Jackpot
The moment Raven burned Wendygo to a crisp, a single message reached every adventurer staying on the tenth floor.
Ding.
The familiar of Contractor Yuri (1T) from Sion's Party, the Mad Demon Raven (■■), has defeated the 10th floor's <Dungeon Lord> The Frozen Shaman Chewing on Taboos, Wendygo (6.5T)!
All hail this brilliant achievement with the appropriate cheers and blessings!
The golden inscription floating before the adventurers' eyes vanished like a fleeting dream, and the gloomy, gray-clouded sky regained its clarity.
In the next instant, sacred light burst from the adventurers one after another, accompanied by the majestic tolling of bells that matched the rhythm of their heartbeats.
Ding—!
At the same time, all the accumulated fatigue and minor wounds melted away like snow, and the labored breathing of the injured who had been hovering at death's door finally steadied.
“This is…”
The miracle of complete recovery, granted only on floors where a floor master had been defeated. Joy bloomed in the eyes of every adventurer who witnessed it.
“…It doesn’t hurt anymore?”
“All the exhaustion is completely gone. Yeah. At this rate, we could head back tomorrow.”
“Eh…? Leader, that’s a bit…”
“Just kidding, idiot. I want to sleep in a soft bed too.”
“Hey! Shorty! Look at this! My severed finger? Ta-da! It’s back!”
“Kahaha! Now I can draw my bow again! Archer, this is perfect!”
“The injured are all fully healed too! This is a miracle!”
“Yes, a miracle indeed.”
A miracle they had desperately wished for but never truly believed would come. Precisely because of that, it was all the more precious.
Tick.
The eyepatch-wearing adventurer whose wrist had been severed earlier fumbled with a cigarette using his newly regrown hand, still awkward with the motion. He flicked his fingers and lit it.
“Huuu… Haaa……”
Every time the pure white smoke painted the air, his mind grew calmer. The heart that had been startled by the dungeon’s sudden anomaly and the stealthy approach of disaster finally found its rhythm again.
But then—
“Sniff sniff! Who the hell is smoking in front of the injured?!”
The Canis therapist, who had been regulating the patients’ body temperature with her lush tail fur, began to twitch her nose in outrage. Soon a priest who had been praying nearby spotted the smoker and pointed.
“Hey! You there, adventurer! Don’t light that thing near the patients! I’m holding myself back too, you know!”
“Holding yourself back…? Wait, you still haven’t quit smoking?”
“Ah! It’s not that, Your Holiness… Hey! This is all your fault! Put that cigarette out before I snap it in half!”
“…My apologies.”
Overwhelmed by the combined pressure from the therapist and priest, he stubbed out the cigarette, pocketed it, and slowly looked around.
“O Goddess…”
“We thank you for this blessing…”
“Thank goodness we survived.”
“If I’d died, I was planning to be reborn as your daughter. A little disappointing.”
“How could you be reborn as my daughter if you’re the one who died? Maybe as a puppy or a chick, sure.”
“You’re saying something that cheesy even now?”
“…Weren’t we supposed to be having an emotional hug just now?”
“Shut up. Stop talking nonsense and just stay by my side.”
“Yeah. For as long as you want.”
“Ugh.”
Adventurers knelt, shedding tears as they praised the goddess’s miracle with their eyes and their entire bodies. Others bowed their heads in quiet gratitude for not losing their comrades.
“…Sherpa Sion, you’ve done something tremendous.”
She used to be nothing but a prankster brat back at the academy. She’s really grown.
They were the adventurers Sion’s group had rescued and gathered along the path to the White Zone. Roughly sixty in number. The eyepatch-wearing adventurer quietly marveled at how she had kept her composure amid the sudden dungeon anomaly—caused by Raven—and devoted herself to saving the novices.
And then—
“‘Contractor’ Yuri and ‘Mad Demon’ Raven, was it?”
The demon contractor and his familiar who appeared to have ended the anomaly triggered by the dungeon lord in a very short time.
“A mere 1T rank defeating a 6.5T dungeon lord…? An absolute genius.”
Had he not personally witnessed the goddess’s miracle, he would never have believed it. No matter how much a demon contractor relied on a demon’s power, this clearly transcended common sense. Even if the demon’s rank was high, the contractor still needed sufficient strength and mana to draw out that power fully.
Because he had once dreamed of becoming a demon contractor himself, his shock was doubled.
“…Is this the emergence of a new Irregular to follow in the footsteps of the Sword Saint and the Arch Spirit Master…?”
This is going to be interesting.
Alucard Vladimir, the demonology professor at Bastion Academy who had sensed the new winds of change sweeping through the dungeon city, smiled faintly.
“Thank you for giving me back the life I nearly lost.”
To the proud adventurers.
And to the fearsome, magnificent demon of terror.
As expected, demons really are the best, aren’t they?
It would be nice to meet one in person someday.
Would they come to the academy?
The goddess’s notice reached Sion’s party as well, just after they had dropped off the escapees at the entrance to the tenth floor’s neck area and taken flight again in search of the next group to rescue.
“…The Mad Demon Raven has subjugated the dungeon lord, the Frozen Shaman Chewing on Taboos Wendygo? Sion, this is…!?”
“That’s right, nyang! That crazy crow must have finally taken down the Not Deer’s main body, nyang! Who would’ve thought that thing was the lord of the tenth floor! The crow really came through this time, nyang!”
