66. The Hell Where Kind and Competent People Go
66. The Hell Where Kind and Competent People Go
Scop, the warrior serving as his party's vanguard, felt a deep sense of injustice at his current predicament.
All he'd done was listen to a Fallen Hero's proposal when the man approached him in a tavern while he was gambling after work.
When he'd demanded equal pay, figuring the party was already as good as doomed anyway, the man had agreed without hesitation—and Scop had thought he'd hit the jackpot. That was it, but still...
'My luck... it's not just bad, it's absolutely cursed.... Why the hell did this have to happen when I'm the one in the dungeon...!'
"No answer, I see."
And now the mage who'd recklessly charged forward in that chaos had been turned into an undead without so much as a struggle. The very culprit who'd killed her was now shambling toward him, surrounded by a horde of undead.
Since escape was impossible anyway, the creature clearly figured it could just take its time cornering and roasting him at its leisure.
"Silence implies consent, as they say. In that case, may I process your enrollment right away?"
"P-please, spare me!!"
Scop finally screamed, dropping to his knees on the spot.
As a vanguard—someone who takes enemy attacks with his own body—he was supposed to be stout of heart. But his opponent possessed a presence so overwhelming it could shatter even the most stalwart spirit into dust.
Everything that hand touched had its vitality drained in an instant, and the magical power spreading from it forcibly raised desiccated corpses back to their feet, ensuring not even death could grant them freedom.
"Heh heh, spare you? What a ridiculous thing to say. You make it sound as though I'm trying to kill you, don't you?"
Gorgon, the Knight of Famine, let out a comical laugh, as if even the terror radiating from him was a joke.
Then the gaunt figure lowered himself, quietly meeting Scop's eyes, and began to swagger.
"I merely require an assistant. There's no need to be so frightened. Or do you, perhaps, have some reason you cannot accept my offer?"
"W-well, you see. It's, uh...."
"Speak. I wander this world to understand it, so I at least possess the time to hear out those who have caught my eye."
Gorgon stood at ease before the panicking man, granting him room to speak.
At that, Scop's lips—damp with cold sweat—began to curl upward, as though he'd found a sliver of hope.
'Wait... could I actually survive this...?'
The atmosphere, too, held a certain degree of courtesy.
At the very least, if he could just placate this being, it seemed capable of showing enough mercy not to kill him on the spot.
"W-well, you see. The truth is, I have a sick mother at home...."
"Hmm, is that so? You have a bedridden mother at home, you say?"
"Y-yes. She's someone I have to look after. Even the reward from this mission... I was going to use it for her medicine, and...."
It was a lie.
A man who funneled his adventuring earnings into gambling had nothing and no one in this world worth protecting.
"Well now, you're a far more admirable young man than I expected."
But the creature couldn't know the truth of his words. If this lie could just stir its heart, he might make it out alive.
And so, just as hope took root in Scop's chest, the Knight of Famine's hand shot toward his throat.
"I can't possibly just send a good-hearted young man like you on his way! Since your intentions were so noble, I shall kindly escort you to my graduate school myself!"
"Wh-what!? W-wait.... Gyaaah!"
A grown man's body, every last nutrient sucked from it in an instant.
His body convulsed on the spot as his breath gave out, then rose to its feet without a shred of will and began to sway where it stood.
"Indeed. Is it not to the world's benefit when warm-hearted talents such as yourself enter graduate school? Worry not about your mother—if she comes along to the graduate school with you, she'll be able to work regardless of her ailment."
For the advancement of the world, even the virtuous and the sick must be recruited without hesitation.
Gorgon, who held this philosophy as truth, now turned his gaze toward the ascetic, who had been trembling as he watched the scene unfold.
"Well then, next is...."
"Uwaaaaaaaaah!"
But even if he had taken up adventuring as a form of spiritual discipline, the sheer catastrophe that was the Knight of Famine had driven the man to his psychological breaking point.
Feeling his faith crumble at last, the ascetic fled the spot like a madman, shrieking desperate pleas toward the deity he served.
"O Lord! Cease this trial, I beg of you! I have not yet found a master to take me in—I cannot die like this, I tell you!"
"A man of the cloth yet harboring such lewd thoughts! This will not do—I shall take you to my graduate school and correct your spirit!"
"Gyaaaaaaah!!"
Abraham the ascetic was seized by the swiftly pouncing Knight of Famine, his life force drained on the spot.
