The Office Worker Who Can't Quit and Might Get Locked Up

"Hehehe."

Lucy beamed with a wide smile and let out a laugh.

Lucier, who had been grieving after finally grasping reality, snapped right back to her usual self the moment I raised her level again. Achieving twenty years' worth of growth with ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a few clicks in a matter of minutes—anyone would feel good about that.

Even though Lucier had become a member of our Legion, she could still slack off or deliberately refuse my orders, so I couldn't just pressure her blindly.

Well, she still has one wish left. And since getting stronger is her goal too, there's no reason for her to fight me.

If I had to compare it, it wasn't master and slave so much as company and employee. Of course, Lucier couldn't quit, and if things went south I could reverse-summon her and lock her away, so the real power still sat with me.

Huh? An employee who can't even resign and might get locked up if things go wrong? Isn't that just a slave?

The thought crossed my mind for a second, but since I had no intention of treating Lucy like a slave, it was fine.

After getting her consent, reverse-summoning her, and bringing her back out, I asked,

"Lucy, what was the reverse-summon space like?"

"Huh? I don't remember! It just felt like I fell asleep and woke up."

"Woof!"

I'd heard the same thing from Poppy before. Reverse-summoning my hero-grade monsters seemed to put them to sleep. Other summoners' beasts sometimes had entire dimensions where they lived after being dismissed, but mine apparently didn't.

"The next upgrade will be a long way off. Got it?"

"Okay! Got it!"

"Honorifics."

"...Yes."

Even though Lucy was the strongest in our Legion, I couldn't pour too many points into her. Her core ability was mental-type attacks. Against anyone with weak mental defenses, it was basically an instant-kill skill. But against someone with solid mental resistance, it was no ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠better than having no power at all.

Just in case, I asked how strong her physical abilities were...

"Huh? This body? It's exactly like it looks! Strength, stamina, everything."

"...Then why did you make yourself look like that?"

"Well... I can't create a body any stronger than this."

Lucy claimed she had based the body on my appearance, but the result was child-level. I might be a bit short, but I still had the looks of an adult woman.

(That was Haram's one-sided claim.)

To anyone else, we would look like mother and daughter.

(In truth, it was more like older and younger sisters with a small age gap.)

"Isn't it dangerous if your body is that weak?"

"Huh? This form is just a shell anyway! Even if the body gets wrecked, my soul doesn't take the slightest hit!"

"...You're casually dropping the honorifics again?"

"...Yes."

Either way, Lucy's role was strictly support. In the end, what mattered was my growth and Poppy's. Still, against enemies below a certain level, Lucy was basically a munchkin.

"Guhhh... O Yggdrasil..."

"The Queen will... punish you all..."

We roamed from village to village of the fallen elves, smoothly harvesting DNA while running the Legion at peak efficiency for points.

My Queen, resources near Void Pond No. 1 have been exhausted.

"Shut down No. 1. Send the Void Bugs to No. 2."

I created a new Void Pond in a suitable location.

A troll colony has been discovered near Void Pond No. 12.

"We still can't beat trolls... Stay away from that area and expand in a different direction."

We carefully avoided enemies the Legion couldn't handle and diligently farmed points. Day faded, and the end of Day 4 approached.

"We've grown a lot, but... this feels like the limit."

The Void Dogs' combat power had skyrocketed, so the new points we'd gained had jumped dramatically. But piecing together what the administrators had told me, farming even more points from here would be difficult.

The reason was simple: monster numbers had dropped. The monsters that once seemed ready to blanket the entire planet had been heavily culled by our Legion's hunting.

Maybe I was the one most thoroughly fulfilling the expedition's goal of monster cleanup.

"Either hunt stronger monsters... or risk running into people and hunt near the cities."

This planet had been devoured by monsters. The natives lived centered around the cities that remained like islands, and every Earthling had dropped into those cities. Avoid the city outskirts and you never ran into other Earthlings. I'd already ordered the Legion to flee immediately if they ever crossed paths by chance.

"Well, it's not like we've never run into anyone at all... and eventually people will find out I'm the one leading the Dimensional Predators..."

I fell into thought for a moment. If I squeezed every last point, I could hit ten million by Day 6. Upgrading the Legion with that would make us vastly stronger, but...

"Poppy."

"Woof."

"Even if you hit level 100, you still couldn't beat a high ranker, right?"

"Woof woof woof!!!"

Poppy barked that it could win right now, but I knew the Legion's limits. The high rankers had been stopped on the 92nd floor, but that was only because of the irregular known as the Mad Knight. The other Dimensional Predator soldiers had ultimately been cleared by the high rankers.

"No matter how much I strengthen the Legion ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠with points, the ceiling is still capped."

"Grrraah!"

"And the reason I still can't step into the open is those villains hiding in the shadows, right?"

Back when I worked for the Cheongung Guild, I'd even been on friendly terms with the Empress, the number-one ranked hunter. The reason I was currently hiding in Ansan was the villains who hunted talented awakeners from the shadows. If not for them, I would have joined the Empress long ago, received S-rank items, and been given high-grade monster corpses with excellent DNA.

As I pondered, a system message appeared.

The Void Pond I'd built in the volcanic zone on Day 2 had finished its DNA extraction.

