An Easy Way to Make Money (4)
As I stepped inside by way of the stairs, a corridor steeped in darkness greeted me.
There were lights, but they showed not the slightest intention of turning on.
"Wel—come. What busi——ness brings you here?"
Something had noticed the intruder and came walking out of the dark.
A doll emerged through the gloom, approaching me as it spoke.
It was a rabbit doll that looked for all the world like something you could buy off a store shelf.
Its appearance was cute enough, yet the fact that it had walked out alone from the darkness only sharpened my wariness further.
"Do you perchance have some busi—ness——"
I swung my sword and cut down the approaching rabbit doll.
In that instant I felt mana moving stealthily within the walls on either side.
In my previous life I had lived without knowing the first thing about mana, yet after possessing this body I accepted it as naturally as water flowing downhill.
Whether that was because I had possessed this body, or because this world itself was simply that way, I could not say.
What mattered was that I had sensed the mana now.
And it was Black Mana.
The same as mine.
Before anything could happen I quickly wrapped Aura around my sword and slashed the places where I felt the mana.
The Black Mana that had been secretly forming shapes hidden inside the walls was destroyed and scattered by my Aura-infused blade.
"Do you perchance have some busi—ness——"
And just in case the doll might rise again and catch me from behind, I conjured flames and burned it outright.
"Bu-business, busi——"
Pitch-black flames consumed the doll.
The flames that gave off a black light possessed a rather majestic quality when you looked at them.
Black light? Did that even make sense?
This was fire magic I had learned from the internet.
A truly simple spell—anyone with mana could cast it.
It was a weak magic that could not even pierce basic fire-resistance wards,
yet the black flames I conjured somehow carried far greater power.
Power enough to reduce that rabbit doll—which must have been layered with all manner of defensive magic—to ash in an instant.
Well, good is good. Strong is better, right?
Confirming the doll had completely turned to ash, I moved on once more.
The basement was quite spacious.
It would take a fair amount of time to reach the deepest layer where the villain was hiding.
And along the way, objects of unclear purpose caught my eye on both sides of the corridor.
Everyday items—ballpoint pens, mugs, and the like—were set out there, which made the whole place feel distinctly unsettling.
I considered destroying them, but a creepy sensation warned me not to touch them, so I left them alone.
"Intruder detected!"
And there were ambushers that came at me from the darkness.
Dolls that kept popping out from who-knew-where, knives in hand and spewing fire, bursting from the dark.
I could not sense any presence at all,
yet they appeared without warning, so the mental strain was considerable.
As if they were being formed from the darkness itself, or summoned out of it.
Thinking that and looking again, the placement of the lights felt quite deliberate.
It was an arrangement that inevitably left places the light could never reach.
And moreover—I had eyes that could pierce even darkness without a single point of light.
Yet the darkness from which the dolls emerged was as if the dark itself had clumped together; I could not see clearly inside it.
This had to be an artificial phenomenon.
But it was fine. Since it was dolls doing that nonsense rather than people, the atmosphere turned strangely horror-like, yet it was not frightening.
How could it be scary when a single taste of Aura would kill them?
Anyway, I advanced while cutting down every moving object in the basement.
I did not miss even the small bugs that caught my eye in between.
Since I preferred not to put my sword to them, I conjured flames and killed them all.
Those were definitely familiars.
If I left them alive they would surely feed a great deal of information to the villain.
Even if they were not familiars, bugs ought to be killed.
Why kill bugs that are not familiars?
The reason was simple.
I just hate bugs.
After turning them all amicably into a handful of ashes, I entered the second basement floor.
-Krarararak!
-Kiyot!
The moment I descended to the second floor, what greeted me was a horde of monsters.
They varied in size; some were quite small like Miho, while others were as large as a rhinoceros.
Dozens of monsters moved in perfect unison as if they were a single entity and began to surround me.
If the black mage himself was controlling these monsters, I could give him credit for quite excellent control.
"I can't just leave them like that, now can I?"
I needed to cut through the middle of their formation.
Wrapping Aura around my sword, I dashed forward.
I killed the monsters with the barest minimum of movement.
