Nothing but Hodgepodge
Basement Level 3 of the Gold Mine Dungeon.
Simon walked on, dragging in ragged breaths. His heart pounded, and sweat poured down his forehead like rain. All around him, the twitching fragments of undead — crippled beyond any hope of regeneration — writhed across the stone.
I tried to pace myself, at least.
It had been a resounding failure. He'd simply smashed everything in his path. At this rate, he might be worn out before he ever laid eyes on Nirrti, the boss of this place.
[Keheheh! So these are undead of immortality? Whoever made them certainly put together some usable pieces!]
Pier was surveying the sprawled-out undead. As Legion Manager, he apparently couldn't help but take an interest.
[Pathetic, if you ask me. Immortality, my foot — they're nothing but toys stitched together from dungeon scraps.]
Herseba scoffed, sounding utterly uninterested.
"No time to waste. Let's keep moving."
Sword in his right hand, Herseba in his left, Simon pressed onward. Then Pier, sensing something, spoke up.
[Boy! New enemies ahead.]
Simon blinked. The fog and darkness that hung thick over the third floor made it impossible to make out anything in the distance.
But if Pier said it, he could trust it.
[Undying soldiers. Hundreds of them, at a glance.]
Unbelievable.
Nirrti had laid her defenses two and three layers deep. He could certainly punch through them with Pier and the Legion's power — but the drain on his stamina was brutal.
[And there — the passage on your right.]
Simon turned his head. Beside the central corridor leading to Nirrti's laboratory, another passage branched off.
[A swarm of intent pouring out of that one as well!]
A flanking attack?
If they hit him from front and back at once, things would get messy.
Simon left the undead army barring the main path and slipped into the side passage instead.
And there—
'……!'
—he witnessed something horrific.
-Kiiiiiiii!
-Gigigigik!
Townsfolk already well along in their undeath thrashed together with undead monsters of every description. It looked as though every failed experiment beyond control had been dumped in here. Excited at the sight of a living being, they convulsed against their cages, bloodshot eyes bulging, clawed hands reaching through the bars.
Incineration, huh.
Simon turned his head — and there, in the far distance, an incinerator glowed, heat rippling off its flames.
[I don't like it, kid.]
The wand Herseba thumped down onto his shoulder.
[Maybe it's because I've become a Lich myself. But watching someone toy with undead like that — experimenting on them, then tossing them out like garbage — it makes me sick.]
"……."
Simon, chin in hand, thinking hard — and a light flickered in his eyes.
"I've just had a wonderful idea."
Then he began to cough — khum, khem. Herseba's expression froze solid.
[You're not about to sing that bizarre song again?]
Tzik— tk—
Basement Level 3 of the dungeon, where Simon stood. Masked men of 'The Society' were holding the passageways with their undying soldiers. One of them raised a communication crystal orb.
"Lady Nirrti! A single Kizen necromancer has reached the third floor."
-One person?
"Yes."
-My experiments here are nearly complete. Stop them by any means necessary.
"Understood."
Tzik—
The line to Nirrti went dead, and the man pocketed the crystal orb. Around him stood a dozen or so fellow Society members, masked like himself.
"Remarkable. I thought if we fortified this passage with undying soldiers, we could hold out for at least three days."
"Still, cutting through this place alone is impossible."
"Hm. He's rushing far too much."
Thud. Thud.
Footsteps echoed off the stone floor. Someone was approaching.
"He's here."
Emerging from the darkness came a man shrouded head to toe in massive, unidentifiable Bone Armour, his face hidden beneath a skull helm.
In his hands he held a white greatsword — and a wand.
The Society members drew their weapons, and the undying undead behind them let out low, rumbling growls.
"Your courage in coming this far is admirable. But do you truly intend to face all of us alone?"
[Alone?]
A voice like iron scraping over stone slid out from beneath Simon's helm.
[What kind of dream are you babbling about?]
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
On the heels of Simon's own footsteps, countless more thundered out of the darkness behind him.
'No way! He had a hidden army?!'
