Dungeon Tour Guide ch. 179 - THE END (Patreon)

The next few days—hell, the next few weeks—went by in a blur.

There was a lot to do, and too many people to help.

Even with my incredible power, I couldn’t have managed it alone.

It was Iris who set up the plans, and it was all of us survivors who carried it out.

There were a plethora of immediate concerns, of course, but those were relatively easy to quash.

When my dungeon spanned an entire continent—the only continent, as far as I could tell, which meant I spanned the entire world—it was simplicity itself to spawn stronger monsters to quash the ones that plagued my people.

I refused to let a single person die after my ascension. My spells stretched throughout the entire world, and even if my dungeon didn’t have the spells to heal people, the monsters I summoned did.

It wasn’t all sunshine and roses, of course. Unfortunately, even with my power-ups, the [True Resurrection] spell just wasn’t available to me. I was starting to suspect that nobody had ever been capable of using it—I could [Resurrect] the recently dead, but even as a full [Healer], I had never been able to.

As it was, I was able to use my near-infinite mana capacity to bring back most everyone that had died during the last five minutes of the final battle, but not many more than that.

We had undergone a tragedy that would shape the world forever, and there was no undoing that. All we could do was try to pick up the pieces.

So pick them up we did.

Iris’ plan relied heavily on me—of course it did. I controlled the world.

That came with less fine control than I was used to. With my dungeon spread so wide, I couldn’t even sense everything that was happening unless I spent the entirety of my focus on it.

There was no “fix everything” button. We had to do this step by step.

First, we killed every single extant monster. Iris contributed with that—she found a pretty effective way for me to use the minimum amount of [Reposition Animate Being]s to gather monsters into killzones and having anyone with magic to spare attack them.

That served a dual purpose—first, the process involved driving people together, which, now that we were no longer trying to avoid an impending apocalypse, and second, we eliminated the remaining threats to us.

From there, things got a little more complicated.

When I’d arrived in this world, the population had been somewhere between five and ten million. Now, we were down to just over two million, scattered across a kingdom.

People needed to recover from their wounds, and I had to provide the infrastructure to make that possible.

Iris and the few surviving members of Alder Corp finally got to show me the plans they’d had for Centerpoint Dungeon in the Omen. I had wanted them to help me with administration for so long; it figured that it would take the literal end of the world for me to finally get access to city planners.

To be honest, I didn’t understand most of what they wanted me to do, but I had the power to follow their plans to the letter, so I did.

At the scale I was operating at, I couldn’t be the only one providing for the people, but they accounted for that.

I turned ruins into cities. I planted farms in barren battlefields. I refilled rivers, redirected them, built settlements where they intersected.

The goddess had haphazardly created our environment, but with every surviving creative mind behind me, we had the

Bit by bit, I rebuilt a world.

People were understandably reticent to trust another authority figure when the last one had killed off the bulk of the population, but without better options, some of them cautiously approached my cities.

The people who had once been Kingsguard led the way. They were the non-adventurers who had spent the most time with me, and despite our somewhat rocky introduction, they showed a shocking ability to accept the new state of the world.

We split them across the cities. When a crowd was sitting on a fence, unsure whether to trust the gift that they’d been given, it only took a few people jumping off to get the rest of them following. Everywhere across the world, the people I’d saved and protected led the way.

No solution was perfect, of course, and all of us were still so very human. Disagreements rose, and they turned violent.

Yet my promise to myself and my world held. I refused to let anyone die, and nobody did. Though my attention was split into millions of pieces, I could identify and isolate flare-ups of rage and pain easily. I split people up, healed them—but I couldn’t mediate every single argument, and sometimes, they got a bit out of hand.

It was a good thing that I had a group of dedicated, powerful adventurers who could help with that.

Though I once again could walk freely amongst the land, I couldn’t be everywhere, and there were often large groups of potential armed conflict. My adventurers took the jobs, peacefully putting an end to them.

Their methods varied—from a [Melody of Peace] from Rose to a knockout solution from Nora to a massive glowing gun and an unspoken threat from Anderson—but they got the job done.

And as the days passed, they weren’t the only ones.

People started signing up. A fair chunk of the ex-Kingsguard that weren’t spearheading the move into our new cities volunteered.

