The New Lord (Or Not)
A cold, heavy silence had settled over the winter forest. In the mysterious and perilous domain of that shaman, a massive fireball erupted with a thunderous roar like a bolt of lightning striking down. KWAAAAANG!!!
A black mushroom cloud swallowed the crimson flames from below, while translucent shockwaves rippled outward in every direction. Keeng!Krrrk!Shiiiiik… Frozen trees and monstrosities were caught in the blast. They toppled, crumbled, and tumbled pathetically across the icy ground.
In the variously shaped pupils of those monstrosities—whose arms, legs, or scales trembled violently—there was an emotion entirely different from their usual ferocity. It was fear, the emotion of prey.
Monstrosities were inherently aggressive creatures that would stop at nothing to elevate their own rank. But they weren’t stupid enough to stick their heads in front of an eight-ton truck speeding at full throttle. A few of them quickly realized that getting involved in a battle between such mighty beings would lead only to annihilation without even a scrap of profit. They prayed that no flames would bloom above their own heads and swiftly fled the area, begging the great master of the dungeon for mercy.
But the world isn’t made of just one kind of pie. Just as there are monstrosities that value safe growth, there are also those with the spirit of adventurers—creatures willing to throw their lives onto the scales and hurl themselves into the flow of great history!
“Ukkiii…!!!”
Here stood one such being: a monstrosity with the head of a proboscis monkey, the long arms of a gibbon, and the lower body of a human. It was roughly the size of a Roland gorilla. At first glance it looked like nothing more than a slightly unusual monkey, but in truth it was a 4.5T monstrosity specialized in close-quarters combat—so dangerous that even 5T adventurers would hesitate to fight it. Because it was always seen with bloodshot eyes brawling with something, adventurers had given it the nickname Berserker Monkey.
And.
“Ukyaaaaaaaack!!!”
Berserker Monkey, the brawler of the Green Zone who threw the first punch at any intruder no matter how strong they were, was currently extremely pissed off.
It was the ultimate specimen of anger management issues, the kind that stayed furious even while sleeping. If its usual rage was “mild anger,” then right now it had reached the level of “extreme rage.” Its blood vessels had burst so thoroughly that everything before its eyes looked red. If Croma Ira, the mesgaki demon from the Rainbow Cup, had seen it, she would have gasped in admiration: “Even for a monstrosity, that’s some seriously thick wrath♡.”
Thwack!Krrk!
Thwack!Kiiyuk!
Thwack!Riiip!
“Ukyaack!!!”
To vent its boiling fury, Berserker Monkey smashed the heads of the cowardly monstrosities fleeing in the opposite direction, one after another, while hurling itself straight toward the center of the massive explosion.
Tadadat!
With a grip strong enough to easily crush long arms and skulls, it swung from half-frozen trees, rapidly closing the distance. “Ukkiii…!”
Completely worked up at the thought of crushing the skulls of the bastards who had dared defile its territory, Berserker Monkey gladly threw itself into the eye of the storm where ash and snowflakes swirled together.
“Ukkuk….”
The sharp wind that momentarily battered its eyelids made Berserker Monkey close its eyes. It quickly squinted them open again at the presence it felt from both sides ahead.
Pulsing blood vessels. A sinking snowstorm. Within the raging black haze, two silhouettes moved silently toward each other. And then—
────────!!!
A violent collision that shook the bones, followed by pure white silence.
“Ukyaa…?”
In a world stripped of sound, Berserker Monkey’s mouth gaped wide. It wasn’t an expression of surprise. It was closer to the primal instinct of the beast engraved in its flesh desperately struggling to save its master.
Open your mouth and scream with all your might! If you don’t want to vomit blood from the pressure!
—PPPUUUUUUUNG!!!
The enormous roar that tore apart the fleeting silence—and seemed intent on shredding Berserker Monkey’s eardrums as well—blew away the snowstorm in an instant, swelling with terrifying speed.
“Kyaaack!!!”
A shockwave powerful enough to blow away the annoying black haze that obscured its vision and the madly pouring blizzard slammed into Berserker Monkey. Kwajik.
At the same time, its large primate hand slammed into the frozen, hardened ground. The blood flowing from its cracked and torn palm instantly froze upon contact with the cold air.
The fiercely swirling wind and the heat that followed made its entire body sting as if it had been slashed to ribbons.
Kwaaang…!
“Ukkiii!!!”
Berserker Monkey clutched one ear that was ringing from the impact and scowled fiercely. Furious at its own pathetic display, it slammed the ground hard and jerked its head upward. It wanted to burn the images of the bastards who had put it in this state into its eyes—the enemies it would tear apart.
But.
“…U, u…kkiii…?”