Moments later, what poured out of the dark were more than a thousand failed undead — the escapees from the cages and the incinerator.
"O-our undead!"
[Der König ist Zurück――!!]
Simon raised his greatsword and gave the charge order. The failed undead shrieked and hurled themselves at the ones who had made them into such monstrosities. Simon ran at their head, cloak streaming.
"Stop them!"
The Society members and their undying soldiers surged forward. The two armies collided head-on in the middle of the passage.
BUUOOM—
CRASH—
KWA-KWA-KWA-KWAAAM!
A deafening racket echoed in from beyond the door — but inside the room, all was silent.
The Tarados branch, Senior Researcher Nirrti's laboratory.
"Almost finished now."
Before her, a monster was fixed to the dungeon wall like a cocoon. Nerve-like tendrils concentrated on it from every direction, as if the entire dungeon were feeding it nutrients. She was injecting the creature with drugs and layering dark magic over it.
"Just a little more."
She glanced at the figures displayed in the magic circle hanging in the air — and at last, a satisfied smile spread across her face.
"A little more, and my life's greatest masterpiece will be—"
[Masterpiece?]
KWAAAAAAAAANG!
Someone kicked the door clean off its hinges and strode into the laboratory.
The smell of blood hit like a wave. The intruder was wrapped in Bone Armour, face hidden behind a skull helm.
[You're Nirrti?]
"……Impressive. Reaching this place in a matter of hours."
Beyond the shattered doorway, the masked Society members and undead who had failed to stop him lay sprawled across the floor.
"Useless, the lot of them."
The undead swarmed forward, trying to follow into the laboratory. Nirrti snapped her fingers, and the door slammed shut with a boom.
"More importantly — who are you? With skill like that, you can't be a student. There was no one like you in any of the profiles I secured."
Shing.
Instead of answering, Simon leveled the tip of his greatsword at her.
[Make the undead outside stop.]
"That's a request I'm afraid I can't honor."
While he spoke with her, Simon's eyes were sweeping the room. An enormous laboratory. Everywhere he looked, countless experimental chimera specimens floated in their tanks. All told — a hundred of them, no, closer to a thousand. If every one of those were imbued with immortality and released outside… the mere thought was horrifying.
"Pretty impressive, isn't it?"
She traced a finger through the air.
"This used to be the Dungeon Lord's chamber. Now it's my laboratory."
Crash!
The sound of a tank shattering. A beat later, accompanied by the snap of something kicking off the floor, a chimera dropped down in front of Simon before he could blink.
It's huge!
Simon's eyes flooded with wariness. A mid-sized monster, but a nightmarish chimera — there was no telling how many different creatures had been fused into it. And studded across its body were human faces, each one twisted in what looked like unbearable agony.
"I'm a bit busy at the moment, so this one will deal with you in my place."
Nirrti turned her back and resumed her research without so much as a glance. Simon started toward her — and a brown arm hanging from the chimera's back whipped through the air at him.
WHUNG!
Simon jerked his head aside just in time. Next came a green orc's arm, then a scale-covered reptilian one.
There's no opening!
Forced to give ground, he watched ten arms rise at once, each palm forming a sphere of Jet-Black and hurling it.
[Tch!]
Swept the Sword of Ruin through the air in countless arcs. The blades flashed, splitting the Jet-Black spheres apart, and they erupted.
-Kyaaaaaaak!
-Uuuuugh!
The faces studding the chimera's body screamed in agony. Lifeforms that should never have been joined had been stitched together, and the strain was tearing the undead body apart — grotesque tumors and cancerous growths swelling and bursting, over and over.
And in that moment, the voice of Grerion, Professor of Summoning Material Science, rose in his memory.
-When I told this class was called 'Chimera Design Theory,' a few of you looked frightened. I understand — chimeras carry the image of forbidden research, of a discipline that tramples on life itself. But it's the exact opposite.
TAT!
Simon kicked off the ground and charged.
-Chimera design builds character. The more you learn, the more you come to grasp the dignity of life.
