Styx levelled up to <Lv. 9> and had another swarm of memories emerge in his mind. He remembered who he was, or at least, who he had been.

He was born in the peak of the era of Mayans, although it was called something closer to Aramyayan back then. This was an ancient civilization that existed during the days in which humans relied on the pagan gods for survival in a world that seemed determined to kill them.

Styx was actually his name back then, and he was the high priest for the goddess, Anthea. She was an earth goddess of the harvest, who walked bare foot across the earth and gave it her energy for plants to thrive.

He wasn't just her high priest, but also deeply in love with this goddess who provided them with the food they ate. He professed his undying love to her on a regular basis along with his private prayers. One day, for whatever reason that only the gods would know, she accepted his love.

Anthea descended into the temple and revealed herself before him. She had long golden hair breaded with beads, golden eyes, and a smile which made even the sun seem to dim in its presence.

There were no words spoken, but he perfectly understood all of her intentions. She opened her arms and brought him into her embrace and their lips locked, the entire universe seeming to make sense at that moment.

The two of them fell backwards and landed on a bed which should not be there, in a room which definitely didn't exist anywhere on Earth.

Her clothes slipped off, revealing her body that was the embodiment of perfection, while his own had disappeared at some unknown point of time.

His body pressed against hers, her large breasts squished against his chest, her divinity enveloping his soul.

"Why don't you talk?" Styx asked at the time.

Anthea merely smiled and he knew. It wasn't that she couldn't talk, but he couldn't hear her.

He pressed onwards, his hard rod about to penetrate her hallow hall, when all memory of that moment faded away.

He awoke the next day back in the temple, as if everything had merely been a dream. He would have also believed that to be the case, should he not know that his body was no longer mortal. Just as he gave her his love, she gave him hers.

His body was now one with the Earth itself and would exist as long as the former did. All wounds would heal, and all sickness pass. He would no longer age, but it came with a condition.

He could never love another.

He could have physical relations with other women, and it was expected of him, but his love belonged exclusively to Anthea, and would remain hers for all eternity.

Once every thousand years, the two would reunite again to share their love among once another.

Thus begun his life of eternity.

He watched his own civilization fall and others rise to take its place, only to fall once more.

He was both worshiped as a god many times, and executed as a devil just as often.

Civilization learned of science, and the age of man truly came to fruition.

He watched as they warred, conspired, and killed on scales never before seen on the history of the planet.Gods came and went from the world, some ever present, others forgotten in the river of time. The gods of war and conflict thrived the most, and the human civilization reflected this in their actions.

Eventually, humans reached a point where they no longer struggled for survival and pursued spiritual fulfilment.

He was a great god of gaming, streaming and had a huge online following, but just as trends came, they also passed and lived their own cycle of life and death.

He lived for almost 4000 years, and was a first hand witness to some of humanities greatest and worst moments.

It was in the futuristic age where buildings pierced the clouds and cars flew through the sky that he made a mistake.

He fell in love with a girl.

There was over a thousand girls he had relations with, some for several years, others a single night. This time however, he fell in love.

His love was exclusive to Anthea and the foundation for their contract.

He had broken the covenant, and paid the ultimate price.

His body turned to dirt, his judgement delivered by the very earth goddess who had loved him deeply.

He never saw his goddess again to apologize, nor was he given the chance to, the balance had been corrected and all relations severed.

Styx simply begun his next life… as a dungeon core.

~~~~~

Styx had a knot deep within his core, a regret which could not be corrected. His core seemed to dim several shades and enter a depressed state.

He wanted to speak with his goddess again, to seek forgiveness, but he knew that was no longer an option.

"Is everything okay?" Therina asked while in her room, picking up on his mood as if by some supernatural sixth sense.

"Everything is fine."

Therina didn't comfort him anymore, but her feelings reached him across the link they shared.

In another room, Styx also spoke with Klair and Kale, the dark elf twins.

"Is everything ready for your journey?"

"Yep~" "Of course~"

"Do you remember what your task is?""To bring back our fellow sister dark elves!"

"And males! I want an entire new generation of dark elves!"

"We will, we will," Kale giggled while storing their luggage in a dimensional pocket. It wasn't a big space, but it was enough for two people's supplies.

The two of them were tasked with returning to their old village and proliferating the word that Styx would take in any outcasts, or even the entire village should they truly fall into dire straits.

The two twin sisters set off at dusk and ran through the moonlit forest with bows in hand and daggers on their hips. They were intending to reach there and return before the end of the night as the humans were currently in the process of organizing another attack but nobody currently knew when. What they did know was that it would not tonight.

The reason the twins were chosen to go was Kale was considered to have a highly valuable job, and her words would hold more sway than anyone else's.

The dark elves' training had progressed quite fast as they were more accustomed to fighting and weapons than Therina had initially been. Of course, the latter still far outstripped them in skill and could easily defeat them all at once.

Rhea and Theo finally had sex for the first time, and Theo had been busy fawning over the latter ever since. Styx had first row seats to it all, which he greatly enjoyed, not that he told them that. Rhea was already embarrassed enough, but Styx had helped nurture her body and mana network afterward. Promising the same treatment each time to help her growth.

He also checked over her body at the same time, but while the male seed inseminated her egg with relative straightfowardness, the egg had a high difficulty attaching itself to the uterus wall. This appeared to be cause of elves' lower fertility rate, and Styx wanted to try fix this, but there was simply nothing he could do to change it.

"Try lying like this," Styx said to Rhea as he adopted some more superstitious traditional methods of increasing pregnancy.

Rhea followed his instructions and raised her legs up straight up in the air. She was highly flexible and strong, so it was little to no effort on her part.

"Is this okay?"

"Yes, now hold that for half an hour. It will increase the chances of you getting pregnant."

Styx knew that there was no truth in this, but he was hoping for a placebo effect to take place and her body increase its own fertility. In the meantime, he could also make her take poses that accentuated her figure and let him secretly perv on her.

~~~~~

The dungeon facilities had also grown.

The first were the blast furnaces. With the replenishment and introduction of new monsters, Styx expanded his operations of refining iron into steel, while also injecting spare mana he had into creating manasteel.

Three more forging rooms were created along with some carts for monsters to move the finished products to a storage area. Most of it was stored as raw steel, but there was a small supply of backup weapons and spare throwing knives cast to replace any of the girls' weapons or supply new minions.

He also ran tests on the wolfbone steel, which operated like normal steel except was more brittle and only had average mana conductivity.

He didn't even need to take it to a store in the local dungeon city to know that it was practically worthless. He suspected it could be used as an intermediary product for other materials, but until a demand for this new material could be created, it held no market value other than being an oddity.

His miners were approaching a new unknown ore vein he had detected with the mineral detection subskill. While he had an inkling as to what it was due to its bluish shade of color on his radar, he couldn't be certain until they reached it.

Overall, the dungeon was progressing at an increasingly rapid rate, and all that he was waiting for was his next batch of human experience to come in as well as new minions to add to his ownership.

He wanted a city.

He wanted a civilization.

He wanted to create a temple to provide worship.

He wanted to amend his past wrongs.