I slipped past charging monsters with only slight shifts of foot and torso,
stomped the small one that had been secretly aiming for my ankle after wrapping Aura around my foot,
and immediately smashed the one that lunged at my side with an Aura-wrapped fist.
It did not even take a few minutes for all dozens of monsters to die.
"Kang."
Suddenly Miho popped out of the picture.
Why did she come out all of a sudden?
Watching her, I saw Miho extracting and sucking the Black Mana that remained in the monsters.
Dozens of monsters with straws stuck into them by Miho alone, having their Black Mana stolen in real time... it felt somehow... strange.
Miho's satisfied feeling transmitted itself to me as well.
In less than a few minutes the corpses of dozens of monsters shriveled completely without remainder.
Just like mummies.
Miho lay down on the floor as if satisfied and prepared to sleep.
I could feel her Black Mana rapidly strengthening.
"······Please go back inside."
"Kang."
Fortunately, Miho returned into the picture.
······I didn't summon a dangerous being, did I?
Well, whatever. Since she is my summon, there will be no harm to me.
By the way—controlling dozens of monsters?
Commanding dozens of monsters, not merely a few, is no easy task.
Of course, if one has the skill it is not strange.
A skilled black mage can command thousands of troops alone.
In fact, this world's history records a necromancer who alone commanded hundreds of thousands of undead.
But for a talentless and inexperienced black mage, even fully controlling a single monster is difficult.
That villain might have been far more skilled than I had thought.
Raising my wariness another notch, I advanced.
Monsters continued to appear afterward.
Perhaps because more than half had been expended in the previous engagement, the ones that charged were not as numerous as before.
From the start I could feel all their movements, so dealing with them was not difficult.
That did not mean the numbers were small, however.
Just roughly counting the monsters I had killed so far, it seemed well over a hundred.
It was so many that I absolutely could not believe it was the work of the villain I had known from the original story.
At this level I would have to consider the possibility of external intervention.
Thinking that as I pressed forward, before I knew it the entrance to the third basement floor was waiting for me.
The villain was probably on the third basement floor.
In the original, after killing the villain, the description said he only emerged after climbing the stairs three times.
As a bonus, he later revisited that space and took every helpful thing he could find.
All right, then. Shall I go down?
The third basement floor was wider than the first and second.
This dungeon that gradually widened the deeper one went hit its peak on the third floor.
At the end of a long corridor lined with numerous rooms stood a large wooden door.
It was not made of particularly luxurious material, yet it did not look poor in quality either.
I walked past the many rooms until I stood before the wooden door.
Unlike the previous floors, the third basement floor held no obstacles of any kind, so
I arrived in front of the door without incident.
If I open this door and catch the villain, it is over.
The first step toward living peacefully in this world.
I might drop out if academy life proves too hard, so I will need plenty of assets. Hmm.
After taking a brief deep breath,
I immediately opened the door.
"···So, so you've come this far after all."
What I saw when the door fully opened was a man.
He had corpse-pale skin and hair long enough to reach near his shoulder blades.
He looked quite emaciated, as if under heavy stress, giving off an overall corpse-like atmosphere.
Behind him stood a structure that resembled an altar;
to the right was a rather wide desk, and to the left refrigerators stood lined up in a row.
All manner of books lay scattered across the desk, and long blood-red marks stained the altar,
marks that continued down toward the fourth basement floor.
"Nice to meet you. I am Baek Sejin."
My name still did not roll off the tongue easily.
Hearing it, the man trembled and suddenly shouted.
"You···! Where the hell did you come from? Why are you doing this to me! What wrong have I done!"
"Wrongdoings... there are many, aren't there. You stalked someone, did you not?"
The man froze for a moment at my words.
"D-did I get caught? I thought I hid it thoroughly..."
This villain must die.
Of course it is not that I think he must die merely because he stalked someone.
"Also, the matter of your family, for example."
At my words the man's face turned blue as something occurred to him.
"My family is already missing! If you're trying to provoke me..."
"Haha, 'missing,' you say. It seems you don't remember anything at all?"
This man had offered his own family as a sacrifice.