Forbidden-Class Dungeon (6)
"I must have judged too hastily.... You're far stronger than I thought... no, even beyond that."
"You don't have to look at me like that."
I wasn't any happier about things turning awkward between us. All it did was keep underscoring that I was something other than an ordinary human.
"Doesn't seem like there are any traps, at least."
"Still, better to be careful just in case."
Heeding Estelle's warning, I spread my senses wide.
Beyond the door, a vast space had definitely opened up. Yet in all that expanse, there was not a single presence — strangely, unnervingly none.
I stepped forward with care. The moment I crossed the threshold, thick darkness swallowed us whole. But the interference I'd braced for never came.
"Looks like there aren't any traps."
"...Then maybe opening this door was the trial itself. It was difficult enough to count as one."
A space without a single thread of light. Relying on my senses alone, I pressed forward through it.
Thud. The feel beneath my feet was no different from the floor before. Even after we'd entered the interior, the silence held just the same.
And then a faint light began to seep slowly down from above — a shallow glow that peeled back the curtain of darkness. My gaze lifted of its own accord, and there I saw it.
In the center of the wall, a human face hung as if something had tried to force its way through and stopped halfway. No — more precisely, it was embedded in the wall. The red light was pouring from that face's eyes.
A massive stone statue's face, impossible to tell whether living or dead. Below it, the rest was buried so completely in the wall that its form couldn't even be guessed at.
Then the statue's lips trembled, minutely, and a creaking sound issued forth like stone cracking under strain.
"Guuh......"
A rough, low resonance — like a deep rumble leaking from a fissure in a cliff face — and yet the sound was unmistakably flowing from that statue's mouth.
Kuuung.
At the same instant, the wall that held the face began to shudder. The vibration grew steadily harsher until, with a splitting crack, the wall fractured and came crashing down in pieces. From within, a colossal body shaped like a man's slowly revealed itself.
A frame larger and heavier than even the black golem. It had been set into the wall like part of the structure itself, yet its substance was clearly something far harder still. The giant stone statue shoved aside the fallen rubble and planted two legs upon the ground.
A mineral body of gray-black. The only light in it — those red eyes — turned toward us. It had recognized us, without question, and awakened.
I was certain. This was the dungeon's boss.
"What do you call a magic beast like that?"
"...I couldn't say. I've never seen one... Usually that means it's something that's been around since ancient times."
"Ancient?"
Weren't dungeons left unconquered since antiquity called the Seven Calamity Caves? Were there other dungeons that traced back that far as well?
"It's not as if we... know every dungeon there is."
Thud.
Before Estelle had even finished speaking, the giant stone statue took a step forward. As that enormous body moved, a single footfall made the ground boom. It was almost strange the place didn't collapse under a shock like that.
"Guuuh......"
I launched myself at once. Rising into the air, I twisted my body on a slant and drove my fist into its abdomen. The blow met flesh that looked as if muscle had been carved into stone — a punch carrying the force of Medium, the same intensity that had shattered the black golem in an instant.
Pung.
Under the heavy strike, that massive frame lifted for a moment and was shoved backward. But it did not break. Fitting for a boss-class magic beast, I supposed.
Thud.
Having given two steps of ground, the giant stone statue dropped straight to one knee.
"Guooooh......"
A low, rough rumble shook the space once more.
...Is it speaking?
At first I'd taken it for simple roaring, but hearing that strange sound over and over, the thought crept in. In the end, though, it wasn't anything I could understand.
Before the momentum could slip away, I threw myself forward again. Fist after fist hammered into the giant stone statue's body.
"Guuuh... guuh...."
Chest, abdomen, shoulder. Every time a blow landed, the giant stone statue bellowed in sounds I couldn't parse. I paid it no mind. Without realizing it, I was already crossing some boundary of thought.
In the repetitive work of simply thrashing a golem, I may have been stepping into a stage I myself had never consciously recognized. Through those repeating motions, the one thing I kept turning over was the meticulous control of force.
What filled a fist was never merely muscular strength. Weight, speed, distance...... Beyond stripping away all those physical factors, the true core was the mind. Without the mind, what rode in the fist was nothing but turbid impulse — the raw instinct to smash an enemy, unfiltered rage, a will that was somehow hollow. That was nothing more than a blade that had lost its direction. It felt like knowing what to do and how, only for it to scatter like foam the moment it reached the fingertips.