Anton, Riley, and Kimberly were the first three otherworlders to join. They were growing strong quick, so I approved them eagerly. I had barely conversed with the latter two, but Anton did a bang-up job at convincing them to join.

The worst part of our new world was the bodies—or rather, the lack thereof.

Everyone had been affected by the Cataclysm. Everyone had been affected by the king’s monster horde. Nobody had remained in a comfortable position, and the events of the past month were hectic enough that keeping track of friends and family had been impossible.

On top of the displacement, most of the bodies had been mutilated or devoured entirely by the hordes of monsters, and I took on the grim task of using my limited omniscience to find and locate survivors.

The ARI had been fully restored, and sufficient usage of [Guide] had been enough to instruct everyone to join it. It had been repurposed—with only one dungeon remaining in existence, there was no need for rating. Now, it was the best form of communication that everyone could access.

There was an open thread on the forums titled LOST CONNECTIONS. It had hundreds of thousands of messages in it within an hour of it opening.

I spent the bulk of my time looking within the world and checking for survivors. It was grim work, but it had to be done.

There were surprises both happy and sad.

Twill, the [Soulsong Bard], had not survived.

Kit, Nora’s younger brother, had. He’d fallen in with a group of powerful otherworlders that had never made it to Centerpoint. The [Alchemist] had taken a day off when she’d learned the news. Every time I checked in on her, she was smiling.

The two of them spent their days searching for magical plants to mine resources from and their nights building potions together. Every time they came up with something new, they did a little ritual—mostly for Kit’s benefit, because Nora knew I could always hear them if they called out for me—and sent me the recipes. Together, the two of them cured diseases, bettered health, and created some of the funniest non-addictive hallucinogens I’d ever seen.

They seemed happy.

Warmth filled my heart every time I saw them.

I wanted that for everyone.

We all deserved a happy ending.

I wouldn’t rest until we got it.

#

But there were some people for which it was already too late.

We held our first funeral a week after the end, but I doubted we would see the last one for a long, long while.

I attended as many as I could, but out of all of them, it was the first that stuck with me the most. With the ex-Kingsguard and the otherworlders, there was mourning, but there was also celebration.

At the first funeral, though, comprised only of the adventuring parties that had come into the Omen with me, there was none of the latter. It was a somber affair.

Only Minus One had made it out untouched. The Duelists of the Weave had lost Sylva. Inquisition had lost Jonathan. The Heretics had been forced to execute one of their own. Only Abraham, the foul-mouthed [Pirate Monk], and Eliza, the cold [Winter Cleric], remained of the Land Pirates. Starfall had lost Kevin.

The A-Team was gone.

We gathered around ten graves, each containing what pieces of the bodies we’d been able to recover.

The surviving members of the broken parties gave simple speeches, remembering that which we had lost.

Lisa spoke for the A-Team. She’d trained them all, and now none were left.

All of us remaining had been scarred. Each and every one of us had gone through hell to get here.

Our grief was silent, but it was shared. I knew we would each process it differently. We had lost teammates. Allies. Friends. Lovers.

At the end of it all, though, was the promise that they had died for a cause. We had won, and every bright day for us was proof that these fateful ten—and the millions beside—had truly been victorious.

We spent a long time observing. Hours, maybe. It felt important.

The others left, one by one, returning to their tasks. There was still work to be done; until the world was intact and functional again, there was always going to be work.

I took a little extra time, giving a subtle two-finger salute to every adventurer as they left.

“I’ll figure it out,” I whispered to the silent graves of my comrades. “We’ll figure it out. One way or another, we’ll bring you back.”

Because we all deserved a happy ending, and I would not be content until the people who had given everything for the world got one too.

Maybe not today. Maybe not this month. Maybe not this decade.

But one day, we would find a way.

There was a world at our fingertips, after all.

#

Duelists of the Weave

I followed each of the parties throughout their lives, checking in on them once or twice a day—more, if I detected that they were in danger. Anyone who wanted their privacy could opt out, but nobody did.

After the first few weeks, it started becoming less of a way to make sure everyone was okay and more of a ritual of stability. I checked in less frequently, but I still kept it consistent. It was a way to keep me grounded, and I wanted to see them all thrive.

Arthur and Jess got married two months after the end. The [Swashbuckler] and [Arcane Archer] weren’t content to stay out of trouble, so I gave them trouble to deal with.

