My First Assignment (1)
“Hyat.”
When I came to my senses, something was nestled in my arms.
“...How long has it been?”
Work will begin in 10 minutes!
New Gatekeepers are asked to familiarize themselves with the instructions!
“T-ten minutes???”
I jolted upright and flailed wildly, only to slam my head into the wall because I’d forgotten how cramped the space was.
Thud—
“Ow! U-uuugh...”
Tears sprang to my eyes. The shame of crying over something that small was almost as bad as the pain itself.
Why did I have to end up in the body of some little girl—
「Biiik?」
Huh?
「Bik!」
“Wh-what is this?”
Something white and tiny lay in my arms. Soft white fur. Upright little ears.
“A rabbit?”
「Bii! Biiik!」
「Bik!」
Two rabbits were wriggling around in my lap. Or rather, maybe they were rabbit puppets.
They looked like the real thing, but the seams and the texture gave them away in the end.
They’re really cute. The kind of thing that makes you want to hug them tight and go to sleep like this...
“Mm. N-no, this isn’t the time for that.”
I almost buried my face in them and rubbed my cheeks against their fur before remembering the situation I was in and stopping myself. I had invaders to stop right now.
Uh. So, um...
「Biiik?」
These two?
One of the rabbit puppets slipped out of my arms and climbed onto my head. No matter how I looked at it, it didn’t seem to have a shred of aggression in it.
“D-don’t climb onto my head...”
「Biiik!」
It would be easy to pin down with my little hands. The puppet I caught struggled hard, but soon went limp and behaved itself.
...Had I done something stupid? No matter how I looked at it, there was no way these things could fight.
“Figures. What was I even expecting...”
So that was it after all. I still hadn’t accomplished anything, and now I was going to—
Work has begun!
Minions and traps are being deployed automatically!
“Huh?”
The rabbits’ eyes changed for an instant. This time both of them climbed onto my head, then used it as a stepping-stone to leap up through the opening.
“W-wait! Rabbit? Rabbit!?”
Before I could grab them, the two rabbits had already vanished back into the dungeon, and I stared blankly up at the ceiling.
“C-come back! What do you think you’re going to do with those useless little bodies!?”
Invaders detected: three Wood Class adventurers.
Dungeon conditions are being shared with the Gatekeeper.
After shouting one more time, I absentmindedly brought a hand to my mouth.
The enemies visible beyond the screen. Their overwhelming presence made my body curl in on itself before I even realized it.
...Ha.
Someone like me looked like I could have my neck snapped and be killed in an instant.
Even though the gallery and the System both judged them to be weak.
I couldn’t win. This frail body trembled violently, making the fear inside me painfully obvious.
I squeezed my eyes shut. That was all I could do.
“Mmph.”
Negative thoughts kept tearing through my head. In time that seemed to crawl by, I curled up as much as I could and covered my ears.
And still I kept hearing it.
That there was no point trying.
That in the end I would rot away in this narrow place.
That the ugly thing that never changed was the true core of who I was.
That all I was doing was useless resistance—
【Invaders have been eliminated!】
“......?”
Defense difficulty relative to rank: High
100 points have been awarded!
The enemy was defeated without taking any damage!
100 additional points have been awarded!
All invaders have been successfully neutralized!
Bonus skill rewards have been granted!
“Uh?”
I opened my eyes and looked at the screen showing the inside of the dungeon. A lot seemed to have changed. But the most striking thing of all was—
「Bik?」
Like they’d died in a game, the invaders were dissolving into blue particles and disappearing.
The rabbit puppet tilted its head with innocent confusion. I hadn’t seen the whole thing, but there was no doubt.
“...We won?”
It looked like they’d won the fight.
...
No, how?
***
“...I wonder if she’s hiding well.”
Deep in a maze, in the heart of a vast dungeon where flames burned in every direction, a woman let out a breath.
With the crimson eyes characteristic of demons, and a body that seemed made of living fire, she was the sort of figure that would inspire terror at first glance. Yet her expression was clouded with worry.
A sub-moderator of the Gatekeeper communication gallery, also known as Getgal.
Hot Place, Seoyeon.
“That insane Demon God bastard. Why the hell did he only give her garbage like that?”
She was furious. The newbie who had finally shown up had been handed nothing but traits that seemed to shove her straight toward death.
If even one of her race or class had been merely average, there might still have been some way to survive. But what the newbie had received made even that impossible.
In other words, there was no room to recover. Even if she survived, all she’d have to look forward to was a miserable, drawn-out existence.
“...She’s hiding well, right? Haah, she better not get caught.”
That didn’t mean she could actually tell the girl to die.
After all, everyone in the gallery was, in a sense, a comrade. People struggling to survive, clawing their way toward a return to reality.
She could never let them die. She couldn’t send another one off helplessly, like all the others who had perished before them.
“It should be time by now, so why hasn’t she posted anything? Don’t tell me she got found already?”
For a moment she drummed her fingers against the chair armrest in anxious impatience, and then a post finally appeared in the gallery.
It was written by Kangkang, the newbie.
“Phew. Thank goodness. She wasn’t found.”
Though it was probably only a matter of time.
For now, letting out a relieved breath, Seoyeon clicked the post.
**
“What?”
She shot to her feet. It was the only possible reaction.
