Chapter 164
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 164
Chapter Title: Lake Bottom
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Dragon. Or the Eastern dragon.
This race, commonly depicted in all sorts of creative works, had something that stirred the human imagination.
Seeing how every boy gets fascinated by dinosaurs at least once in their childhood, you can't help but wonder if there's a gene in human DNA that draws us to massive reptiles.
And I was no different—I harbored a certain romantic notion about dragons myself.
Back on Earth, I'd stubbornly fill my party with nothing but dragon-types in Pokémon games, only to get absolutely wrecked by ice-types. I'd scour for cool dragon illustrations and end up falling into the abyss that was Dragon Crisis.
Anyway, that's how much of a romantic I was about dragons...
"You're sure about this?"
"Yes. Lady Erzsebet often talked about the other apostles. Among them was the 'greedy lizard.'"
...Greedy lizard.
"Just to be safe, how did she describe the other Seven Deadly Sins?"
"Uh, what was it... Hmm... Definitely something like shady succubus bitch, department head fish, shady stalker, unpleasant half-corpse..."
"Stop. Just stop."
Come to think of it, every time Erzsebet met one of the other amnesiac Seven Deadly Sins, she'd make this incredibly displeased face.
Could it be that the Seven Deadly Sins don't get along with each other? I figured apostles serving the same god, the Demon God, would at least be friendly...
"Especially that unpleasant half-corpse—Akrich, the one called 'Pride'—she ground her teeth complaining about how it rots all fresh blood..."
"...Right."
To be honest, a reasonable suspicion arose that Erzsebet was just picking fights with everyone, but for the sake of her honor, I decided to gloss over that for now.
Anyway, the important part was the last remaining seventh of the Seven Deadly Sins. What mattered was that this one, presumed to be 'Greed,' was a dragon.
"Dragon blood is that efficient?"
"Of course. Dragons are all massive, so they yield an enormous amount of blood, and the quality they possess overwhelms any other race..."
Erzsebet said that if her own refined blood—purified multiple times with the power she sang praises for every day—was tier 1, then dragon blood was about tier 1.5. And that was without any purification process at all!
"Good. Let's find it."
"But how do you plan to do that? We haven't found any other passages."
Erzsebet didn't outright oppose my idea of putting everything into finding the last Seven Deadly Sin, but she pointed out the practical issue.
The ruins' current structure was like this:
1st Floor - Trap Zone, Chamber of Blood (small altar + Erzsebet's coffin), Dry's Garden
Basement 1 - Undead Hive (with massive mural) + Lilith's Room
Basement 2 - Underground Lake
The problem was that after discovering the massive lake on Basement 2, we hadn't found any new areas. That's why Erzsebet suggested there might not be anything left... but...
'Looking at the [Main Quest] progress, there's at least one... maybe two if it's not too big.'
The contamination level shown in the [Main Quest] was around 44 percent. Even if we fully cleaned the still unfinished Undead Hive and the lake, it didn't seem like that 44 percent would all disappear.
There had to be a new area we hadn't even started cleaning yet. And that place was...
"Mimic."
"Don't. Interrupt."
"Hurry up."
I forcibly summoned Mimic, who was sloshing around communing with Whitey or something.
What the hell was that slime body even doing to always be stuck to Whitey...?
"You. Think back. When Aqua found you, how were you at the lake bottom?"
From Aqua's statements and Mimic's story, Mimic had been sunk at the bottom of the underground lake.
But considering how the other Seven Deadly Sins had been dormant in spaces suited to them, Mimic alone sinking to the lake bottom felt awfully out of place.
That's why I'd theorized there was a separate place where Mimic truly awoke, and it ended up sinking into the lake through some process...
"Memories..."
Mimic pondered my words for a moment, then bounced its body and headed somewhere.
I took sturdy Erzsebet and Dessie—who'd scheme something if left alone—and followed Mimic.
Mimic went down to the underground lake, naturally transformed into Aqua, and plunged straight into the water.
"...Should we follow?"
A bit flustered by Mimic's sudden dive without explanation, I pulled out [Cleaning Safety Goggles] from my inventory, put them on, and jumped in after it.
-[Cleaning Mask (lv.max)]: The core of cleaning! A mask that protects the janitor from all sorts of foul odors and toxic gases.
Thanks to the [Cleaning Safety Goggles], no water got in my eyes, giving me a clear view underwater. And with the [Cleaning Mask] on my respirator, clean air—not water—flowed in.
'I even went into Bikini Bottom in the deep sea to clean.'
Memories flooded back. Back when I was deep into cleaning games, there was that SpongeBob collab that suddenly dropped us into the abyss for cleanup duty.
Users lost their minds when the [Cleaning Mask] suddenly gained underwater breathing...
"Gack... Hack...!"
"Oh, right."
Dessie, whom I'd forced into the water with a command after I jumped in, clutched at his throat like it was torture.
Come to think of it, Erzsebet had a [Cleaning Mask], but I hadn't given Dessie anything yet.
'Sigh.'
-[Representative Employee] changed to 'Aqua'.
I switched the [Representative Employee] to Aqua, granting the 'Underwater Breathing' effect to Dessie and the other employees. Barely able to breathe now, Dessie raged.
"You crazy bastard...! You brute. You shove your luggage into the water?"
"What's a half-undead like you complaining about water for? Do you even breathe? With a life vessel, you wouldn't die even if you didn't, right?"