"The Dimensional Predator Legion that appears after Hard Mode Floor 90 definitely didn't have fire resistance."

That meant the kids I led could grow beyond the Dimensional Predator Legion that showed up after Floor 90. In the end, the way to break the ceiling was extracting good DNA.

"Lucy!"

"Yes?"

"Come here and turn this on like before."

"Yes!"

I called Lucy over from where she was splashing around in a Void Pond and handed her the communication crystal orb I'd taken from the elder. As her tremendous mana poured into the orb, every elven city within thousands of kilometers appeared. And there—where the markers clustered especially thick—was the capital where the High Elf Queen might be.

"Is there any better ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠way to break the Legion's limits than extracting good DNA?"

"Woof?"

"What are the high rankers going to do with elf corpses? They're not going to boil them into soup."

Fighting among expedition members was forbidden. If I could just get there, every corpse would be mine. The problem was that reaching it meant punching through a forest packed with countless S-rank monsters.

I turned my gaze to the status window.

Stealth (SS)

"...Stealth, how about earning your keep just once?"

The stealth skill I'd always felt was useless after getting constantly countered. If it could change...

The upgrade cost appeared under my gaze.

"The way stealth gets detected is by a higher-grade detection skill."

To detect SS-rank stealth, you needed SSS-rank detection. If my stealth were SSS-rank, even Lucy's Sky-Chasing Eyes (SSS) wouldn't have spotted me.

"Wait, so that means the detector's detection ability is SSS-rank?"

I suddenly realized how broken the Legion was, but since they were on our side now, it didn't matter.

"Haa... Still, is burning ten million points the right call?"

"Woof?"

Ten million points could strengthen my Legion a whole lot further. Risk my life aiming for the absolute peak, or play it safe and aim for a high peak? There was no room for debate.

"If I wanted to play it safe, I wouldn't have entered Impossible difficulty. Right?"

"Woof!"

Fallen High Elves were a race discovered only once in an S-rank gate. Considering Earth had hundreds of S-rank gates, they were extremely rare. The S-rank gate that produced High Elves had already been cleared long ago, and there was no longer any way to obtain High Elf DNA on Earth.

"Alright! Decision made—let's go!"

"Grrraah!"

Of course, all of this was only possible if I gathered ten million points by the end of Day 6. With SS-rank stealth, there was no way I could punch through a forest crawling with S-rank monsters.

"Lucy! Let's move!"

"Yes!"

I headed for the next elven village while issuing the same order to the administrators.

"Sorry to the other low-floor users, but we're in a hurry too."

Until now the Legion had avoided the city outskirts. But to earn over six million points in two days, every method had to be used.

"It's not quite stealing... but hunting first is unavoidable, right?"

Riding Poppy, I slaughtered every monster in sight as we advanced toward the next objective.

Frowning at the system window, Degore opened his mouth.

"Leo. How many points did you get today?"

"Barely fifty-seven! What the hell am I supposed to do with a score like that?!"

The massive black man slammed the table, unable to contain his frustration.

"Monsters around the city have been completely wiped out. The expedition's purpose is cleanup, sure, but this speed is weird..."

Degore was on his first expedition, but he'd heard plenty of stories from guild members who had awakened earlier. The dimensions where expeditions took place were worlds on the brink of destruction. It was strange for monsters to become hard to find after just a week of cleanup.

"I keep hearing that Void Dogs are being spotted around the cities... Think it's related?"

The red-haired woman wiping her staff with a handkerchief spoke up from the side.

"You're saying the Void Dogs are hunting the other monsters?"

"Well, it's not that weird, is it? Monsters don't exactly help each other out."

The strange lifeforms that came out of gates. As long as they were hostile to humanity, they got classified as monsters—but monsters hunting and eating each other was common.

"If they're Void Dogs, they should've been on this planet since before the expedition started. The sudden drop in monster numbers is still strange."

"Eh, it's not like us worrying about it will produce an answer."

"More importantly, there are stories of Void Dogs saving people's lives."

A blond man who had been listening from the next table approached Degore.

"Lantz, where did you hear that?"

"I made a friend during the expedition. He said he nearly died after falling into a goblin trap."

An expedition meant hunting monsters deep in enemy territory. No matter how carefully the Tower balanced the numbers to the difficulty, deaths still happened.

"He got separated from his other teammates and thought he was done for—then Void Dogs showed up and slaughtered the goblins!"

"That could just be coincidence, couldn't it?"

"That's not the end of it! They carried my friend—who was dying from poison—on their backs and delivered him to his party members!"

"Does that even make sense?"

Degore's voice rose at the absurd story.

"I'm not the only one who heard it. His entire party saw it."

"Degore, I've heard similar stories too."

Party members who had been quietly listening began gathering one by one. The community didn't function during expeditions, so information traveled slowly—but there were so many cases of Void Dogs helping humans that the stories spread fast.

"Anyway, it's got nothing to do with us. Tomorrow we head for the mid-layer zone."

"Yeah! We didn't come on this expedition just to scrape fifty points!"

"It's not like the Void Dogs are hunting humans. Getting scared and holding back when they're actually helping is weirder."

Whatever the reason, the fact remained that monsters near the cities had dwindled. Degore's party decided to push their schedule forward and challenge the mid-layer zone, then quickly wrapped up the meeting.