The Truth of the Gold Mine Dungeon
Thwack!
Simon charged across the floor, the Greatsword of Ruin thrust ahead of him.
"By the way," Nirti said, lifting a syringe from her belt and jamming the needle into her own neck with a sharp snap!
At the same time, she raised her left hand. No magic circle was drawn on her palm.
'!'
A white line had appeared out of nowhere, right in front of Simon's face.
'What the—!'
Animal instinct turned his head. Ka-gak! Sparks scattered off Pier's helmet as the white line grazed past his eye.
"You sent the Dungeon Master down thinking you could take me down easily?"
Simon stopped short and looked at the thing that had shot past him.
'Bone?'
A gleaming white bone jutted from her palm, stretched out like a spear pole.
But that wasn't all. Smaller bones sprouted sideways from it like branches, spreading wide.
'Bone Creation Magic!'
[Careful, boy!]
The white bones blanketing the air writhed like the pipes of Songryugwan and surged toward Simon. He twisted his body desperately to dodge, swinging the Greatsword of Ruin to cut them down.
Tap.
Nirti kicked off her shoes and planted her bare feet on the floor.
"Undead soldiers, chimeras, Dungeon Masters—doesn't matter."
Her eyes flashed.
"In this Tarados, the strongest one here is me!"
At the same moment, Pier's shout rang out.
[Your feet!]
Crash-crack-crack-crack!
White bones shot up from the dungeon floor like spikes. Simon recoiled in alarm and leapt back, and in the spot where he'd stood, white thorns rose without end.
'She's using leg bones...!'
This time Nirti thrust both arms forward. The bones that had begun as two strands split apart in midair, branching out to blanket the ground.
'Bone Creation Magic was this versatile?'
Simon sprinted wildly, swinging the greatsword.
No matter how many bones he slashed and cleaved, Nirti herself showed no pain or damage whatsoever—only a flicker of mild surprise. She seemed puzzled that the severed sections, cut by the Greatsword of Ruin, refused to grow back.
[Hup!]
Simon twisted his waist and drew the sword in a wide arc, and the bones that had turned the air into a jungle split diagonally, cleanly severed.
But piercing through the pressure, more bones shot out and rushed at him.
Ka-gak!
Ka-gak!
Pier moved the Bone Armor, blocking and deflecting the bones that charged in a straight line at Nirti's command.
'Thanks, Pier!'
Barely escaping serious injury, Simon began running again.
"Useless."
Kwa-kwa-kwak!
Bones sprang from the floor like a fence, blocking his charge. Simon had no choice but to veer off and circle around.
'She really is strong.'
The Blood Heaven Sect incident.
The Frost Dragon Carissa incident.
The Tarados incident.
The core figure closest to the mastermind behind them all.
Her strength was only natural. She hadn't been pushed back an inch even against Simon wielding a Legion Commander's power.
Above all, she wasn't a student. She was a seasoned professional necromancer who had survived every kind of hell.
Vmmm!
As she pressed him with Bone Creation Magic, she began expanding her variations. From her subspace, floating blood-red eyeballs darted out.
Kiiiing!
Kiing!
The moment the eyeballs fixed their gaze on Simon, he felt his body sluggish, his movements dulling.
'A curse that takes hold just by being seen!'
And then, at the same time—
Fwaaarrrk!
Fwaarrrk!
Nirti, having cornered Simon against the wall with Bone Creation Magic, hurled ten jet-black flame spells at him.
Black flames swallowed Simon whole.
Kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-kwak!
Dozens of bones plunged into the explosion, skewering him. Nirti finally lowered her arm.
"Is that all? Strong power, but lacking experience."
Then she rested her chin on her hand.
'Not an agent from Kizen, but Simon Polentia and Kajaan Erwald. One of the two, I suppose.'
Shaaaaaak!
Just then, a perfectly straight slash tore through the explosion. She raised bones to defend herself, but all five eyeballs floating around her burst simultaneously.
Teeong!
Simon charged again, breaking through the explosive smoke.
"Do it as many times as you like. It changes nothing."
Nirti's Bone Creation Magic devoured the space around him.
But this time, Simon's assault was different. He sprinted, braked hard to open a gap, and swung the Greatsword of Ruin only when it was precisely necessary—no wasted motion.
'Sword path, habits, patterns.'
The Bone Creation Magic writhed closer. By now its movements were familiar to his eyes.