Dungeons rose—unintelligent cores, the lot of them—providing them opportunity to fight. That aside, they found a new calling in acting as a roaming pair of legends, stepping in to mediate the stirrings of war and beating down those who refused to listen to reason.

During the final fight, I had finally learned the name of the [Moon Cleric]—Erik. He still met up with Arthur and Jess occasionally, but he spent most of his time gathering a following in a city I had established in the far north.

Half a year later, he and his church of [Moon Acolytes] migrated all the way to the south, which was when I realized that he was traveling to places where it was night for the majority of the day. I wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing, but he looked… peaceful. Content. Like he’d found his purpose.

That was the Duelists. I would call on them again if I had need of them, but… I didn’t want to break what they’d made.

I smiled, and I moved on.

#

Inquisition

Though Nora had gone to live with her brother, Alice, Anderson, and Alex stuck together. They had bonded over the course of their struggle to make it to my dungeon, and despite their initial conflict, they had grown closer. They worked decently as a team now.

Despite the fact that I had absorbed the entirety of the world, I couldn’t control everything. Though the goddess had been willing to wait and observe, and though she seemed to enjoy what we had built, she wasn’t content to leave us completely alone.

The monsters she sent weren’t undefeatable, though. They weren’t total bullshit.

And when the adventurers leveled, she didn’t force them to ascend. We had to chat a few times about that, but we had worked it out.

Inquisition lived up to their name. They had their fair share of epic battles, incredible power-ups, and death-defying battles.

That was a story for another time, though, and it wasn’t mine to tell.

Anderson had started his journey as an ultra-violent backstabber who would do anything to win. I was glad he’d found his people.

Every now and then, we talked. He was one of the few people who still had things to talk to me about—at least, things that didn’t involve asking for divine intervention.

We went down to a massive shooting range I’d created in the king’s old palace once a month.

My former enemy had become one of the best men I knew.

#

Land Pirates

I had never been close to the Land Pirates. As a matter of fact, they’d been the single most obnoxious party for me to deal with back in the days when all I had to worry about was guiding people through a humble little dungeon.

After their [Force Mage] and [Paladin] had died, though, their balance had totally shifted. Abraham, [Pirate Monk], spent most of his time at a small orphanage teaching kids martial arts. He wasn’t the best teacher, but he improved with time. His nasty temper practically evaporated around the children.

Eliza, the [Winter Cleric], spent her time working with Iris to provide central cooling to our cities.

Neither of them seemed to want to fight anymore, but the fight hadn’t gone out of them. They survived, continued on, and healed, just like the rest of us.

#

The Heretics

Just like Inquisition, the Heretics spent the bulk of their time fighting the goddess’ monster spawns. Ashley, Thorn, and K’lon were a fearsome force to deal with, and they were all strong enough to handle everything she tossed at us.

They spent more time off, though. They had a few family members that had survived, and they took a few months to rebuild those relationships and get themselves situated into a new home.

Over time, the three of them realized that they were forces of nature on their own, and though they still grouped up together as friends and to deal with the greatest threats, they slowly split, each of them taking students of their own.

Ashley taught a new wave of [Pyromancer]s, so accepting of fire that she could demonstrate its usage to a classroom, now.

Thorn became a researcher, searching for the secrets behind the goddess’ power. To my surprise, she found that more entertaining than nearly anything else he’d done.

K’lon founded a dojo. He was a horrible teacher, but he set a great example for his students.

In a sense, it was like watching my children grow up. Yeah, they weren’t much younger than me, but I had saved them when they were in the infancy of their power, and now here they were, sharing it with others.

They were going to be the paragons of the new age.

#

Starfall

Sarah ascended when she hit level 40, five years in.

That was the strangest choice to me, but it made sense when she explained that her sight allowed her to see past this realm, it made sense.

“There’s a lot of people like me up there,” she told me. “You might have saved the base reality, but there are people there that are dying needlessly. You might not have the power, yet, and neither do I, but I’ll do what I can.”

“Good luck,” I said. “You have a world on your side.”

Rather than a forcible lift, she just said a few words to the goddess, and she disappeared.

Charles retired. As far as I knew, he spent most of his time running a skydiving group, using [Hurricane] to take people flying into the stratosphere. He didn’t talk much, but he smiled everytime I looked in on him.

