The Forgotten Bunker
The air-raid shelter. The test Raven had called simple unfolded slowly but surely over the course of two full months. If one were to list the tasks he had assigned—tasks whose purpose, criteria, or evaluation standards remained utterly opaque—they would read as follows:
- Every morning, endure one-sided violence disguised as sparring against him with all your strength.
- Every evening, climb and descend the building stairs until you collapse from exhaustion.
- Leap between high-rise buildings without any safety equipment.
- Provoke mutants and escape without being noticed.
- Recapture a department store occupied by madmen.
...There were several more trials that felt less like tests and more like the ordeals of a demon, but merely thinking about them made Yuri’s head throb, so she stopped.
‘Raven... I miss you.’
For the record, the Raven she longed for was not the blood-crazed demon sprawled nearby. It was her gentle, reliable familiar back in Bastion.
When she had first faced this man, she had felt a faint flutter in her chest, as though she were seeing another side of Raven. Yet after spending a little over two months with him, Yuri had come to a realization.
‘That demon is not Raven....’
Adventurers in Bastion often called Raven a mad demon, but that was only because they had never known him in the past. The Raven who had only recently manifested (or possessed this body) had truly been the very embodiment of madness. Kidnapping residents of the demon realm (the madmen) to use as living targets was routine, and he had frequently destroyed anything in sight with his wand (gun) simply because it annoyed him. He had been the tyrant of the demon realm, the Emperor of Terror—and her damned teacher.
“A test should be conducted as though it were real combat. Nothing is more effective. Discard the prejudice that learning and evaluation must be separate, Yuri.”
“....”
Yuri wanted to shout that he was wrong and smack the back of her teacher’s head, but she had genuinely felt—and painfully acknowledged—how much she had grown through these non-tests. She could not bring herself to contradict him.
By now she had grown accustomed to moving her body vigorously even without Kkachi’s help, and she had reached the point where she could control Kkachi’s power in reverse.
‘Release.’
At her will, the all-black combat knife lost its shape and vanished beneath her robe. Watching the display, he let out a quiet murmur of admiration.
“Your control over that strange ability has improved considerably. You said it was a built-in function of the robe itself? The skin customization too—looks like you spent quite a bit of money in reality.”
—Chijijijik.
Kkyu....
‘Father... calling it a strange ability....’
Kkachi grumbled inside Yuri’s mind, feeling slighted by his words. Having lived with a long-term mental connection to Kkachi, Yuri sensed the emotion and soothed the familiar inwardly.
‘Don’t feel too hurt, Kkachi. This era’s Raven hasn’t taken you as a subordinate yet, so he simply doesn’t recognize you.’
Kkyu...!
That was not at all what Yuri had meant, but Kkachi’s mood brightened a little thanks to her consideration. The two of them had grown rapidly close while enduring hardship and adversity together under their mentally unhinged teacher.
While quietly watching Yuri smile faintly as she communed with Kkachi in her mind, Raven confirmed that her meal had ended and spoke.
“That was the last of the rations. Of course, I have no particular need for them, but for someone who must eat at least one meal a day, it is quite the crisis.”
“You certainly have a talent for saying things that infuriate people, Teacher.”
“That is the highest praise a gamer can receive.”
—Chijijik.
“This is why demons....”
—Chijijik.
“Wipe that expression off your face.”
He approached Yuri, who wore a look of pure disgust, and vigorously ruffled her hair.
“Ah, seriously! Teacher...! Stop it!”
Seeing her wave her hands about, demanding he stop touching her hair, he smiled—a warm yet bittersweet smile that could never reach her from behind the mask.
‘Even if it is difficult, just follow me a little longer, Yuri.’
Turn the novice survivor ‘Yuri Alcast’ into a proper survivor.
📍 Time Remaining: 7343:23:31
🎁 Reward: Return of ‘Yuri Alcast’, Deletion of ‘Cheongju Omok Ghost’ data.
‘Our salvation....’
The end was not far off.
***
“Ugh... the smell.”
“...After two months together, shouldn’t you be used to it by now?”
“Unless my sense of smell has completely deteriorated, that is never going to happen.”
“How cruel.”
“The truly cruel thing is the stench coming off Teacher’s body, not me....”
“Disciple. One must learn to respect others.”
“I don’t want to hear that from a teacher who starts exploding the moment something displeases him.”
Yuri, nose plugged and cradled in his arms, flew for a long while before they arrived at a barren mountain where withered trees stood tangled together in death.
‘Judging by how all the trees are dead, it doesn’t look like we’ll be gathering fruit or hunting beasts.’
“...You’re saying we can find food in a mountain like this?”
Yuri’s skeptical gaze naturally turned sideways.
“Indeed. An enormous quantity of food that could last decades if rationed properly lies dormant right beneath us.”
Following the straight line of Raven’s finger pointing at the ground, Yuri’s head lowered of its own accord.
“Beneath us... underground? Did you bury food in the soil?”
“No. More precisely, we will be making the air-raid shelter beneath the ground our base.”
“Air-raid shelter?”