Soon reduced to the same wretched state as the two who had died before him, he began to wail in agony before his new master, Gorgon.
"Now then, little one. Your turn has come."
Ignoring even those cries, the next target was the Hero, Yi Ga-ram.
A young girl far too immature to shoulder the responsibility that came with her innate power.
"H-hiik!"
For such a frail being, this situation was impossible to endure with a sound mind.
"You're trembling. Are you afraid of me?"
"Uu, aah. Aaah...."
"Khu-hu, there's no need for fear, little one. Fear is an emotion born only from ignorance, after all."
Fear.
To one of the dead such as himself, it was an utterly meaningless emotion.
After all, fear existed only to heighten vigilance—spurred by the grim prospect of being unable to protect oneself, it kept one's guard from slipping.
"So worry not. If you but take my hand, I shall personally bestow upon you the opportunity to overcome that fear."
The moment a hand steeped in the power of famine stretched forward to preach that very revelation—
—even as it closed in right before her eyes, the girl could do nothing but tremble in place, frozen by terror and exhaustion.
Yes. Everything was going to end here, just like this.
—BOOM!!
Just as that despair sank deep into her bones, a thunderous crash shattered the undead blocking the entrance.
Startled, both the girl and Gorgon turned their eyes toward the exit—and saw a black blur clutching a long weapon hurtling toward them.
—BAM, BAM!! CRAAACK!!!
Undead torn apart by ferocious strikes.
Even the undead golem, belatedly sensing the crisis, crumbled apart along the fissures racing through its body the moment a thrown spear's magical energy washed over it—before it could even swing its fist.
"What is—what...."
—BOOM!!
A spear blade rammed straight into Gorgon's gaping, bewildered mouth.
As the magical explosion that followed blasted his head to scattered fragments, the black-armored youth who'd stormed the scene urgently reached out his hand toward Ga-ram.
"Grab my hand."
"H-huh?"
"Hurry up and grab it! We have to run!"
A familiar face.
No—more than familiar. A face she had never once forgotten....
"J-just go on your own. I'm fine, so...."
Was it because the situation was so urgent?
Before the emotions that face stirred within her could fully awaken, Ga-ram could focus on nothing but the fact that her legs had completely given out beneath her.
Yes—if she took the hand of the person who'd come to save her, the number of dead would simply increase from one to two.
"Don't talk nonsense. If we just break through here, we're golden—how am I supposed to get out of here on my own?"
But he hadn't come here to save her out of pure goodwill, either.
He might have an ability that let him evade danger from the undead, but even that wasn't perfect—he'd already figured that out while dealing with the undead occupying this place.
He couldn't push through and escape the dungeon alone, not when there were beings with some degree of ego—or those directly controlled by a higher existence—whose very movements couldn't be completely paralyzed.
—Crack, crackle.
That was why he'd prioritized killing the higher being first.
But the enemy, even with its head blown off, was calmly regenerating the shattered fragments and rising back to its feet as if nothing had happened.
"Khee-hee, well now... you're awfully rough with someone you've just met."
An obvious outcome.
The undead were, by definition, beings resurrected from death itself.
Without a god-given miracle, erasing the strange magical power that tethered them to this world was no easy feat—and for entities that possessed overwhelming strength, destroying the vessel containing that power was equally out of reach.
"Young man, why do you seek to take away the one I've set my eyes on?"
The Knight of Famine, Gorgon, flaunted that very status as though it were trivial.
Unsettled by the sight of him not losing an ounce of composure even with his head gone, the man looked back at him and forced an ambiguous smile.
"...Sorry, but I'm her guardian, you see."
"Oh-ho, is that so? A guardian, you say?"
The enemy could kill him any time he pleased—but if there was a reason he wasn't killing him, then he had to latch onto it.
The man, who had encountered many such beings by now, resolved to engage in conversation as if searching for any possibility of persuasion.
"If that's the case, then let me make you an offer instead, guardian. Would you not consider entrusting that girl you protect to me? I shall take her to my graduate school and teach her everything she needs to navigate this world...."
"Ah, yes. Since we do live in a credential-obsessed society, earning at least a master's degree would be nice, I suppose."
Just keep your wits about you and play along with the lunatic's whims, and you'd survive somehow.
Even if the other party was an eccentric far removed from normal reasoning—no, precisely because he was a man trapped in his own little world, the effect of playing along would be all the greater.
"...But, sorry to say, Professor—this kid hasn't even graduated middle school yet."
"What?"
