The Demon Realm Underground
A cold droplet struck the back of my neck, and I flinched. Water, fallen from the cave ceiling. I'd been hit by those droplets more times than I could count, and every single one was so icy it made me twitch.
Ever since I'd fallen into the underground of the Demon Realm, I'd been wandering a cave that seemed to have no end. I had no idea where I was headed, or even where I was walking. Sitting still would only mean withering away and dying, so I kept moving forward — endlessly, without destination.
I wasn't even hoping to find an exit anytime soon. The Narration had already confirmed there was no way out for the time being. I wasn't looking for an escape. I was looking for a way to survive down here.
"I'm glad you're here, at least."
I spoke to Shari, who was stuck fast to my head, tagging along. She couldn't speak, so no answer came back — but her feelings reached me through our shared consciousness. I couldn't begin to describe how comforting it was to have someone to talk to in a situation like this.
Grrrrrrrk—
My stomach screamed for food. The meals I'd eaten in Kubel floated through my mind, and the memory was agony. There wasn't a scrap of anything edible in this damned cave.
The glowing mushrooms and moss growing from the walls and floor looked, at a glance, like the kind of thing you absolutely should not eat. They wouldn't fill me up anyway, and anything that grows wild tends to make you sick if you just grab it and shove it in your mouth.
If there were even a bat or something, I had a body tempered with mana — I could catch it with my bare hands and figure something out. No, even if I caught one, I'd probably be too disgusted to eat it. The fact that I was even thinking this meant I really was hungry.
The absence of the sword I always wore at my hip was deeply unsettling. This was the Demon Realm underground — a monster could burst out at any moment. But the only means I had of protecting myself were two tightly clenched fists.
Yunoa wandered the deep underground of the Demon Realm, starving.
But he did not know.
That he had already stepped into a zone inhabited by the demons and monsters of this place.
The Narration seemed to be trying to scare me, but I actually preferred it this way. Demons and monsters were far better than wandering through a place with nothing at all. If a monster was going to show up anyway, I hoped it would be one I could eat.
Come to think of it, some of the food sold in Kubel used slime as an ingredient. Slime... could I eat that?
"Huh?"
That was when I spotted a large treasure chest sitting in front of the cave wall. It was the textbook image of a treasure chest — anyone who looked at it would know exactly what it was. There was nothing around it. Just the chest, sitting there all by itself.
Curious, I approached and looked it over. This wasn't some video game. Why would a treasure chest be sitting in a place like this? What was inside? I reached out carefully, about to open it, when—
"Waaagh!"
The treasure chest flung itself open and shot out a long tongue. That long tongue dragged a wet, sloppy lick straight across my face. I was instantly slathered in drool, and I went over backward.
"Ugh..."
I roughly wiped the sticky, slimy saliva from my face with my hand. A living treasure chest. A mimic? I'd heard of them, but this was the first time I'd actually seen one.
The mimic sat there with its mouth wide open, sharp teeth and tongue on display, rattling noisily. Fortunately, it didn't seem to have legs, so it couldn't move. Watching it sit there like that, I felt a flicker of irritation.
I didn't have a sword, but maybe I could punch it once. If I concentrated the mana flowing through my body into my fist, that should produce a decent amount of force, right? I had no idea what was coming next. Practicing unarmed combat on this thing seemed like the perfect opportunity.
I focused, gathering mana into my right hand. Then I lunged forward, about to smash the mimic, when—
"Don't do that!"
A girl's cry rang out from behind me, and I froze. I turned toward the voice and found a girl with a peculiar air about her. She looked like a pretty human girl, but her skin was a different color — a pale blue, like moonlight. And that skin was faintly glowing.
The most striking thing was on top of her head.
A mushroom.
A small mushroom was growing from her head. A tiny, colorful mushroom sprouting from her crown, as if it had been planted there on purpose for everyone to see.
The girl — who resembled a human but was clearly not one — came toward me and said,
"Arong-i is my pet. Please don't hit him."
"Arong-i?"
When I asked back, the girl pointed at the mimic. The mimic still had its mouth wide open, flicking that grotesque long tongue.
"Arong-i~ time to eat!"
The girl approached the mimic, pulled a small chunk of meat from a leather pouch, and tossed it into the mimic's mouth with practiced ease. The moment the meat went in, the mimic snapped its lid shut, chewed with a grinding motion, then stuck its tongue out long and contentedly, going still.
"Um... who are you?"
I asked the girl, who was stroking the mimic's lid with her hand. Honestly, even seeing it with my own eyes was a bit of a shock. A girl raising a monster like a pet.
"I'm Kiki. Huh? This is bad! Big brother's head..."