So what followed the fist was the body — but what had to lead that body was always consciousness. A will carrying a firm direction. The body had to struggle to catch up, even belatedly. That was the proper path.
That desperately sought-after sensation. If it manifested, what appeared in that instant was precisely Intent.
Not simply a polished technique, but understanding and insight given form — the sense of asking oneself where, and with what heart, to place that power. This was a realization I had already gained when I crossed the third wall.
So why was that old insight rising again at this very moment? There was no explanation for it but coincidence.
Meticulously controlling force. Endlessly honing only the precision of technique. If one refined a rough sharpness while still accepting turbid impulse — rather than advancing to the stage of embedding the mind — would that be the completion of no-mind, or merely the purification of impulse? And if, amid all that swirling confusion, just one solid sensation remained, what horizon would open at its end?
Come to think of it, when I had thrown my fist at the final Red Barrier in the forbidden zone, I had held no thoughts at all. Consciousness itself had been hazy; I had struck without deep meaning, merely retracing every sensation of the martial arts I had established. The feeling now touched that one.
My fist met the giant stone statue's forehead.
Tung.
A small resonance. And a sensation like gentle ripples spreading outward, as if a fingertip had brushed the surface of still water. At the same moment, the faint red light in the giant stone statue's pupils went out.
Its massive knees planted against the ground as it collapsed, and a body harder than iron tilted over onto the floor. No roar, no flying fragments...... None of the overwhelming destructive force that had once reduced bodies to rubble. Rather, there was a stillness as if the silence that comes only after everything is finished had been drawn forward ahead of its time.
The fist had merely touched — and with that single touch, it had surpassed overwhelming destructive power.
I decided to call this technique Jeong-geuk — Silent Limit.
Landing back on the floor, I closed my eyes. In the dark of my mind's eye, a single enormous wall appeared, soaring roughly toward the heavens as if to steal the breath — a wall so high that even craning my neck to its limit, I could not find where it ended.
What I faced now was the fifth wall.
It was an enormous advancement. Even back when I had been coughing blood and having my bones wrenched out of place fighting monsters in the forbidden zone, the fifth wall was something I had never so much as glimpsed. And yet now — the fifth wall I had never seen even in that desperate place had appeared before me at a time I never expected.
Had the key to crossing the wall been extreme precision? To think I would gain such a precious realization here.
I steadied my racing heart and quietly opened my eyes. The giant stone statue lay fallen before me, mouth half open. No more voice came from it.
When it did not so much as twitch, Estelle carefully approached.
"That was probably... a boss bordering on disaster-class...... I never thought it'd go down this easily."
Surprise lit her eyes, but the fear that had faintly shown before was nowhere to be found. That was likely because it hadn't been the destructive spectacle of a golem shattering to pieces under a single punch — though of course, this had been a far more refined technique than that.
As she said, it was true I had taken it down easily. That did not mean it would have been an easy opponent for adventurers of Estelle's caliber. For them, it might well have been a disaster they simply could not overcome.
Looking at it this way, I don't know what kind of messed-up world this is.
If magic beasts like these ever poured out beyond a dungeon's boundaries into the outside world, could humans hold the line? Even those called high-rank adventurers didn't seem able to handle them properly. And if the monsters I had seen in the forbidden zone ever broke out past the Red Barrier......
While I was lost in thought, Estelle pointed at the giant stone statue.
"And at the end — didn't it seem like it was asking to be spared?"
"No way. A magic beast?"
I shook my head. Didn't magic beasts charge even as they died? ......Or did they?
I recalled the swarm of locusts in the forbidden zone frantically fleeing from near the fortress — and at the same time, the voices I had heard from inside those walls.
Still, surely not every high-grade magic beast has reason......
If they did, the world could become even more hopeless than it already was.
After a long stretch of quiet, once I had confirmed that nothing further was going to happen, I turned to Estelle with a question. I asked because I was certain the boss had fallen.
"Do you happen to know a way to meet the Emperor?"
"..."
She was briefly at a loss for words, blinking several times — as if turning my question over, wondering whether she had misheard.
"Why?"
"No — I've just never seen anyone ask something like that. Or anyone who calls His Majesty that way, either."