'In the end, it's a human controlling those bones! Analyze. Adapt!'
Simon's movements as he ran, dodging the bones raining down like white sleet by mere fractions of an inch, were dazzling—almost divine.
Teeong!
He kicked off the floor, leapt, and ran across the laboratory ceiling. The bones rising from the ground couldn't reach him there.
"Kuh!"
She needed more bone. A hole tore open in the clothing over Nirti's stomach, and a rib soon pushed its way out.
'Jet-Black, and—'
Simon calmly extended his left arm.
'—mix in Cloud!'
He detonated the two furiously spinning forces in midair. A jet-black smoke screen swallowed Simon's body.
'A cheap trick!'
Nirti halted her assault, narrowed her eyes, and waited. Soon the tip of a greatsword emerged, piercing through the smoke.
'Got you!'
The instant the sword confirmed Simon's position, Nirti dumped every bone in her body straight at it. The bones tore through the smoke.
Fwaaak!
But—
Simon was on the ground. He had circled around the smoke screen, stripped off Pier's Bone Armor, and was charging at her himself.
'Then what is that greatsword?!'
As the smoke cleared, she saw Pier—nothing but bones now—grinning as he thrust the greatsword forward.
A perfect feint.
<Phantasus Original – Sleep>
Simon shot forward like lightning, touching her abdomen and back as he passed.
Two stacks in a single exchange.
Ding—
For a moment, her whole body went languid, and she felt strength drain from her limbs.
'A Sleep curse?'
And not just any sleep—this was a potent Sleep, one that made her eyelids droop even in a battle where her life hung by a thread.
She calmly activated the Cancellation circle inscribed on her body and extended her right arm.
Shaaaak!
Simon flung his arm back as well. Pier's bones flew in and coiled around his right arm, and at last the Greatsword of Ruin settled into his hand.
[Huaaaaaah!]
Charge.
'Reckless! Is he blindly trusting a Sleep he planted in advance?'
Counterattack.
As she spewed bones forward to skewer Simon's body, Nirti overlooked two things.
First, her Cancellation had failed to erase the Sleep.
Second, because of that Sleep's lingering effect, the bones hadn't extended at their full condition.
Simon twisted his body, threaded between the bones, raised the greatsword above his head, and brought it down with all his might.
Shaaaaaak!
Her shoulder and right arm severed, she let out a terrible scream. Simon couldn't press the attack either, retreating to avoid the bones surging up from the floor.
'The bones threw off the greatsword's angle for a second!'
"Kkeuk! Kkuuuh!"
Nirti clutched her severed shoulder, shuddering.
Having researched immortality, she could regenerate something like an arm—but a wound dealt by the Greatsword of Ruin could not be healed.
"This much?!"
She abandoned the shoulder blade severed by the Greatsword of Ruin, threaded a different bone through her shoulder socket in its place, shaped it like an arm bone, and stretched it long.
Jjaeeeeng!
At the same moment, one of the nearby test tubes shattered, and a single arm from a chimera-fied monster flew into the air. It snapped—click!—onto her severed right arm.
Ggeudeudeudeuk!
Ggeudeudeudeuk!
She braced the chimera arm firmly with Bone Creation Magic, then immediately sprinted forward, swinging her new limb. Simon raised the Greatsword of Ruin in a guard before his body.
Jjeooooeng!
'!!'
Monstrous strength.
Despite the guard, Simon's body was hurled backward. Pier came rocketing back, wrapped the Bone Armor around Simon as if embracing him, and together they slammed into the wall.
Kugugugugu—!
Watching the thick dust settle, Nirti snatched up a syringe with her trembling left arm and drove it into her body again and again. Stimulants beat back the sleep; painkillers erased the pain.
Hoooo—
But when she saw Simon standing up perfectly fine, her eyes filled with wariness.
"I hate to admit it, but you really are Kizen."
She smirked.
"The more I look at you, the more of a waste it'd be to kill you. Why don't you work for the Elder too? He can never resist talent. He'd even forgive all the atrocities you've committed so far."
[Fighting, and now this nonsense?]
Chuk.
Simon rested the greatsword on his shoulder. His formless cloak billowed brilliantly.
[You 'Cabal' scum exploited innocent residents and carried out forbidden human experiments. And you want me to work alongside you?]
"Everything is for a higher cause."
Nirti said.
"And I don't know about anything else, but—Tarados people, innocent? That phrase pisses me off."
Reciting the words icily, she pressed her hand against the wall.
