Priestess, Dungeon, and Ticket (1)
Priest, Dungeon, and Ticket (1)
#
Reni had been dazed all morning.
"Are you okay?"
"Huh? Yes, yes. Yes..."
She was not wearing the resentful expression from last time, nor were her eyes hollow. She did not seem unwell, but...
Had something happened?
Come to think of it, the moment she woke that morning, she had practically rolled into the bathroom. A burst tomato rolling along would have looked much the same.
Well, why she'd done that wasn't hard to guess.
...
-Knock, knock.
「Reni?」
「Huh?! Yesyesyesyesyesyes!!!!!!!」
「Relax. I used Cleaning Magic before I went to sleep.」
「...Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!!」
My ears!
「No, no, no!!! That wasn’t what I meant!!! Sweat! You always got sweaty!!!」
「Aaaaaah.... Yes!!! You're right!!!!! It was sweat!!!!! Sweat!!!!!!!!!!」
..
I had no choice if I wanted to avoid the misunderstanding that I'd changed her underwear. Reni got to use sweat as an excuse too. That was what they called a win-win.
"We've arrived."
"Ah, finally..."
By the time I'd finished dredging up those pointless memories, we'd arrived at the final dungeon.
[Dungeon #1152]
[Type: Undead / ???]
[Monster Status: ▼]
[Normal: 25]
[Rare: 01]
[Boss: 00]
[Irregular Entity: 01]
Good. With only two dungeons left, the odds that this one held the boss had been fifty-fifty, and we'd gotten lucky on the first try.
The boss count was blank, and instead there was one Irregular Entity. So that was how it appeared on the display.
The boss wasn't an undead yet. It hadn't been born in a dungeon in the first place. That was why it was marked as irregular like that. Still, its role was the boss, so I'd just call it the boss.
"Here. The boss will be in here."
Fortunately, Reni was no longer dazed once we entered the dungeon. She knew when it was time to work. Still, her face was rigid with tension. Gulp. I could hear her swallow clearly.
"Are you all right, Yoo-jin? This is clearly different from everything up until now..."
"I'm scared too."
I was scared. Terrified, even. I couldn’t claim an advantage over the boss in level, stats, or experience.
But I knew how that bastard would come at us.
In the original novel...
<-- Legend of the Hero of Another World: ??? Arc -->
...The hero was taken aback.
「Does it make any sense that nobody knew about a spell formula this enormous? You're telling me it took several years just to prepare? Sure, they mostly leave the dungeons outside the capital alone, but still, someone would've had to come by at least once in all those years.」
The wizard shook his head with a conflicted look.
「Even if someone did happen by, it would have been useless. This Lich King... most likely, until the formula was complete, he was an ordinary human. A human wizard.」
The party all froze at the words "human wizard." The wizard avoided his comrades' eyes and kept talking.
「He was not careless. He chose to remain completely hidden until the dungeons were fully linked, ensuring that anyone who came by would notice nothing unusual. He probably devoted every bit of mana not required by the formula to maintaining his concealment and barriers.」
「Stealth... you mean he dug a hole and hid himself? For years? Staying perfectly still in the same spot?」
「...I don't know that part either. Maybe he burrowed underground, maybe he used invisibility magic... he must have done something. To an ordinary person's eyes, the dungeon would have looked completely normal, I expect.」
「...If we had discovered the bastard earlier,」
「We could have dealt with him as easily as twisting a three-year-old’s wrist. But what good would that do if no one could find him? We should contact the royal castle even now and send investigators to every dungeon...」
...I did not remember the exact wording, but it had gone something like that.
That Lich King, the one who'd linked the dungeons to multiply the undead... at this point in time, he should still be human. That was why he was marked as an Irregular Entity.
Anyway, was it because he had originally been human? The bastard had common sense. He hadn’t openly advertised that he was doing something dangerous.
The key was finding that thorough disguise. If I could strip it away and break the barrier, the rest probably wouldn’t be too difficult. He was supposedly pouring most of his mana into the Magic Formula, after all.
...
"Reni. The bastard is definitely inside here. But I don't know how dangerous he'll be. So if the situation goes bad..."
"No!"
"At least you have to survive..."
"I absolutely cannot!"
A pathetic melodrama on the way there. Reni took it completely seriously, which made teasing her all the more fun.
Before long, we reached the enormous cavern at the deepest part of the dungeon.
And there...
"There are no... monsters?"
"No. He's definitely in here."
There were no monsters, but enormous boulders stood in rows throughout the cavern. From here on, it was pure grunt work.
“You see those boulders? I need to throw bombs at them one by one and check each one. Something is bound to react.”
"Ah. Yes."
And then, tedious repetition.
-Crash!
-Crash!
- Boom!
"Yoo-jin! Over here!"