Kira restarted the Adventuring Guild with Lisa, and they might have been dating? I asked, but they never gave me a straight answer.

All in all, they were living surprisingly simple lives for the power they wielded.

Honestly? After the year we’d been through, that was entirely fair.

#

Minus One

Iris never stopped working. In the years after the end, we followed her plans, and we reestablished a world better than the one we’d lost.

We built cities. We built a kingdom.

And, as it turned out, there were people to populate all of them.

Whatever the king had done to Earth, it was still affecting it. The pace of new otherworlders slowed after the first few months, but they continued trickling in at a pretty steady rate. For every two new natives born, a new otherworlder arrived.

Iris was more than happy to have new customers, and she expanded the nearly annihilated Alder Corp back into a superpower.

With a glut of otherworlders inflating the population, more people were coming in with actual engineering knowledge. Though we weren’t quite at the same level as modern Earth, we were replicating technologies at a pretty quick rate. I was optimistic about where we could get in the coming decades.

Six years after the end, Ryan and Troy finally married.

Rose made Troy wear a dress for a photo.

“This is distinctly uncomfortable,” Troy said.

“That’s because it doesn’t fit you. Now hush.”

“I think you look great,” Ryan said, and he kissed his husband.

The other adventurers didn’t come around to meet as much, but a surprising number of them had shown up for the wedding.

“You wanna run this back next year?” Rose whispered to me, a mischievous grin on her face.

“Is that a proposal?”

“If you want it to be.”

Ryan and Troy disappeared in a flash of electricity, leaving nothing but an entirely intact dress fluttering to the ground.

I snorted. “You lot never change, huh?”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Do you even need one?”

She punched me lightly. “Yes, dumbass. Give me something.”

“Then yes,” I said. “Like you said, we can ‘run it back.’”

“Not going to say anything about spending life with me? No ‘till death do us part?” she teased.

“Did we plan on dying?”

She laughed. “Until the end of time it is, then.”

“Until the end of time.”

#

Lucas

And I, of course, continued to churn the gears of the world.

#

The World

Jake didn’t see the truck that hit him, but he did see the divine radiance of the goddess. He saw her message.

[You have been selected to reincarnate in another world.]

[Once, I would explain what dangers you face.]

[That is, however, no longer my task.]

[Good luck, and entertain me well.]

He gasped awake in a cave.

Where… am I?

And more importantly, what was that glowing sphere next to him, and why did looking at him turn his stomach?

[Warning: Dungeon Core overloaded.]

Oh, no. That wasn’t good. He had to get out of here.

[Critical core failure in ??? seconds.]

This wasn’t fair. Jake had only just gotten here! He didn’t even know what he could do, let alone what this was.

Then, suddenly, it stopped. Half a second later, cracks spiderwebbed through the sphere, and it shattered, disintegrating into golden dust.

In its place were two people. A tall man and his blue-haired companion, both dressed in formal wear.

“Really?” the woman asked, her words exasperated but her tone light-hearted. “During date night?”

“You said you wanted to do something exciting. I just figured we’d make a stop for errands on the way.”

“Of course.” The strange woman smiled. “Do you want to do the spiel?”

“Spiel?” Jake interrupted.

The man turned towards him and waved.

The cave around them crumpled away, fading into the ground.

“Hi. I’m Lucas, and this is Rose. This world is one of swords and sorcery. It’s a second chance for you. When I say that you can choose your path again, I mean it. You can go for any job you’ve ever wanted—and if you want to fool around with magic, there’s ten thousand different classes you can obtain with hard work.”

“W—what?”

“I know it’s confusing,” Lucas said. “This world is big. It took us a while to acquaint ourselves, too, but I think you’ll come to love it, too.

“Would you like to take a tour?”

FIN

_________

Author's note: Oh, boy, what a ride. I started writing Dungeon Tour Guide in July of 2022; it's been over a year, now. I'll be completely honest in saying that I burnt out really hard on it a couple of times. I hope I still managed to make it satisfying in the end.

I do plan on revisiting Volume 3 a bit to spruce it up before it goes to Kindle, but apart from that, this should be all from Dungeon Tour Guide! I hope you enjoyed it, and as always: thank you so much for reading!

I cannot understate how much I appreciate each and every one of you that has stayed with me.

Thank you all.