Hearing Sion speak with a proud smile that showed her pure white teeth, Hans—who had grown accustomed to flying by now—hung upside down from Kkachi’s tentacles with a resigned expression and asked the demonic sword.
“Sword, a dungeon lord is… that thing, right? The strongest monster in the layer?”
—Correct, Hans. One could call it the king of all monsters.
“…Can something like that normally be defeated alone?”
—Even for adventurers of superior rank, it isn’t easy. After all, the physical capabilities of humans and monsters differ from the start. However, he is a demon. If he can draw out the full power of his main body from the demon world, he could kill mere mortals of the middle realm with nothing but a glance. It also serves as proof that this person named Yuri is an exceptional demon contractor unlike certain others.
“You too, Sword?”
—…Y-yes. If only this damned seal were released, I am a powerful demon who could at least stand right below the Demon of Terror, if not beside him! I could beat an upper-floor dungeon lord to death with my own scabbard!
“Yeah. I think so too.”
—Say it while looking at me with soul in your eyes! Hans!!!
“Unya nyang! Mr. Hans. Please shut that noisy sword up, nyang! I thought my eardrums were going to burst just now, nyang!”
—Noisy sword?! How can a felis be this rude…? Apologize right—
“Ah, sorry, Sion… I’ll make him be quiet immediately. Ugh, Sword, I got scolded because of you? Please speak softly. Do you want me to fall from here?”
—……
When even his sole contractor took the other side, Sword quietly closed and sheathed herself. Then she suddenly recalled her previous contractor.
Aah… Min-seok… For some reason today, I miss your incomprehensible nonsense…
The demon who had tried to pull a contract scam by coveting the hero’s body, only to be sealed inside his sword. The sword instructor of the hero, the demonic sword Sword, lamented her situation deeply once again today.
Because of the unscheduled solo action and even the destruction of the dungeon ecosystem(?), he had done something that made all his previous incidents look like child’s play. He had been certain Sion and the contractor would scold him mercilessly.
But.
“Crow! You did so well, nyang! Thanks to you taking care of that damn deer, far fewer adventurers will lose their lives on the tenth floor of the Green Zone from now on, nyang! I’m going to report this to the guild and make sure you receive official compensation, so look forward to it, nyang! Since you subjugated a monster that no one could defeat for hundreds of years, the adventurers’ guild is bound to give you a great reward, nyang!”
“…I’m proud of you, Raven.”
“Oh…”
Unexpected head-pats and praise.
“Ahem. Is that so.”
The barrage of compliments nearly made his shoulders rise with pride, but the slumped demon mode was canceled. His spine straightened and he regained his original dignity. Somehow he had ended up mirroring the same posture as the contractor being praised. They say people who are close grow to resemble each other. The saying fit perfectly.
“Crow, what kind of abilities did Wendygo have, nyang?”
“Wendygo?”
“The deer you beat up, nyang!”
“Ah. So that was its name? That guy…”
Perhaps because she needed to report to the adventurers’ guild, Sion had produced a quill and notebook from somewhere and began asking all sorts of questions about the deer-human, Wendygo.
“Crow, the battle took longer than expected. Why was that, nyang? Don’t tell me you were toying with it to draw out its fear, nyang?”
…She’s sharper than necessary.
She was right, but telling the truth might actually get him scolded, so he decided to slightly inflate Wendygo’s regenerative ability.
“Ah… That is. That monster called Wendygo had quite a useful regeneration ability. It managed to endure my explosion… magic six whole times.”
“It endured being hit by that, nyang? That means… it might have possessed conditional immortality rather than simple regeneration…! By the way, how exactly did you kill it?”
“As you can see, I burned it. So thoroughly that it could never regenerate again.”
“Fire. So fire was its weakness, nyang… Then next, about the flow of battle—”
Fearing the story would drag on, he wove chairs from shadow (one for Sion as well) and sat down, recounting the desperate battle(?) with Wendygo for her.
This continued for some time. Just as the lengthy report was nearing its end—
“Huh?”
“Whoa—!?”
—This is…!?
Shocked voices flowed from the contractor’s group, who had gone to inspect Wendygo’s corpse.
“What’s wrong, nyang?”
“…Sion! Come here quickly!”
“Maseok! There’s an incredibly red maseok here…!”
—This looks pretty valuable at a glance. Why leave it lying there? Does it mean it’s not even worth the effort to you, Terror?
“…Um.”
No? I got distracted because you suddenly spoke to me.
Yes. The moment he heard that the contractor’s party had discovered a maseok in Wendygo’s remains, Sion’s wildly excited voice exploded from behind him.
“Maseok? Maseok!? Maseok!!! Wait, that guy was a dungeon lord, nyang! Which means!?”
It meant the maseok was at least high-grade or better.
And just like Hans said, the red color means…!
“…A high-grade maseok dropped in the Green Zone, nyang?”
“What?”
High-grade? Isn’t that a good thing?
At Sion’s words, he summoned the patch notes for the first time in a long while.
And saw.
One, ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand, hundred thousand, million…!?
“…A maseok worth at least four million dallants?”
“What, nyang? Crow, how do you know the exact market price for maseok like that, nyang?”
The unbelievable number of four million.
And then—
“…F-four million…! Ueeeh……”
“Y-Yuri! Snap out of it!”
—This is a good sign.
He watched very clearly as the contractor collapsed with her eyes still open at the mere mention of four million.
“…Crazy.”
This is why I play RPGs.