Dropout. Dead?
Dropout. Dead?
In the dungeon's middle layer, blood-red moss flowing down the damp walls glistened beneath the faint mana stone light.
A man gasping for breath, hiding behind a boulder—"Gray"—gripped a chipped sword in his trembling hand.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Heavy footsteps echoed through the passage.
Three ogres.
Beasts the size of wagons flared their nostrils, tracking a scent.
Gray scraped together the mana left in his left hand.
His remaining mana was barely enough for a single 'Fi-re' spell. It was crazy to think he could take down an ogre with that, but he needed to divert their attention at least.
"Fi-re."
A basic magic spell manifesting a fireball the size of a fist.
A fist-sized flame shot from his fingertips, struck the wall of the left fork, and exploded.
As stone dust scattered, the ogres all turned their heads at once.
In that instant, Gray squeezed his body into a narrow crevice on the opposite side.
His shoulder scraped against the rock, tearing his leather armor, and the pain of his skin peeling made him grit his teeth.
The ogres' growling faded into the left passage.
Gray crawled through the narrow gap for a long while before finally emerging into a slightly wider space.
He leaned against the damp wall and slid down, collapsing to the ground.
His heart pounded as if it would break through his ribs, and cold sweat dripped from his chin.
He listened for a long time. No footsteps. No growling. They weren't chasing him.
"...Ha."
A sigh escaped him.
No, it was closer to a groan than a sigh.
Gray twisted his bloodless lips into a bitter smile.
The Imperial Edict—the 'Great Dungeon Subjugation Operation.' Quite a grandiose name.
Anyone with an adventurer registration tag was conscripted, regardless of rank.
Refusal meant having your registration revoked. Those whose livelihoods depended on it had no choice.
The upper layers were still bearable. The problem started from the middle layer.
In this place, swarming with ogres, trolls, and monsters never seen in the upper layers, low-grade adventurers were nothing but 'consumables.'
The companions who came down with him had scattered in all directions, and even their screams could no longer be heard.
Gray wiped his forehead with a blood-stained hand and muttered.
"...If it's gonna be like this, why not just bring those high-and-mighty 'hero' nims along, the fuck."
Heroes.
Adventurers so invincible that there was no one in the Empire—no, in the entire continent—who dared to challenge them.
Monstrous humans who could behead an ogre with a single sword stroke and reduce a group of trolls to ash with a single incantation.
Scum like himself couldn't even dream of looking at their faces, but at this very moment, he wanted to punch them with all his might.
'They've probably already gone down to the lower layers. Without even giving a damn about the likes of us.'
He ground his teeth. His nails dug into his palms.
'Then do something, dammit...!!'
He didn't want to die like this. He couldn't accept that twenty-eight years of life would end in this damp pit—
Crack.
A crack appeared in the ceiling. No, it wasn't a crack. The rock itself was moving.
"Rock-boring bug...!!"
He reflexively rolled to the side. An instant later, a boulder weighing hundreds of pounds slammed down on the spot where he had been sitting.
The stone floor split like a spiderweb, and fragments flew in all directions.
A piece of rock grazed his cheek, cutting his skin, but he had no time to worry about it.
It rose from the dust. A hunter that had been camouflaged on the ceiling, waiting for its prey to tire.
Its outer shell was like stone itself, a rocky surface that could deflect even a steel blade.
If he had had a blunt weapon, it would have been a different story, but in Gray's hand was only a single sword—chipped and stained with monster blood.
The rock-boring bug extended its six joints and charged. Gray avoided a head-on confrontation and dodged to the side.
Its charge was heavy and linear. The problem was that its directional change after stopping was faster than expected.
'Head-on is suicide, and its back is the same rock. Which means—'
Experience guided his eyes. Between the joints, the gap in the articulation beneath the body. The rock was thinner there, a flexible joint gap.
The rock-boring bug charged again. This time, Gray didn't dodge. At the last moment, he lowered his body and slipped into the gap beneath it like a slide.
His back scraped against the floor as if it were on fire, but he gritted his teeth, reversed his grip on the sword, and stabbed it into the joint gap.
Kiiiik—!!
A friction sound like a scream. The blade broke halfway, but one joint lost its strength and crumpled. The rock-boring bug, losing its balance, staggered.
Gray rolled out, gripped the broken sword again, and as he poured his remaining mana into the second joint on the same side of the staggering creature, he incanted.
"Fi-re."
The flame that burst from his fingertips dug into the joint gap. That firepower, which was nothing more than a match flame to an ogre, was different for the soft tissue exposed between the rock gaps.
With the stench of burning flesh, the rock-boring bug writhed like mad. The second joint went limp, and the creature completely collapsed to one side.
Gray didn't miss it. Under the overturned body, the center of the abdomen where the rock was thinnest—where its core would be.
He gripped the broken blade with both hands, put his full weight behind it, and drove it down.
Thud—
A dull sensation. When the blade was embedded about halfway, the rock-boring bug's joints all convulsed at once, then went slack.
"...Hah, hah..."
Gray collapsed, hanging from the embedded sword.
His entire body trembled. Blood flowing from his back pooled on the floor, and his palms were split open by the sword hilt.
This was how a talentless man survived. A brutal survival, devoid of any elegance, forged from blood and experience.
