Dungeon Prowler : One Man Army

Minotaurs are two legged monsters with a bull's head, a humans upper body, and bovine hooves and lower body. Although they have tough muscles and hard hides, they can make some of the most delicious meats inside Tartarus thanks to them being omnivores.

These few days Yunan felt like he was in heaven, the numbers of minotaurs were not as excessive as the last floor, and they gave enough struggle to justify killing them without depending on the buffs and power ups Yunan had. In addition, the mapping of the floor was going just fine. It was an actual labyrinth with many rooms, and a very complicated pathway, that even with his notes Yunan felt a headache trying to remember where he was.

One of the first rooms Yunan found was a boss challenge room, and after 12 hours of constant fighting, Yunan decided to retire after being unable to handle the 37th wave of minotaur bosses and needing Drogon to clean up the 38th wave. Inside the chest he found two sets of books, two had the name of topographic mapping, the other two were named topographic survey, they were all related to mapping, so Yunan fed two to the armor and two he learned himself.

The new skill from combining the two books was a passive skill, it would scan 100 meter radius around Yunan and indicate the lay out of the floor. Upon entry the floor would look like a dark place with only one light post, only a small part of it is illuminated, but as Yunan kept exploring more and more becomes visible on the map until its fully illuminated.

Yunan took a few hours of rest, he found recently that all rooms would take 6 hours to reset after opening the chest, something he really appreciated in the 14th floor very much. However upon exiting the room he found himself face to face with the old man and his battle slaves, they pointed their weapons at him and surrounded him to prevent fleeing.

"Take my slave mark or die, you are a strong stud and i will breed you with the best mares, it's a good life, otherwise die". Yunan felt strange, he had never killed humans before, and the first one to threaten his life face to face was a weakling, however he was distracted from his thoughts by Drogon slithering up his body to his shoulder and asking with a loud and clear voice, "can i eat him, he has so much mana linked to him, i bet he has marked thousands of battle slaves"

"What are you trying to eat? His filthy, no matter how much mana he has, not even Debauchery kills his kind, if you are that hungry, i can go buy some high level fresh monsters for you" Yunan did not even feel danger let alone fear, so he used his newest skill "traceless casting" and cast dizzying spell on all the battle slaves, he cast fear and paralysis on them, and finally he used spell break while talking with Drogon. The old man watched with disbelief as he never met someone who refused his orders, but soon he regained his composure and ordered an attack, but not one slave moved.

They were frozen by fear and paralysis, and the spell break could temporarily scramble the effects of the slave mark, making them unable to feel the compelling power that came for the master mark. The old man looked around him and started peeing himself, Yunan was already behind him with a dagger ready to slit his throat, and his slaves were not responding, and even the pain that comes from rejecting orders was not present, he was cut off, and he knew death was waiting for him.

Yunan had a bit of time to threaten the man so he used his other dagger and pierced his shoulder, the man was screaming in pain, adding to the effect of the fear spell and buying some extra time. "Unless you hand over your master mark, i will slowly slice and dice you, piece after piece, i will cut of all 5 of your limbs and feed them to you, then i will feed you your own internal organs, before i make you eat your own brain, and i will make it as painful as possible, i will not let you die, but you will live like vegetable for the rest of your life, until your parents think you are not worth the effort, maybe they will feed you to your own dogs like you did to the all those slaves"

The man was weeping, soiling himself, drowning in sweat and shivering in fear, that is why they were called weaklings, any amount of threat and they will break, push them a bit harder and they will give you everything, just to stop the pain. And so when Yunan nudged him the old man passed him a locket that was filled with runes and magical constructs.

The master mark was the cruelest and crudest method to enslave someone. It was possible to buy slave, and have them willingly serve you, some are tortured into obedience and some were marked, funny enough, the marked slaves would turn on their master of given the chance, while those tortured slaves were more loyal, as for the willing slaves, they were the ones who would pay with their lives if there was a need.

The master mark worked by branding the recipient with an authority spell and a pain spell, the authority would make them feel obliged to follow orders but nothing more, they could resist it if the order was too big, for example, kill for me and die for me, are not equal to the mind, the pain spell would make the slave feel unbearable pain upon rejecting orders, thus conditioning the slaves into obedience. Most branded slaves would eventually be killed when the effects of the mark starts to fade after 5 years, and the slaves can disobey without much pain, and those are the ones to kill their masters.

Yunan knew that there was something that public did not know, the master mark was linked to the mana core of the master, and unless he severs the link, there can never be a new master for the mark, therefore Yunan made him break the link and then fed the mark to his armor, effectively breaking the slave and master bonds it had linked to it, at that moment all the slaves the old man had knew they were free. Some killed his family, and did to them what has been done to them, some pillaged and some just left, but not one of them stayed.

Yunan made the armor empty the mana core of the old man and looked as the effects of his spells were disappearing and the battle slaves were waking up, there was relief and gratitude on their faces, they all bowed to Yunan as an expression of gratitude, and he nodded back to them, then pointed at the man wailing on the ground, and all of them answered at once "death".