"The Gold Mine Dungeon was said to have been destroyed decades ago. Do you know how it still remains here in Tarados?"
Simon could barely stand; the damage to his legs hadn't yet recovered.
He decided to use the conversation to buy time until they did.
[You researched the ability of a sword that seizes control of dungeons. You must have managed something with that technique.]
"What are you talking about? Sure, that technique can take over a dungeon, but it can't recreate one that's already gone."
She raised both arms wide.
"This dungeon was never destroyed in the first place."
Decades ago.
When 'dungeon addicts' turned immortal poured out of the Gold Mine Dungeon and reduced the city to ruins, five adventurers, commissioned by the lord, came to conquer it.
They fought their way at last into the deepest chamber of the dungeon and killed the Dungeon Master.
Or so history recorded.
"The truth is, the Dungeon Master, like the monsters of other dungeons, possessed the attribute of immortality. The adventurers couldn't destroy it outright, so sealing it was the best they could do. Once the Dungeon Master was sealed by an artifact's power, its chamber closed, the dungeon lost all its power, and the monsters stopped coming out. People naturally assumed the Dungeon Master had died and the dungeon destroyed."
She walked forward slowly.
"When the dungeon that produced gold fell silent, people blinded by rage brutally murdered the very adventurers who had saved their lives, without a shred of gratitude. Of those five, only one—a single female adventurer—barely survived thanks to her companions' sacrifice. And in the woman's belly—"
Her voice dropped to a low hush.
"There was a baby."
Simon's pupils shook as if an earthquake had struck them.
[...Don't tell me.]
"Yes. That's right."
Nirti twisted her mouth into a grotesque, monster-like grin.
"Those adventurers were my parents."
The female adventurer, wrongfully widowed and having escaped the Gold Mine Dungeon, fled the Tarados residents who chased her to kill her, escaping to the neighboring territory of Ebrun. There, alone and struggling, she gave birth to Nirti.
But the woman was desperately weakened—and worse, her mind hovered on the brink of collapse, consumed by her husband's death and her hatred for the people of Tarados who had betrayed them.
I'm sorry, Nirti. Mom is so, so sorry.
Nirti was three years old when her mother hanged herself.
Having lost both parents, Nirti wandered back alleys and slums from a tender age, scavenging garbage to eat, catching and devouring rats to survive.
Exploited for her labor, subjected to vile abuses, beaten by drunken vagrants—so she dragged out her days, one after another. And the place she was finally sold off to for a handful of coins was—
From now on, this is your home.
An illegal necromancer experiment facility.
There she endured experiments far beyond what a human being could bear. But while every other test subject died, Nirti survived to the very end, her hatred serving as the engine that drove her.
The researchers performed the final stage of the experiments—the 'Core'—on Nirti, turning her into a necromancer. And one month later,
every soul in that laboratory was slaughtered by the hands of a fully awakened Nirti.
"That's when the 'Elder' reached out to me, a drifting nobody. His ideology and his goals aligned perfectly with everything I wanted."
She spread her arms wide.
"I joined the Cabal and grew into a powerful necromancer. And then I went to the Gold Mine Dungeon! My mother used to tell me—the Dungeon Master wasn't completely killed!"
[...]
"So I built my laboratory in the Gold Mine Dungeon, and decided to use this dungeon to create an army of the undead."
Her furious mouth split open in a long, jagged line.
"Tarados! Tarados! This hateful Tarados! I'll make them suffer exactly what I suffered! I'll starve them, sicken them, make them grovel in filthy gutters—and in the end, I'll use them as experiment subjects! As much as they ruined my life, I'll return every ounce of suffering I endured back onto them, exactly as I received it!"
She burst out laughing—Hahahahaha!
"It's all. Their. Just deserts!"
[...]
His legs were slowly recovering. Simon let out a long breath and moved forward.
[It's true your past is tragic. But almost everyone in Tarados who murdered your parents is dead or gone. Why must you carry your vengeance down to their descendants?]
"Don't make me laugh!"
She shrieked.
"Then why did I have to endure that horrific past and those human experiments? Why? For what reason? There's no reason behind this world's malice! I'm simply returning it in kind! I will destroy Tarados—and then this kingdom, and the Alliance itself!"
[...'Returning it in kind'?]
At those words—
the last trace of sympathy drained from Simon's eyes, leaving them cold and hard.
[You've gone too far astray, Nirti.]