Even though Berserker Monkey had recognized its foes, it could not move at all. No—more precisely, it could not. Because this was a battle far too high in rank for a trivial creature like itself to interfere with.
If what it usually did could be called ordinary fighting, then what unfolded before its eyes was war itself.
In Berserker Monkey’s red pupils, which had lost focus and trembled faintly, the figure of the Wendygo appeared—its withered, long fingers weaving strange hand seals.
“【────!!!】”
From within the mask made of a deer’s skull, a blue glow blazed from the hollow eye sockets. The moment an ominous, unintelligible language rode the snowflakes and scattered—
Huge spears of ice began pouring down like a sudden shower toward Raven, who held the Injector with faint smoke rising from its muzzle.
But in an instant, a dagger woven from shadow left Raven’s hand, soaring through the cluster of fierce spears. The moment it aligned with the Injector’s muzzle—
Click.
—KWAAAAAAAAANG!!!
A red-and-black flower bloomed in the sky. The ice spears that touched the violently vibrating hot air shattered instantly and scattered in all directions.
“Mutation.”
Raven’s form, which had instantly created massive wings to accelerate rapidly, streaked through the floating ice fragments hovering in midair.
“Elimination.”
Raven closed the distance to the Wendygo, who had left itself defenseless while forming hand seals. He spread the wings he had folded to reduce air resistance and activated elimination.
Then—
Black powder mixed with the swirling snowflakes, obscuring the Wendygo’s vision.
“Aaaaack────!”
Startled by Raven’s sudden approach and the visual obstruction, the Wendygo swung its arms wildly. Its bony arms lashed out like whips. But unfortunately, they caught nothing.
By then, Raven had already lightly ducked to evade the attack and was pressing the muzzle of his gun against the Wendygo’s chin.
“What are you looking at, deer?”
“Aack!”
Thud!
Before it could even resist, a heavy foreign sensation struck beneath its jaw and inside its skull. And then a cold chill.
A smooth hole ran from the Wendygo’s chin straight through to the crown of its head, as if pierced by a sharp spear. From it flowed sticky red-and-white remnants of life.
The blue glow in its eyes lost all vitality, as if facing its end. But it didn’t stop there—thin red lines were carved along its uvula, heart, abdomen, and genitals. Not mere incisions, but a path of slaughter aimed at complete dismemberment.
Fear of the blade, engraved not only in the mind but in the very flesh.
“Hey, deer. Have you ever been cut vertically?”
I’ve only done it once, but it didn’t feel very good.
Shwaaaack!!!
The moment Raven pulled the trigger, the massive body split in half from the uvula downward. It collapsed, spilling its smoothly severed organs across the pure white snowfield.
It looked like a corpse that could not possibly be any closer to death. Yet Raven did not leave. He quietly remained in place, loading the next fear bullet he intended to test into the Injector.
As if he knew it would step past death and rise once more.
Meanwhile.
“Ukkii….”
Berserker Monkey had watched all of this in silence. Buried beneath snow and ash in a corner of the battlefield, it trembled madly.
Monstrosities rarely fought one another, except for a few special individuals. Hunting intruders from outside granted far greater achievements than harming their own kind. And above all—
Monstrosities could sense each other’s rank.
That was why the weak avoided the strong on their own, and the strong had no reason to bother with the weak, who could not help them rise in rank.
To Berserker Monkey’s senses, the deer now collapsed at the feet of the crow-headed being was—at the very least—a powerhouse of 6.5T. Considering that the strongest monstrosity it had seen while staying here was only 5T, this was an absurdly powerful existence.
With that level of strength, it must have been the newly appointed Dungeon Lord.
Then… what in the world was the being that had utterly overpowered that mighty existence without spilling a single drop of blood?
Thump.
Its heart pounded violently. A terror it had never felt in all its life crawled up its spine and engraved itself into its mind. The anger that had burned within it melted away like snow in spring, replaced by a budding sprout called awe.
Since it could not feel the unique “hostility” that outsiders carried, that being—no, that person—must surely be a monstrosity like itself.
“U, ukkii….”
Berserker Monkey, once called the lone warlord of the Green Zone, knelt and bowed its head before the crow monstrosity(?) that had brought the previous king to its knees through pure force.
It prayed that mercy would be granted to such a trivial creature as itself. And if possible, it hoped to receive the seed of this superior male…
Flinch!
“…!”
Raven, who had been waiting for the bipedal deer that kept reviving no matter how many times it was killed, suddenly felt an unknown chill. He turned his head toward the direction where a bittersweet, high-class chocolate-like fear had been emanating for some time.
What entered his eyes was a proboscis monkey(?) performing a dogeza on the cold snowfield.
“…Who the hell are you?”
Was this dungeon actually a zoo?