could be bought.

Nobody would bat an eye after seeing a slave as damaged as her, she was just a broken tool someone had sold back to a shop.

---

Aura had finally gotten through the maze, finding himself in an unnecessarily large hall, which had an impressive throne at one end.

Atop the throne sat a skeleton wearing a frayed robe, a staff in one hand, and black flames burning in his eyesockets.

The boss of a dungeon normally scales with its difficulty, but since this was a hidden dungeon that nobody could find, the boss was the dungeon master, the most powerful monster in the dungeon.

Unfortunately for the dungeon, the lich it had probably poured most of its force into creating wasn't going to be able to do much of anything to Aura.

Aura pulled some silver dust out of his item box, did a quick chant, and cast an intermediate purification spell on the lich, reducing him to ashes.

Aura walked over to the throne, pulled out the crystal from the lich's staff and began walking back the way he came.

---

After clearing the dungeon, Aura reactivated the barrier stones and began to carve out the cave, expanding his domain ever so slightly before he pulled put his tools and began to build a barrier pillar in the cave itself.

Aura was going to make this a beautiful home, hidden away from the world, and the dungeon core was going to make that happen.

But seeing how much time had passed since Ascendance went live reminded Aura that a certain event was coming up soon, the demon princess being found in the nearby Farbridge.

The demon princess already had no value to her country, and she was weak in combat, so most didn't pay attention to her, but Aura took note of anything that interested him, and a beautiful girl, broken and in despair, being sold as merchandise was a very interesting event.

If Aura could get there before anyone discovered her true identity, he could claim her to be an illegal slave and demand her return (slave dealers won't knowingly sell illegal slaves unless said slaves have a great deal of value, this is to prevent low value slaves from causing their business trouble by both taking up space and generating hostility from their relative).

If Aura could convince her he had been sent by the king of the demons, he could get her to swear under a slave's oath that he had a valid claim on her, which, given her injuries, would make the slave dealer give her up quite easily.