At the unfamiliar word, Yuri tilted her head with a purely innocent expression.
“What is an air-raid shelter, Teacher?”
“What? You’re not a child, yet you don’t know what an air-raid shelter is....”
‘...Ah, she was a child, wasn’t she?’
Upon seeing Yuri’s soft cheeks and innocent face, he nodded as though convinced and searched for words simple enough for a child while picturing the vast unknown space sleeping underground. A place filled with unknown dangers, yet one that would grant immense rewards once cleared....
“Think of it as a kind of dungeon. That should make it easier to understand.”
“A d-dungeon!?”
‘There were dungeons even in the demon realm!?’
At his bombshell statement, Yuri’s tired eyes widened in shock. Regardless, he merely began walking forward at a leisurely pace. Dungeon or whatever else, clearing a single air-raid shelter was nothing to him.
‘With this place, I should be able to safely train Yuri for ten months.’
It was the best possible base at present—one that provided both food and safety. A red light settled in his eyes as he prepared to reclaim it.
***
For some reason, Raven was reluctant to reveal his true power. Because of that, Yuri often found herself wondering: ‘If Raven were to show his true strength, just how powerful would he be?’
Today, she thought she might have caught a glimpse of the answer to that question.
Tingting... tititing....
Under a flickering, feeble light.
“Ugh....”
There stood a naked man covering his face with pale hands. He had been the facility manager in charge of maintenance before the mutants invaded the air-raid shelter. Yet he was far too white, far too twisted to be called an ordinary human. A madman who lived and breathed within insanity, terrified of death. He was a resident of a ruined world forced to go mad in order to survive.
“Ugh... ughhh....”
A low, frightened whimper escaped him. Through the gaps between his fingers, beyond the briefly flashing light, the madman gazed into the darkness flooded with red blood and trembled violently.
And then—
“Is this the last one?”
“Ughhh...!”
Thud.
Without even being able to struggle, the man’s short death rattle mingled with the blood of his kin flowing through the darkness. His body, liberated from the pain of life, convulsed violently like a fish thrown onto the shore in ecstasy. Quietly regarding the corpse of the madman whose head was gone and whose body still twitched in postmortem spasms, he turned his gaze behind him.
“...So this is the Demon of Terror.”
Yuri stared blankly at him, clutching a small shield woven from shadows with trembling hands, while beyond her, in the darkness, lay a cluster of mangled, torn, and burned lumps of flesh whose original shapes could no longer be discerned.
“...Section clear.”
With his tenth declaration, the conquest of B10F, the lowest floor of the air-raid shelter, came to an end. Only eight hours had passed since he and Yuri had first set foot inside the shelter’s entrance.
***
In the silence-laden darkness, every flash of light painted the cold walls with red blood and pale fat. Beneath a shower of fire and steel, an overwhelming violence, monsters and twisted beings fell to their knees one by one. Standing atop a mountain of corpses, the crow-headed demon radiated crimson light from its eyes. And the moment that terrifying yet noble gaze met hers—
“Ughhh!”
Yuri awoke from the nightmare, kicked the green blanket away in a spectacular flying arc, and tumbled off the bed with a loud crash.
“Uweh?”
“Kkyup!”
She had clearly fallen to the floor, yet the sensation against her head was soft, springy, and cool. This feeling... surely not!?
Yuri hurriedly lifted her head and looked down. There—
“Kkachi!? A-are you all right!?”
Kkachi was pinned beneath her like a failed, burnt pancake against the smooth marble floor.
“Kkyup!”
Kkachi let out a short cry as though to say it was fine to the flustered Yuri.
“Oh no, what do I do!?”
Startled, Yuri carefully grabbed Kkachi’s head and lifted it.
“Kkyuuuuk!?”
Kkachi, stuck to the floor, began stretching like a piece of gum.
“W-wow...!?”
Yuri gazed in wonder at Kkachi stretching endlessly like sticky cheese. Before she knew it, she had climbed onto the bed while holding Kkachi’s head and was raising her arms toward the ceiling like a monkey lifting a cub from a cliff.
“Ooooh...!”
Yuri was the type who had to try everything herself whenever curiosity struck. Already forgetting that she had just had a nightmare, she happily stretched and released Kkachi, savoring the joy of being a pet owner.
Just then—
Click!
“Yuri, cleaning is finished, so you can come out now...”
“Ah.”
“...?”
A sudden silence descended upon the staff quarters.
‘What...?’
Seeing Yuri, who had stuck something like black tar to the floor and was now on the bed stretching and releasing it with evident delight, he experienced a moment of cognitive dissonance.
“Uh, uhh. Well.”
“....”
Feeling the same awkwardness a father might upon unexpectedly opening his daughter’s—or son’s—door, he told Yuri to come to the staff cafeteria if she was hungry and hurriedly left. Yuri, who had been quietly glaring at him, suddenly—
“...The staff cafeteria? Where is that...? Teacher? Teacher!?”
Feeling the terror of possibly becoming lost inside the dungeon called the air-raid shelter, she tossed Kkachi into her robe and ran after his footsteps.