"You idiot...! Breathing is the most fundamental act separating the living from the dead. Naturally, I, who maintains half his life, must breathe to inhale the deathly qi in the air...!"
"Yeah, yeah. Shut it."
"...!!!"
I shut Desmond's mouth before he launched into another long-winded explanation and turned to find Mimic, who'd gone ahead into the water.
"Wheee!!"
Aqua came rushing at me with a happy grin...
"Mimic. No pranks."
"...No fun."
Mimic grumbled at my reaction, then used Aqua's ability to manipulate the surrounding water, parting a path.
We sank straight to the lake bottom and followed Mimic along it.
'Aqua must've done a lot of cleaning.'
As I trailed Mimic, I scanned the lake floor.
Compared to when I first met Aqua, when this lake was a cesspit, pouring in the [Water Purifier] had left a massive amount of filth here—but now most of it was gone.
"There."
Guiding us, Mimic finally arrived at a spot covered in black muck.
"...? Looks the same as around here."
"Look."
Unable to spot any difference from the surroundings, I looked around—then Mimic, wearing Aqua's form inverted, pointed somewhere.
It was just a small gap between rocks. What was...
Wait.
"You came out from here?"
"My body. Half liquid. Can pass."
"Huh."
No wonder we missed it. I'd asked Aqua to check for passages under the lake, but... this wasn't a passage a person could fit through.
-Shwoooosh!!
As I stared dumbfounded at the tiny crevice, Mimic demonstrated by reverting to its slime form and squeezing right through.
"This is. Slime."
"...No, you're not a slime."
Was this guy seriously maintaining that body because he liked slimes? Hanging with Whitey all the time—did he actually think he was a slime...?
Anyway, we weren't slimes, so we couldn't squeeze through that gap...
"Erzsebet."
"Got it."
Catching my intent, Erzsebet gathered blood into a flail-like mass underwater and smashed the area around the gap Mimic had entered. The floor shattered, creating a path wide enough for people.
"Let's go. Oh, Dessie. You block the water from coming in?"
"Making me, your luggage, do such a petty task...!"
"Fine, stay here then. Oh, gonna remove underwater breathing?"
"........."
Savoring Desmond's trembling fury, I casually entered the newly opened passage. It started as that tiny gap but gradually widened into a fairly spacious room.
And trailing pitifully behind came Desmond, who'd barely scraped together some deathly qi just to cast a waterproof spell, using it all up.
"I. Woke up. Here."
"Hmm......"
Mimic introduced the room as the place where it first awoke.
"Woke up. Tried to explore. Entered gap. Got swept away."
It gave a more detailed account of how Aqua found it.
Like the others, Mimic had awakened with memory gaps and slipped through the visible gap in its main slime body to head upward—only to get immediately buried under a descending mass of filth from above.
'...So it got crushed.'
That's why it was at the bottom...
Mimic's racial trait of freely wielding the powers of transformed races was incredibly potent, but the tradeoff was that its untransformed base form was pathetically weak. So much so that it couldn't even shove off the filth crushing it.
"Couldn't you just transform into something and clear it?"
"To transform. Need recent contact. With target."
"Ah?"
I also learned more details about Mimic's transformation ability. To shapeshift into someone, it needed recent contact with the target or possession of part of them (blood, hair, etc.).
'When it awoke here, it hadn't touched anyone in ages...'
Unable to transform into anything else, Mimic lay helplessly crushed under the filth at the lake bottom until Aqua started cleaning the floor, clearing some muck, spotted it, and pulled it out—doing nothing in between.
'But after barely surviving and getting out, all it does is cause trouble...'
This one was something else.
While listening to Mimic, I surveyed the fairly spacious room interior.
The Seven Deadly Sins we'd found so far had been in places reflecting their traits to some degree, but Mimic's room looked incredibly cluttered at first glance.
'Most of it's rotted away, but this looks like a stash of clothes and gear... all in different sizes.'
A few accessories and equipment had survived the ravages of time, but their sizes and types were so varied it was hard to believe one person used them. Some seemed suited only to specific races.
Fitting for a Mimic that could transform into multiple races, I suppose. Cleaning this meticulously would be a chore, though.
And above all...
"There's a door?"
A short passage extended from Mimic's room. At its end was what clearly looked like the door to the next area of the ruins.
"Why'd you ignore the door when you awoke and go through that gap? Normally, you'd take the door first, right?"
"Door. Heavy. Main body. Can't open."
"Hm."
Yeah, that door looked huge and heavy for a slime body to open, and there were no small gaps visible... Guess that was Mimic's best option at the time.
'No need to hunt for it ourselves—great.'
Based on the pattern so far, beyond that door was probably a new passage or the space where the final Seven Deadly Sin, Greed, slumbered.
Was Greed already awake too? The others had been stirring recently, some even before I found them...
'No need to hesitate.'
We came here specifically to find the last one—the dragon. No point turning back from an obvious path.
Erzsebet was fully stocked on blood for contingencies, and we had Dessie as a meat shield if needed...
'Dragon... Dragon...!'
Above all, anticipation welled up from deep in my chest. The symbol of fantasy. Apex of all races. The moment to see a dragon with my own two eyes...!
"Dessie. Go in first."
"...You bastard. So this is how you planned to use me..."
Of course, since it might be dangerous, I sent Dessie in first. Despite his protests, his body obeyed my command, approaching the heavy door and slowly opening it.
Fortunately, it wasn't locked; rusty hinges creaked as the massive door swung open slowly.
And beyond it...
"...Huh?"