An Unexpected Map
The fact that I was already standing firmly on solid ground without feeling the slightest impact, despite having just plummeted through empty air, threw my senses into total disarray.
A suffocating darkness that even torchlight failed to pierce rendered human sight utterly useless. Ominous noises rattled the eardrums, while intangible presences crawled across the skin like biting ants and prodding needles, coaxing raw panic to the surface. And what happens when a grotesque, horrifying spirit leaps out into clear, vivid focus amidst such a nerve-shredding environment?
Extreme, primal terror, naturally.
“Eeeek! Kyaaaaaagh!”
“Skreeeeeech!”
Case in point: Vivian and Cacciola, screeching beside me like a pair of frantic pterodactyls.
…Vivian was understandable, but what was Cacciola’s excuse?
I didn't recall reading anywhere in the settings that she had a phobia of ghosts, yet here she was, clutching me in near-fainting hysterics. It was downright absurd.
At any rate, this entire sensory assault was simply one of this dungeon’s gimmicks. Reality and the game were never completely identical, but the game had presented it in much the same fashion. Back then, the scale and depth of the dungeon map shifted dynamically depending on the party’s fear resistance and mental barriers… and I wondered if that rule still held true now that it had become real life.
“Skreeeech! Hee-hee-hee-hee!”
“Give us life… Give us hot blood…!”
“I didn’t want to die… I didn’t want to die…!”
“Why do you get to live? While I wander around dead…!”
“Die! Die like us!”
The wandering specters had no uniform appearance. Some were violently warped, having lost all semblance of humanity long ago. Others had eyes and mouths so monstrously distended that their faces were swallowed whole, while some drifted about as detached arms or legs. Yet without exception, their translucent bodies swam through the dark, radiating pure malice toward every living thing.
“Hiiieee…!”
“Waaagh…!”
“Hey, let go a little, both of you. You’re going to strangle me to death before the ghosts even get a chance.”
Vivian and Cacciola clung to me with grips that tightened by the second. I spoke up because I couldn't take the constriction anymore, but my voice barely registered through their chattering teeth and trembling limbs.
“Cacciola. Aren't you embarrassed acting like this? Since when were you terrified of ghosts?”
“H-H-How am I supposed to stay calm looking at those things?! Ghosts! And demonic monster ghosts at that! A normal person barely sees one in an entire lifetime! I’ve never fought anything like this before!”
“…You just cut them down with aura.”
“Are you telling me to go near them right now?!”
“I told you, we have the relic. Their attacks can't touch us.”
“Ugh, uuuuugh…! I-I-I can’t! Hiiik! Save meeee!”
Because she was hugging me with all her might, the sensation of her ample chest squishing against me came through loud and clear.
“…I mean, I get that it’s scary, but I was hoping you’d show a little veteran composure.”
She was supposed to be a seasoned adventurer, a villain feared for her cold-blooded, iron-willed cruelty. I had never seen this side of Cacciola before. Then again, all I had ever known of her was a set of game parameters and scripted scenes; measuring a flesh-and-blood human against that might have been unfair from the start.
“Hyaaa! I-It’s coming! It touched me! It just brushed against meeee!”
Even so, wasn't she overreacting just a bit too much? This felt like the kind of prominent quirk that belonged in a character profile, so why hadn't it been written down? Ever since I met her, my faith in the setting guide had been taking a beating. It was genuinely inconvenient.
By the way, Vivian had her eyes squeezed shut, clamped to my leg like a frightened cicada. She was trembling so violently she couldn't even manage a scream.
…I really wished she would at least walk on her own feet. My body was weak enough as it was, and hauling around two dead-weight freeloaders was draining my stamina fast.
“Sigh. Whatever. Muriel. Rebecca. Are you there?”
I called out into the darkness behind us. A moment later, answers echoed back.
“Yes. I am here.”
“I’m right here!”
Their voices sounded faintly muted, as if carried across a vast distance. Since Holy Guardian Fortress was active, my mind and senses hadn't been tampered with. That meant the muffling was simply a natural property of the dungeon itself.