Found it. While concealing himself, the bastard had layered on a barrier that emitted the same kind of mana as the undead, so they would not attack him. That was why it reacted to the Holy Bomb.
So this was his method. He had erected a defensive barrier that looked like a gigantic boulder and hidden inside it, buying time while the Magic Formula operated.
"Then he's inside this?"
"Yeah. Ah, don't touch it. It's dangerous."
I tapped the boulder with the Holy Sword.
- Clang. Clang.
“As expected, it doesn’t even make a dent.”
"In that case... shouldn't we request support from the Church?"
"Not necessary yet."
It wasn't as if there was some other reason...
Money! If those guys came, they'd definitely snatch the magic stone out from under me! My ultimate goal—buying a house and enjoying a lovey-dovey, harem-filled sex life with my girls—required cash.
And while I was at it, I could clear the dungeons and make the mountain range safer.
Even if I couldn't deal with every future threat, I didn't care.
If it looked as though I wouldn't make the deadline, I could request Church support through Kate’s connections. Failing that, I could spread word at the Adventurers’ Guild that medium and large magic stones were being discovered outside the Great Labyrinth.
But that was only a backup plan. I could always do it after scooping up a share for myself.
- Clang. Clang.
Anyway, it really didn’t make a dent. The original novel had talked about cutting it down in one stroke, but those people were cheat-code characters. With a ridiculous class like mine, this was only natural.
"How are we supposed to break this... without any support...?"
“To break it... you’d probably need a Sword Master’s aura or a Grand Wizard’s destructive magic. But it’s fine. I can still break it.”
"You can use something like that?!"
Her emerald eyes sparkled with anticipation.
"No? I can’t, though?"
"Whaaaaaat?!"
Betraying Reni’s expectations was always fun. Her reactions were so dramatic that she was a delight to tease.
"Then how...?"
“First, let’s start by throwing bombs.”
- Boom! Boom! Boom!
Every time a bomb detonated, a tiny, almost imperceptible scratch appeared on the boulder, and after throwing them for a good while, a small crack finally formed—just big enough to wedge the tip of a sword into.
“Good. Stand back a little. You remember what I told you, right? When the bastard appears—”
"Yes!"
I drove the Holy Sword into the boulder and activated 「Vibrating Sword」—「Vibro Holy Sword」 for short—setting the blade into vibration.
And then...
#
"Yoo-jin... your sword is...!"
"Yeah. Be ready. It'll be any second now."
The Vibro Holy Sword was slowly grinding away the barrier.
What I was using was the Super Vibration Blade.
It was a technique that vibrated the blade at high speed, disintegrating anything it touched at the molecular level and even turning the surrounding air into an air cutter.
By adapting 「Vibrating Hand」, I could do something like this. Honestly, to make this skill, I'd talked the Goddess's ear off. I provided the idea, but the Goddess handled the detailed work needed to make it feasible.
"I've never actually seen Sword Aura with my own eyes... but is this what it's like?"
"Similar, maybe?"
Those people supposedly coated their weapons in mana somehow. Heroes could use things like that with ease, while I had to talk the Goddess into giving me anything even remotely similar.
Nor could I simply buy warrior- or wizard-type skills and use them properly. Starting with intermediate skills, their efficiency dropped sharply.
In the end, being a Sex Warrior meant I had to use sex-related techniques.
But this was where I'd shifted my thinking. Even if they were sex-related skills, there was no law saying I couldn't use them in battle.
What if the opponent was a living creature? I could cloud its mind with pleasure-type skills. That was an enormous advantage, since most monsters were living things. I could drive them into heat and simply watch them get themselves off.
And the occasional undead or inorganic enemy? I could deal with those through the holy attribute or tricks like the one I was using now.
And the truth was, the techniques themselves weren't all that weak. Sex-related skills, just like other combat techniques, scaled off specialized stats, so they could become plenty powerful.
During sex, the system automatically capped the output so my partner would not be harmed. In any other situation, however, the greater my Sexual Stamina was, the stronger the technique became.
In the end, I got the feeling the Goddess had planned all of this. The way the system sometimes tried to mess with me, but didn't try to actually kill me... and the way it kept letting me slide with my Heat Release tricks up until now.
But why? If she was going to let me use loopholes, wouldn't it have been better to give me a powerful ability from the start?
Why make me take the long way around?
"Yoo-jin...!"
"Yeah. I see it too."
Reni’s shout pulled me out of my thoughts. It was almost finished.
At last, the barrier collapsed completely—
A naked man appeared.
His skin was gray, his head bald. There wasn't a single hair anywhere on his body.
"That's the bastard. Get ready."
"Yes...!"
He slowly rose to his feet, looked our way, and opened his mouth.
"□□□□ □□ □□ □□□ □□ □□□"
But his voice didn't reach my ears.
Because...