Rumble, rumble, rumble...
The floor shook. The walls shook. Dust scattered over the corpse of the rock-boring bug.
Gray lifted his head, leaning on the broken sword. His heart stopped for a beat.
'...Could it be, did they actually do something?'
The heroes. Did they break the core in the lower layer? Was it over? This hell.
But the shaking didn't stop. Rather, it came closer. Closer. Closer. Closer.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
It was on a completely different level from an ogre's footsteps. With each step, the entire passage trembled, and stone dust fell from the ceiling like rain.
Right next to the wall Gray was leaning against, from the darkness of the forked passage—it revealed itself.
The first thing he saw was its body hair. Dark brown bristles, thick as if they couldn't be burnt even with the fires of hell, covered its massive forearms.
Next were the claws. Three of them. Black curved blades that seemed like they could pierce any hero's armor like paper. And in its grip—
Three ogre heads were crushed. The very ones that had been chasing him until just now.
The skulls were being crushed between its fingers, brains dripping down.
When the massive body that filled the passage fully revealed itself, Gray couldn't even breathe.
Blood-red eyes, blazing with hatred, shone like two lanterns in the darkness.
He had never seen one before. Not in person. But he knew. From the tavern, from the guild bulletin board, from the countless descriptions that slipped from the trembling lips of adventurers.
Greater Demon. Man Eater.
'...Balrog.'
The blood-red eyes moved. They locked onto the man frozen against the wall. A moment of stillness.
"Fu—"
Before Gray could even roll his body, something swept in from the corner of his vision.
A tail. A tail the size of a log cleaved through the air. Instinctively, he raised the broken sword in front of him.
Clang—!!
The scream of tearing metal. The sword held. No, it didn't hold. His body was sent flying by the sheer impact.
When his back slammed into the wall across from him, he could hear his own ribs breaking. Blood burst from his mouth.
When Gray collapsed to the ground and lifted his head, the Balrog was already right in front of him.
He didn't even know when it had approached. The blood-red eyes looked down at him. Three claws came down indifferently.
And then—
His side erupted.
"——!!"
He couldn't even scream. His flesh split open along with his ribs, and something hot poured out.
Blood. His own blood. The crimson spilling onto the floor stained his vision.
The Balrog looked down at Gray. Once. Then it turned its head away like a beast that had lost interest.
It threw away the ogre heads and went back the way it came.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The footsteps faded. Less attention than stepping on an insect.
Gray clutched his side. He could feel the touch of his intestines between his fingers.
His vision blurred. The mana stone lights on the ceiling seemed to flicker out, one by one.
'Why... is there a Balrog in a place like this...'
The middle layer. A Greater Demon in the middle layer, not the lower. Had the information been wrong? From the beginning.
'...I don't want to die.'
His lips moved, but no sound came out. Blood pooled in his mouth, choking him.
Rumble, rumble, rumble...
Another tremor. But this one was different. It wasn't the Balrog's footsteps. The direction was different.
It was coming from below. As if the entire dungeon was pulsing to the beat of something.
'This... the Balrog's sound... wasn't... it...'
'...What...'
His vision went dark.
.
.
.
"...Hukk!!"
Cold. A single drop of water struck his forehead. That trivial sensation caught his fading consciousness and pulled it up.
His eyes opened.
A damp ceiling. Faint mana stone light. A familiar smell—the air of the dungeon's middle layer, a mix of blood, moss, and dampness.
'...Am I... alive?'
His heart was beating. That alone was a miracle. His side had definitely been torn open. His intestines had spilled out. From the Balrog's claws.
Gray touched his side with trembling hands. What he felt between the torn leather armor was—smooth skin.
The wound had healed. There wasn't even a scar. As if it had never existed in the first place.
'...What is this.'
Confusion came before relief. He opened his palms and looked at them. His hands, calloused and split from the sword hilt—were small. Strangely small.
The knuckles were slender, the nails were clean, and there was no trace of the labor of twenty-eight years of life anywhere.
'...?'
He put a hand on his waist. It was thin. It wasn't the body he knew.
The leather armor hung loosely, covering his shoulders, and his pants were folded under his ankles, dragging on the floor.
He stood up. His legs were unsteady, but stranger than that was his eye level. It was low.
He was sure he had to duck his head slightly in this passage, but now the ceiling was far above. As if the world had grown a handspan taller.
'...What is this.'
Staggering, one step, two steps. He walked, supporting himself against the wall. The sensation of his fingers gripping the cracks in the rock was unfamiliar.
Too light. His arms were too thin. His center of gravity was different. Everything was off.
Then, water touched his toes.
A puddle. Groundwater seeping from the ceiling had collected in a depression on the floor, forming a small mirror. The faint light of a mana stone rippled on the water's surface.
Gray unconsciously looked down.
Reflected on the water's surface was not a weary twenty-eight-year-old man.
Silver-tinged light hair flowed down past her shoulders, and on a white face smudged with dust and bloodstains, large eyes stared blankly back at him.
She looked about sixteen. A girl. A girl with a pale face, wearing loose leather armor.
The girl on the water's surface opened her mouth in the same way.
"———Aaaaaaahhh!!!!!"
The scream echoed through the entire cave.