“Are the specters swarming you over there too?”
“They are. Their numbers are considerable.”
“They’ve been trying to cast something at us for a while now… but strangely, it doesn't affect us at all.”
“That’s thanks to my artifact. Coat your blades in aura and you can cut them down easily, so regroup on me.”
“Understood.”
“On our way!”
Before long, the rest of the party came into view, slicing through the air with aura-clad weapons. The darkness clung to them like viscous tar, undulating stubbornly as if trying to drag them back, but they strode forward briskly without encountering the slightest real resistance, annoyed expressions on their faces.
“Looks like everyone made it in one piece.”
Muriel, Rebecca, Lira, and Weller. Inspecting their condition, I gave a satisfied nod and pulsed the Holy Guardian Fortress once more just to be safe. Nothing changed. The barrier was already working at full capacity.
“Hey. What now? We can't see a damn thing. Even light magic won't illuminate this place.”
Flash!
A ball of light the size of a human head flared in Weller’s palm, searing against my retinas.
“Gah, my eyes… Put that out. It’s useless in here anyway.”
Weller extinguished the flare, glaring at me with a pout.
“Are you sure this dungeon is supposed to be easy? Because it certainly doesn't look like it to me. The environment is completely alien… and those specters we just put down were far from ordinary.”
She wasn't wrong. The oppressive gloom swallowed all light, yet we could somehow see each other with crystalline clarity—an eerie, unnatural contradiction. And if the game's numbers held true, those specters were easily level 130 or higher.
“I never said it was an easy dungeon.”
“What? You bastard! You explicitly told us we could clear it quickly and easily!”
“Oh, that part is true. We’re going to clear this place today. Smoothly and easily, in fact.”
“Are you playing word games with me right now…?”
Watching Weller’s temper flare again, I let out a sigh and pulled the Holy Guardian Fortress necklace out from under my collar.
“I’m saying we can clear it easily because we have this. Given our lineup, you guys probably could have powered through eventually on raw muscle alone… but Vivian and I would have been dead within minutes.”
“…You’d better be certain, Alzen. If so much as a hair on Vivian’s head is harmed, I will never forgive you.”
“Good grief. You worry too much.”
Shaking my head, I tucked the pendant back away and rested a hand on Vivian’s trembling shoulder.
“B-Brother…?”
“It’s fine to worry about our little sister, but don’t smother her. She’s much tougher than you give her credit for. Right, Vivian?”
Vivian lifted her gaze to meet mine, her lips firming into a resolute line.
“Y-Yes! He’s right! I can do this, Sister!”
“Vivian…!”
Weller’s eyes welled up with proud tears at our sister’s display of courage. She was such a shameless sap when it came to Vivian.
“What a sight… Anyway, let’s move.”
“Wait, do you even know where you’re going? We can’t see five feet ahead!”
“That’s just how this dungeon works. Just give it a… ah, looks like it’s starting.”
“Huh?”
“Hm…”
“Lord Alzen, behind me.”
The thick darkness that had been clinging to our skin began to churn and shift. In the lore, the ‘darkness’ pervading the Bottom of Rancor was a dense agglomeration of demonic energy that had evolved into a minuscule fragment of the Evil God. While devoid of an ego, it possessed an authority-like trait: it read an intruder’s memories and projected the landscape most familiar to them, then sowed that familiar setting with nightmarish horrors to induce sheer panic.
In the game, that manifestation was represented by the ‘Fear’ and ‘Confusion’ status ailments, which crippled a character’s stats and scrambled player controls.
Judging purely by the lore, it sounded like a nightmarish, unpredictable dungeon that shifted layout on every visit. In actual gameplay, however, the map was almost always the same. Why? Because the player was forced to enter with a party led by the protagonist, the Hero. As a result, the dungeon almost always manifested as the Hero’s rural hometown, the forest surrounding it, or, on rare occasions, a snippet from a chosen companion’s past.
…So which map would it pull from now?
“…What in the world? What am I looking at?”