The mushroom girl, who had introduced herself as Kiki, pointed at my head with a startled look.
Why? What? What's wrong with my head?
I startled too, frantically patting my own head.
"There's no mushroom!"
"Huh?"
"This is terrible! You've caught a deadly disease!"
Kiki suddenly grabbed my wrist tight.
"We have to go to the village! If you don't get treatment right away—"
"Huh? Wait? What? I never had—"
"Hurry!"
Kiki desperately yanked on my wrist. Was not having a mushroom on your head really that serious? But I thought of the meat chunk this girl had tossed to the mimic earlier. If she'd thrown it to me instead of the mimic, I probably would have eaten it happily. That's how hungry I was right now.
This mushroom girl was probably a demon. Rather than wandering the underground alone, if there was a demon village nearby, going there would be better, wouldn't it? If I followed Kiki for now, I should be able to reach the village where she lived.
More than anything, I already knew from Shari the ghost that not all demons were bad. And Kiki, currently trying so hard to drag me along, didn't look like a bad kid either.
"Waaah—! Wait! I'm coming! I'll go, okay?!"
When Kiki started running, her unexpectedly strong pull nearly sent me pitching forward onto my face. A demon was a demon, after all. Her strength was incomparable to a human girl's. I ran hard after Kiki, hoping I might at least get a meal at the place she lived.
The village we arrived at, following Kiki, was a curious place. A small stream ran through the center, and houses were built on flat stones of varying heights along both sides.
The unusual part was the houses themselves. They weren't built of wood or stone — the houses were giant mushrooms. Enormous mushrooms with windows and doors attached, like something out of a fairy tale.
And like Kiki, who had brought me here, every villager I could see had a mushroom growing from the crown of their head. Kiki's was very small, but the others were growing somewhat larger mushrooms on their heads. Did all of these demons grow a mushroom on their head? Judging by Kiki's reaction, they seemed to think that not having one was a serious problem.
"It's an emergency! It's an emergency! This person's mushroom died!"
The moment we arrived, Kiki ran around shouting. Every gaze in the village locked onto me at once.
"Ah... haha..."
I gave an awkward laugh under those uncomfortable stares.
A moment later, a young man approached, glaring at me with sharp eyes. He was holding a long spear. He thrust the spearpoint at me and said,
"What are you. How did you get here?"
I hadn't expected a warm welcome, but shoving a spear in my face right off the bat was a bit much.
Kiki, who had guided me here, looked at the young man with a bewildered expression.
"Benos, this person is in trouble! His mushroom died! Kiki brought him because I thought he was going to die!"
"Kiki, this guy isn't Karia. He never had a mushroom on his head to begin with."
"Is this big brother a bad person?"
"...Probably."
The young man called Benos thrust his spear at me as if he meant to run me through.
"Um... I just got lost down here and followed this child, that's all."
"There's no way a human would end up here just from getting lost."
I couldn't argue with that. For an ordinary human, falling into that impossibly deep hole in Horn Canyon and riding a water current all the way here was, admittedly, not a thing that made sense.
"Well... I have no intention of doing anything bad, at least."
"Who would believe that. You humans are the ones who can't wait to kill us demons."
Once again, I couldn't argue. Even in Kubel, where I'd been operating, demons were seen as something you killed on sight. Let's flip it around. If a demon suddenly appeared in Kubel and said I got lost, what would happen? The moment they showed their face, adventurers would pour out of the guild and compete to cut their throat.
People with pale-blue skin and mushrooms on their heads gathered around me one by one. Each of them held a weapon, closing in as if to surround me. When I looked at Kiki, who had brought me here, a young man hid her behind the others, as if to protect her from the vicious human.
This... was bad.
No matter how I looked at it, this wasn't a situation I could talk my way out of. But fighting back wasn't an option either — I had no weapon, and I didn't particularly want to hurt these people.
"Talking's useless."
I could see Benos tensing his grip, about to drive the spear into me.
But then—
"...!"
Shari suddenly burst out from my head and stepped in front of me, both arms spread wide, as if to protect me. From their reactions, it seemed Shari had made herself fully visible to these mushroom demons.
She shook her head.
She shook it again.
Shari looked at the mushroom demons surrounding me and desperately shook her head from side to side. The murderous atmosphere from a moment ago eased, if only a little.
"A Pureblood Demon, same as the Demon King... Just who is this man..."
Benos muttered in shock, withdrawing the spear he'd been pointing at me. Murmurs rose from the crowd around us. I didn't fully understand what was going on, but it seemed we'd gotten past the crisis, at least.
Shari... I could cry, I'm so grateful.