-You'll all come to feel it yourselves. How exquisitely every single living creature is made. How it adapted to its environment, which parts developed, which parts it let fall into disuse. Why does this organ exist? How is it able to move? Through competition and evolution, life hones itself to the absolute limit!
-Design a chimera, and you'll find yourself moved to your core by every one of those details — goosebumps rising on your skin. Can I truly blend two finished creations, each perfect in its own right? The question forces itself upon you!
He slipped past the monster's flailing arms or vaulted over them, weaving from one perch to the next. Spewing Jet-Black into empty air to change direction, then slamming the brakes hard to tear open a gap.
-The chimera, you see, is the necromancer's answer to what the Priests call the Goddess's creation!
[Nirrti!]
Simon kicked off the floor and launched himself at the chimera.
His eyes went wide. He could see it — the single most important stitch of any chimera, the line called the 'center seam.'
-A chimera is not some undead brute-forced into power by mashing parts together. That's not a chimera. That is—
[Everything you've ever made—!]
The Sword of Ruin plunged toward the monster's seam.
-is nothing but hodgepodge!
[Nothing but hodgepodge!]
CHAAAAAAAANG!
A single strike. A long line opened across the monster's chest, its organs spilled out, and the chimera collapsed.
Crackle!
One blow had been enough. Even with the effects of an immortal Legion, the Sword of Ruin — which halts all regeneration — had severed the chimera's center seam and neutralized it outright.
Thank you, Professor Grerion!
Sword re-gripped, Simon walked on. Behind him, the enormous body crashed down and twitched.
"What — Specimen 2109, already?"
Nirrti, syringe still buried in the wall-bound monster, turned with an icy expression.
"And what was it you just said? That my chimeras are hodgepodge?"
[That's right. What you're building here isn't a chimera, or anything else worth the name.]
Simon's eyes flashed.
[I'm going to hear exactly why you committed these atrocities in Tarados.]
"An answer, is it."
She flung her research tools aside and reached toward the magic circle of the still-incomplete wall-bound monster.
HWUUUNG!
The monster's eyes flew open — and its jaws gaped, spewing a blinding lance of light in a straight line.
"!"
Simon hurled himself aside, and the beam gouged across the floor. The stone glowed blistering red, then exploded a second time.
"Do you know what this is?"
Nirrti said, unsealing the monster's bindings.
"This creature is, in fact, the Dungeon Lord of this very 'Gold Mine Dungeon.' If you truly want to save your friends and the townsfolk — then bring it down."
Even without her telling him, Simon could feel it in his gut: that monster was the Dungeon Lord of this place. With every step it took, the dungeon's floor trembled as though the whole structure were quaking.
Kiiiiiiiiing!
Cloak whipping, Simon evaded the next beam and sent a slash of the Sword of Ruin arcing out. The cut carved clean through the Dungeon Lord's shoulder—
Grrrrrgle!
—and the flesh welled back up in an instant.
"Of course! It has the power of immortality as well!"
The Dungeon Lord's thighs swelled taut, veins standing out — and then it kicked off the ground and charged.
"Kill it! Then we finish the final stage of my research!"
Just then, the corner of Simon's mouth lifted.
"Now! Herseba!"
Flung from Simon's hand, Herseba gushed out a massive torrent of sand, engulfing the charging Dungeon Lord's entire body.
SHAAAAAAAAA—
⟨ Herseba Original — World of Sand ⟩
Herseba and the Dungeon Lord's body vanished without a trace. Nirrti's eyes went wide.
"H-how?"
[A Dungeon Lord with the power of immortality, inside its own dungeon. What happens to that immortality when it's forcibly transported to another space?]
That Dungeon Lord was no match for Herseba and Akemus.
Simon was certain of it.
And watching the technique that had banished the Dungeon Lord to another world, Nirrti finally opened her mouth.
"……Don't tell me. You're the one who brought down Silaje and the Blood Sky Cult?"
Instead of answering, Simon unleashed an enormous surge of Jet-Black.
[Right here, right now — we settle this completely, Nirrti.]