The First Skill (1)
HotPlace, Seoyeon, looked away for a moment. The newbie, fidgeting with her hands, was blinking sleepily.
The threat of death had come and gone in an instant; it made sense that her tension was finally starting to melt away. It was such a childlike reaction.
Ha. Just looking at her, there’s no doubt she’s still a kid…
She turned her gaze back, this time to the rabbit doll.
It looked like an ordinary stuffed toy, and yet something about it raised the hair on her arms. Even she felt it, and she was no weakling—hardly, when she was strong enough to serve in the Demon Realm itself.
She uploaded the combat footage to the gallery, along with a detailed explanation of the newbie’s condition.
After a brief silence, the same reaction she’d been holding in spilled across the posts—every thought she hadn’t dared voice out loud in front of the girl.
Silence settled over the thread for a while. It seemed she wasn’t the only one at a loss.
It was completely unknown territory. Something different from the Seok they had known until now—a place none of the people in the gallery had any familiarity with.
…More than that, why can’t the newbie even recognize these things? They’re right there, impossible to miss…
In the peaceful field, something kept writhing and twitching.
Pieces of people. No—what was left of people. So torn apart that even Seoyeon, who had seen plenty, felt nausea rising in her throat.
And yet the girl before her would occasionally glance that way, then simply look elsewhere again as if nothing had happened.
That, too, was an inexplicable phenomenon.
But.
There was one person who seemed to have seen straight through the veil.
“Um... newbie?”
“Mmnya... huh? Y-yes?”
“Could you show me that skill description—the one about the blessing, or whatever it is? I need to check something.”
“Ah, yes.”
■■'s Blessing(?)
It will become safe. This is the protection of ■■.
The explanation was unfriendly, and sparse—just two short lines. It was also a skill no one in the gallery had ever seen shared before. Something no one had received, something no one had discovered.
But at least it was possible to tell what it did.
“A perception filter, huh.”
That made some sense. The newbie was clearly seeing a world different from her own.
Those flesh fragments... there was no need to look that far. Even this field alone was proof enough.
“Mmm? What was that?”
“Hm, nothing. Say, if you look over there—what does that seem like to you?”
“...Uh. T-there’s something there? I can’t see anything except flowers... y’know.”
“I see. No, I only asked because I don’t know flower names very well.”
“Ah, I’m sorry... I don’t know them either.”
Bloody pools.
Across the green meadow, those bright-red masses stood out sharply, but the girl simply perceived them as flowers.
The world she saw was completely different.
It had been replaced. Censored.
Even the fact that the rabbit doll clutched tightly in her arms had a mouth wet with dark blood—blood that had just moments ago been smeared with human bone and flesh as it chewed and swallowed—was something she failed to register.
“It’s okay. I was just asking because I didn’t know either. More importantly, if you’re sleepy, you should sleep. You must be tired.”
“Huh? A-ah, but this is our first time meeting, so...”
“I said it’s fine. Sleep.”
Without another word, HotPlace used her points to buy a bed for her. At this rate the child looked ready to lie down on a floor littered with writhing nerve bundles and chunks of brain matter and just pass out there.
“Wow, is that another Gatekeeper power? That’s amazing...”
The girl’s restless eyes slowly drifted shut the moment she lay down in the bed.
“Um... then I’m sorry, but I’m going to sleep now. I’m really, really tired...”
The small girl blinked once, twice, then finally let her consciousness slip away completely.
Seoyeon kept watching her until the end. As someone who had witnessed this moment, she could hardly do anything but give the sub-moderator’s words her wholehearted approval.
“...Hoo.”
“Ha. If only she didn’t phrase everything like that, I could agree more easily...”
Seoyeon nodded and stared at the girl’s face.
Whoever the bastard was who had dumped us here, she thought, they at least seemed to have a scrap of conscience left. The thought flickered through her mind.
If they didn’t, there would have been no reason to give that blessing—this Blessing(?)—to the newbie. To a girl handling the horrible things in this horrible world.
Leaving behind the board now settling after that long, lively discussion, Seoyeon let out a sigh.
“I hope she stays more or less normal until the very end.”
Watching the girl sleeping peacefully, she dug back into the shop window, searching for something that might help the newbie—something a little different from what she had originally planned.
***
“Eek.”
When I woke up, I had the strange impression that time had... passed. Somehow, the sun that had been there all along didn’t look like it had moved at all.
More importantly, what the hell had I done? No matter how much tension had left my body, sleeping in front of someone I’d just met was still pretty wild.
What, did my body turn into a child and my mind shrink into a little girl too? Please tell me that’s not what happened.
“You left a lot behind...”
I got up from the bed, stretched once, and climbed down. Beneath the bed, there were several items HotPlace seemed to have left for me.
Let’s see.
◈ Dungeon Cleaning Fairy (C) x 1
◈ Gatekeeper Cleaning Fairy (C) x 1
◈ 7-Day Dungeon Vacation Pass (S) x 1
◈ Mother Slime's Body (B) x 2
...Just looking at them, I could tell they were good stuff. They were already in a completely different league from the things I had in my mailbox.
The first two seemed obvious enough to use somewhere. Whether I really needed them right away was another question.
“There weren’t even any corpses left anyway. Wait, are these for cleaning up dirt and dust?”
And as for the bottom two—
◈ When used, instantly expels all enemies currently inside the dungeon. After that, the dungeon is locked down for seven days. During that period, there is no penalty for failing your duties when expelling them. However, no points can be earned while on vacation.
◈ A body belonging to a Mother Slime that can be permanently transformed. It can be substituted with any material of the same grade or lower.
“Wooooow.”
Even the descriptions were different. Compared with my skill names, which were plastered with bland, unfriendly sentences, this was something else entirely.
No, was it really okay to just hand out stuff like this? I had no idea how strong a sub-moderator was, but even if she was way stronger than me, this still felt way too generous.
Because.
That was the price for something only B-rank. I had no idea how much the other Gatekeepers earned, but for me, it was a number so far beyond reach I couldn’t even dream of it.
“How am I supposed to pay this back...”
It was an odd feeling.
Someone whose face I didn’t even know had gone this far to save me. It was kindness I’d never even gotten in reality, which somehow made it a little frightening.
But that didn’t mean I’d just let it slide. If someone gave you a kindness, didn’t you have to return it somehow?
“...Yeah. For now, I guess I’d better survive.”
Then first—
You have unapplied bonuses!
Raising the dungeon’s grade was the priority, of course.
“Biiip?”
Before I knew it, the rabbit doll was back on my lap.
HotPlace’s reaction still bothered me, but this thing really had beaten the enemy. That much was true.
I didn’t know whether the enemy had been weak or whether the rabbit was just especially strong against that enemy in particular... but at the very least, it had enough strength to take one down.
That meant what I needed to do was obvious.
“...I have to make use of it somehow.”
To build a dungeon around these dolls, one way or another.
Bonus: Skill Granted
The bonus I’d gotten from killing the enemy had been twofold: 100 points, and this.
“Let’s see, what skills are there...”
“...”
Puppeteer’s House(?)
Build a house where the doll can perform well.
Pretty Ornament(?)
Create ornaments suited to the doll.
Sturdy Fingers (F)
Your fingers won’t get hurt while sewing.
“Nope.”
A wave of injustice surged through me.
They’d made the item descriptions look all flashy and grand, so why were my skills the ones getting this treatment? Even the rank wasn’t properly displayed.
“Uuuuu...”
I felt gloomy.