“Is this… a city?”
“No, but… could a city like this even exist?”
“Heavens…”
The pitch-black shroud rapidly solidified, drenched in vivid colors as artificial light poured down from an unseen source. Baffled, awe-struck gasps spilled from the women around me.
I said nothing, but my own shock was just as profound.
“So it really works this way, huh.”
Unfolding before our eyes was, beyond any shadow of a doubt, a hyper-modern metropolis boasting cutting-edge human civilization. A concrete jungle intimately familiar to me, teeming with crowds of people. A landscape I had believed I would never lay eyes upon again stretched out to the horizon. An empty laugh slipped through my lips.
“Alzen. Do you recognize this place? What is this?”
“…Seoul, South Korea.”
“What? Is that a place name? I’ve never heard of it.”
I had no intention of elaborating, so I gave a noncommittal nod and took a step forward. Taking a swig from my flask, I lit a cigarette and drew in a deep breath of smoke.
“Hey! Drinking and smoking inside a dungeon is crossing the line, even for—”
“Stay on guard against every single human walking around us. Muriel, Rebecca.”
“Understood.”
“Wait… are all these people monsters?!”
“Most likely. Or phantoms created by the dark… Lira.”
“Y-Yes, my lord?!”
“Keep an eye on Weller.”
“Understood, sir!”
“…Excuse me? I’m not so weak that I need a babysitter, you know! Stop giving unnecessary orders!”
“Sure, whatever you say.”
Smirking faintly, I drew Vivian closer to my side.
“Brother?”
“Vivian. Do you know what a dungeon is?”
“Ah… yes! I studied before coming here! Um, dungeons are places where demonic energy or monsters gather in a specific territory, mutating the environment into something bizarre and hostile! Right?”
“Correct. Clever girl.”
“Ehehe…”
I patted her shoulder as she beamed shyly, my eyes drifting across the unnervingly familiar urban vista.
“However, there are exceptions.”
“Exceptions?”
“Places where lingering grudges, resentful spirits, and deep obsessions condense. Dungeonification can occur in environments like that as well. That is why this place is called the Bottom of Rancor.”
Noticing the terror beginning to creep back into Vivian’s eyes, I offered a gentle smile.
“Keep your eyes open and observe closely. The regrets, desires, and hatred of human beings. As brilliant and talented as you are, you’ll find plenty to learn from this.”
“Y-Yes, Brother…”
“Good. Shall we get moving?”
“Moving? Where to?”
“Just straight ahead. That’s all we need to do.”
The Bottom of Rancor was not an intricate or puzzle-heavy dungeon. Its strategy was dead simple: push forward, slaughtering every monster that barred the way. Doing so was normally impossible for those with weak mental defenses, but sheltered under the Holy Guardian Fortress, we were as safe as if we were standing behind towering castle ramparts.
“Phew…”
Strolling through the familiar city streets sparked a fleeting twinge of nostalgia, but far more than that, a blistering fury surged up from my chest. This fake city, stitched together from stolen memories, felt like a deliberate mockery. It was as if the dungeon were sneering in my face, reminding me that I could never return. Whispering that I would never see my friends or family ever again.
It grated on every single nerve I had.
“Lord Alzen, there’s a building directly in our path… Lord Alzen?!”
“B-Brother?! There’s a wall right in front of you!”
“Lord Alzen, look out! You’re going to crash!”
“Relax. It’s all an illusion anyway.”
My body phased seamlessly through the exterior wall of the high-rise building, leaving the women staring with wide, shocked eyes.
“What are you waiting for? Keep up.”
Snapping back to their senses, they hurried through after me.
Creak!
The very next instant, the hundreds of pedestrians strolling peacefully along the avenue snapped their heads in our direction in unison. Their eyes, wide and unblinking, glared at us with venomous intent, brimming with boundless rancor and insatiable thirst.
“…And so it begins. Muriel. Rebecca. Get ready.”
Not that my warning was necessary. The blades in their hands were already humming with cold, brilliant azure aura, poised for slaughter.