This was absurd. There was no way a puppeteer’s puppet could defeat an enemy. At most, a puppet could startle someone. That was the limit of its usefulness.
And yet.
She caught them?
The invaders? All of them?
The photo the newbie had uploaded was simple. The dungeon room had somehow turned into a field, apparently because she’d already learned to use custom features. A clear window floated above it, with the faint outline of a rabbit puppet below.
“Those really are adventurers. And that emblem...”
It was the adventurers’ guild of the Alderich Empire.
It was confusing, but the evidence was clear.
The newbie had definitely killed them.
And with a trash puppet, no less.
“What on earth did she do? No, first...”
***
“...Can Gatekeepers meet each other too?”
「Bik?」
I had emerged from the pit. I didn’t know why, but the dungeon was different from before. No, not just a little different. A lot different.
Just five hours ago it had been a corridor lined with stone walls, but now it had somehow turned into a grassy field overrun with weeds.
I had no idea what was going on. Still, it did make the place a bit more comfortable to sit in, so I couldn’t really complain.
“...You really are the ones who beat them, right?”
「Bik!」
Tokkaengi 1 rubbed its face against me. I wasn’t exactly gifted at naming things, so I’d just given it a convenient label.
Of course, that didn’t mean I got an actual answer back. It didn’t seem able to speak in the first place.
“What the hell is going on...”
Visit request received!
Gatekeeper pseudonym: HotPlace has requested a visit. Accept? Y/N
Ah, so she’d arrived.
I carefully moved my hand to Y. Then the air at one side of the space rippled, and the figure of a woman emerged.
Fire.
If you were to personify it, she’d probably look exactly like this. She was so utterly, unmistakably like flame that the thought came to mind at once.
Just looking at her made me feel like this much. Without even needing to think, she looked far better than my current body. It was like the difference in rank could be felt at a glance.
So that was why race mattered after all.
“How did someone this young end up here? Haah.”
Appearing from one corner of the dungeon, she stared straight at me, then sighed. After that, she naturally placed a hand on my head.
Huh?
“First of all, good job. Want something to eat? That must have been rough for a child to go through...”
Her gaze was far too tender. It was the look you’d give a child you were proud of, a precious little one.
“I-I’m not a kid. It’s just that my body changed like this—”
I hurriedly grabbed the hand ruffling my hair and tried to explain. But it was stopped with shocking ease. The other woman had only to apply a little more strength.
“...It’s okay. It’s okay. You don’t have to be so guarded that you start lying like that. I came to help you.”
Apparently, that didn’t work at all. She had absolutely no intention of retracting her assumption that I was a child.
“N-no, I really am not—”
“Mm. I don’t know because we haven’t really talked about it in the gallery, but your current form is based on your real-life appearance. Me and the others are the same. You don’t need to hide it on purpose. And no one’s going to treat you like a kid just because you are one.”
What the hell was she talking about?
Then why was I the only one who changed like this? This wasn’t my real appearance.
How could this be my true form when I’d shrunk by almost 60 centimeters? There had to be some kind of error here—
“I-I really did change, though. I was way taller before—”
“Yeah, yeah. I believe you. That’s not the important thing right now, so can you listen to me for a second?”
You don’t look like you believe me at all!
“Your survival is more important for now. I can’t stay here for long either.”
Ignoring my indignation, she began looking around the area. Soon after, she frowned and tilted her head, looking puzzled.
“Uh, by any chance. Did you dispose of the big corpse? Or did you have those things do it?”
“C-corpse?”
“Yeah. Or did you use a Gatekeeper authority? That’s a point loss, you know. Don’t do that anymore.”
What was she talking about?
Why would there be a corpse left behind? Those people from earlier had just vanished.
“...You can do that?”
“Huh? You didn’t use an authority?”
“They turned into blue particles and disappeared... Wasn’t that normal? Aren’t corpses supposed to vanish?”
“What?”
“Huh?”
We looked at each other awkwardly, each of us seeming unable to understand what the other was saying.
To her, leaving behind a corpse was obviously the norm.
To me, a corpse disappearing was obviously the norm.
“...Wait. Wait a second. Could you open the dungeon management window and show me the work log? There’s something I need to check.”
“Ah, yes. So... l-like this?”
When I opened the work log, only one entry awaited me. Even I was a little curious about this. How had those fragile little rabbits managed to defeat such terrifying enemies?
A video began to play. The people slowly entering the dungeon. And then—
“Huh?”
What?
As soon as the rabbit approached and rammed its body into them, they toppled over with a faint pop. Then things continued exactly as I’d seen them. One person dissolved into blue particles and vanished.
No, what the hell. Why were they so weak? They lost to a rabbit I could have caught myself?
The rest was no different. One suddenly bolted in terror, only to die the same way. Another staggered backward and died.
It wasn’t even a battle. It was a ridiculous little farce.
“Wh-why are these people so weak? You said they were strong, so why would—oh.”
But then.
When I turned to look at Hot Place, she was frowning as if she’d seen something she did not want to see.
That expression was unmistakable. She was looking at something unpleasant, something she found intolerable, something that should never have been seen at all. As if she’d just witnessed something disgusting.
“You. You—”
Then she placed a hand on my shoulder, her lips trembling as she forced out a voice thick with both confusion and shock.
“What the hell did you make...?”
What kind of puppet has a mouth like that—
Eh?
Mouth?
What mouth?
What in the world is this person—