A glimpse into the structure of the Prison Dungeon

"This place... it IS a prison, right...?"

Viria breathed out and licked the smudge of fat from the corner of his lips before hesitantly asking Bossac and Chux.

"It sure is! Ahahaha!"

"Everyone asks that when they see the place for the first time!"

The two men had a chuckle and nodded to themselves, more than pleased with the reaction that the young man showed them.

"Alright. But seriously."

After having a laugh Bossac cleared his throat and straightened his back, turning towards Viria.

"Vindras family is one of the last – if not THE last – aristocratic family that isn't corrupted, and to boot, lord Yarezu is the most justice-loving man there is. Normally that would not be worth much, but it just so happens that lord Yarezu is also a very close and trusted aid to his majesty, the Spirit Emperor himself! He is so close that if all the other advisors bunched up together and tried to convince his majesty to act one way, but lord Yarezu advised him to do the opposite, his majesty would follow our warden's advice!"

Bossac puffed out his chest with pride and Chux nodded his head vigorously while serving a mole-rabbit roast to a passing customer.

"That gives our lord a lot of freedoms, one of them being ruling this place as he seems fit. Like I suggested before, there are almost no uncorrupted noble families anymore – that means that a whole lot of innocent folks get treated really poorly and get sent to prison without a proper trial or because of some whims or false accusation. Our lord saw that and thanks to the abilities of his artifacts he is able to separate the actual guilty people from the innocent ones. With the latter ones, he created this town. You see, this place always had only three explorable floors, but our warden is the one who properly separated the groups living on each one. The first one hosts all who were unjustly sentenced, and although they cannot leave because their sentences do not disappear, they have a chance to live normal lives. Some even ask the warden to bring their families here because the living conditions are incomparably better here than back where they are from."

The man revealed, puffing up his chest even more.

"The second floor is for the actual criminals, but not the worst lot either. Our warden takes a peek into a person's soul and figures out whether they are willing to harm others on a whim, or are they willing to change. Those who committed crimes but never intended to actually harm anyone live on the second floor, and it sometimes happens that a prisoner from the second floor gets to be moved here, to the first one."

"I am one of those, actually!"

Bossac said and Chux chimed in, raising his hand very pleased with himself.

"I was an orphan living on the outskirts of the Twenty-second Imperial city and had to turn into banditry to feed myself. I was caught when I was fourteen and sent here – the second floor was scary as hell, but now I can not only feed myself, I discovered that I love feeding others too!"

"And you are great at that too!"

Chux declared proudly and Bossac stood up and patted his friend's shoulder.

"As for the third floor – it is for the worst scums who do not think anything about taking the lives of others, or worse. If not for the abilities of our warden's soul artifact, those bastards would be a horrifying menace to everyone, but instead, they kill strong monsters and mine precious minerals in exchange for food."

"The third floor has no vegetation and the flesh of monsters living there can't be digested by humans. On top of that, they are kept in line by the limit on the cultivation level that lord warden put on them all."

Bossac sat back down and returned to his explanation and once more Chux nodded his head and added some details by himself.

"I see... This... wow... This is not at all what I expected, and I can't stress enough how relieved I am that I was wrong."

Viria breathed out and smiled – with a full stomach it was far easier to look at the bright side of the world than one would expect.

"Oh, but... why no one tries to explore the lower floors...? The danger would be nothing to laugh at, but wouldn't the reward outweigh the risk? Or is it because that would require allowing the real criminals to be stronger and that could be dangerous for the rest of the people living on the upper floors?"

He asked curiously, eyeing out the ingredients that Chux was preparing as they talked.

"Not exactly."

The stall owner furrowed his brows and cleaned up the shining dark-gold knife he was using to chop up more vegetables.

"You heard about the collapsed floors already, right? Apparently, it happened before this dungeon was used as a prison – but during the fight with the floor boss monster of the ninth floor, the group of adventurers – each with a legend grade soul artifact and at least on the high-high level s of cultivation - had to destroy a sizeable chunk of the dungeon to escape with their lives. The floors of the floors fourth to eight all collapsed because of this."

Bossac, as a member of the staff, revealed what he knew about the reason for the particular situation within the dungeon.

"After that, the general of the time – a member of the Vindras family – used his mythic-level soul artifact to check what was lurking down below and discovered some horrifying monster, so he decided to put up a barrier separating it from the upper floors. After all, if such a beast was the floor boss of only the ninth floor, what horrors lurked even deeper? This place is supposed to have a hundred floors after all!"

"..!"

Bossac threw his arms up for the better effect making Viria lean back in surprise.

"Alright. Any more questions or do you want me to show your house and call it a night?"

Bossac asked after sitting up properly and looking at Viria.

"Are you really a healer? If so, what are you doing in this place? I've heard that the healers are sought after the entire continent!"

The young man asked the helpful staff member.