"Don't you think it's a bit premature to talk about taking a kid who hasn't even finished high school to graduate school?"
Having roughly read the eccentric's wavelength, the man delivered the best answer he could muster.
When he discreetly gauged the reaction afterward, he saw the creature blinking—as much as its skin-stretched skull could blink, anyway.
"Uh, uhm. Is that... so?"
It was working.
Because this was a being obsessed with the pursuit of knowledge, persuasion that struck at the blind spots of that obsession was actually getting through.
"Yes, of course. In the first place, research institutions like graduate schools aren't places just anyone can walk into, are they? So send this kid home for now, and come back with the offer later, when she's older and the time is right."
"Hmm. Well. I suppose it can't be helped. One shouldn't overwork promising saplings right from the start, after all."
Good—it was working far better than he'd expected.
Hoping desperately that this absurd flow would just carry them through, the man hid his impatience, took the collapsed Ga-ram's hand, and braced to leave.
"Yes, well then, we'll be on our way...."
"Wait a moment, young man."
Ah, fuck.
Forcing down the curse rising from his gut, the man turned back around without letting it show.
"What is your name?"
He hadn't grown displeased.
His interest had simply shifted from the girl—who couldn't be recruited yet—to himself.
"Ah, yes. My name is U-hyo-seong."
"U-hyo...?"
"No, not U-hyo, it's U-hyo-s—"
"Ohhh, I see. So you are that U-hyo, are you?"
Gorgon let out an exclamation as if recognizing him, despite this being their first meeting.
The Knight of Famine, grinning with what passed for a mouth on his tattered face, rested his chin in his hand and stared intently at the man's face.
"Now that I think of it, that fellow, the Knight of Death—he remembered your name particularly vividly. I'd retained it faintly myself after hearing it from him. So you are the one?"
"...You heard about me from him?"
"There was no need to hear anything. We undead share a tendency, under our Lord's aegis, to mutually disclose our most intense memories to a certain degree."
That was why the undead he'd never met before had recognized him and rifled through their memories.
Of course, to a being with an ego, it was merely one memory among many—so unlike the undead driven purely by instinct, they wouldn't become so consumed by it that their actions were halted.
"Still, this is the first time I've seen that stiff-necked has-been remember a living being so vividly... But yes, now that I've faced you in person, you are deeply fascinating indeed."
Yet even something so minor was, to one who styled himself a devourer of knowledge, impossible to overlook.
That within the memories he'd accumulated through his lingering attachment to exploring the world, this person possessed a presence that refused to fade no matter the moment—
Was that not more than enough reason to fixate?
"You. Won't you become a graduate student?"
"...No."
"Oh my, it stings so when you refuse so flatly."
Gorgon laughed, unfazed even by the decisive rejection.
As if he'd already expected that answer, he stepped forward without the slightest hesitation.
"That eloquence—persuading me out of concern that the girl would be burdened with too much responsibility—I took good note of it. If you were to submit an assignment, the evaluation would receive top marks at any educational institution."
"No, I just cobbled that together from stuff I picked up here and there. You don't have to rate me so highly."
"The very act of making something you've only heard into your own is worthy of high praise. Is that not the very essence of learning?"
"Unfortunately, I'm better suited to work that uses my body rather than books."
"Physical stamina is also essential to learning. So become a graduate student. If you follow me and become a graduate student, you can remain in this world for hundreds—thousands of years, continuing your pursuit of knowledge."
"...I refuse."
"Become a graduate student, and I shall personally mentor you. You needn't pack any belongings—just bring your body, and I will accommodate you to the utmost of my ability."
"I've said it over and over—I refuse. I still have far too much to accomplish while I'm alive."
Even just looking at the "graduate students" currently surrounding him—none of them even resembled human beings anymore.
How in the world could he accept a proposal from a living corpse drenched in madness as an act of goodwill?
"...That answer earns you a failing grade."
Alert to the danger, the man raised the blade of his spear—and Gorgon's eyes flashed as he drew a black longsword into his own hand.
"It can't be helped. Since you've entertained such a foolish notion, I shall take you to my graduate school and broaden your horizons."
"You insane bastard. Why the hell are you dragging someone to graduate school when they got a failing grade...."
—CLANG!
The clash of weapons swallowed even his furious voice whole.
"Become a graduate student!! U-hyo!!!"
Gorgon's hand—having effortlessly won the lock of blades—
was already prying through the gap in their fight and swinging straight toward the man's throat.