Chapter 21
Chapter 21
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 21
Chapter Title: 4th Floor. Hero Fucker
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Coming out of the altar, I couldn't help but marvel at the incredibly fragrant, fucking awful stench that made me want to twist my own nose—a smell I'd grown so accustomed to that I hadn't even noticed it anymore.
To think I'd lived in a shithole like this for a week?
It was a miracle I hadn't come out with some respiratory disease.
"Urk... urgh..! When I get back, I'll squeeze not just your life out of you, but medical bills too..!"
With that, I piled up yet another grudge against User ㅇㅇ(112.311), recharging my motivation to push forward. My steps grew firmer.
The 4th floor was narrower than any of the previous ones.
Part of it was the altar area taking up space, but fundamentally, this floor had the smallest generation scale of all.
The exit placement was somewhat fixed too—right in front of the stairs coming down from the 3rd floor.
It was on the opposite side of the map, so most runs, you could just hold forward and it'd be there.
But blocking those stairs to the 5th floor was the mad wanderer whose origins no one knew: the Wanderer.
'Well, not exactly blocking...'
Truth be told, she wasn't blocking the path. She just stood in the middle of the passage leading to the stairs to the 5th floor. You could sidestep her and avoid fighting altogether.
'Those criminal bastards probably triggered her just to see what it'd be like.'
As long as you stayed out of her aggro range, she remained neutral. Seasoned players like me had pulled off all sorts of crazy tricks to mess with her, but once she locked onto you as an enemy, she never went back to neutral. No room for games right now.
"But this place is too clean for them to have passed through."
A little time had passed, sure, but there weren't even enemy corpses in the 4th floor corridors, let alone signs of doors being opened or searched.
And they were supposed to have a group of twenty people.
Maybe that criminal Dave had lied his ass off to escape trouble.
'I'll find out when I catch up to them anyway... First things first, find what I need.'
That was why, even knowing the Wanderer was dead ahead, I'd taken the side path instead of the direct route.
The 4th floor sub-boss, the Wanderer, had two phases.
To be precise: you beat her once while holding a specific item, it gets consumed, she revives, and phase 2 starts immediately.
Each phase lived up to the sub-boss name with brutal back-to-back fights, but like with the Giant Slime Blob, you had to do it this way to get the silver chest packed with rewards.
And naturally, I planned to claim the Wanderer's silver chest too.
"If I can turn sub-bosses into onaholes thinking of Severa, then making the Wanderer one means the Sewer King is fucked."
Poor leather bag would have to face a player, a sub-boss, and a holy spoonful of onahole. Made me want to cry for him.
The filthy sewage water that had been lapping at my ankles up to now was gone on the 4th floor.
To be exact, the structure was different from the upper floors.
There was a central channel where water flowed, draining it away, leaving dry stone paths along the edges you could walk comfortably.
Exploration difficulty was noticeably lower than before.
But...
Splash!
"Kieeeek!!! Flying piranha!"
A fish with razor-sharp teeth leaped from the flowing water, lunging to chomp me.
> Whoosh—!
The black-bladed axe tore through the air with a whistle, slamming down and cleaving the flying fish vertically in two.
Fishy blood sprayed into the air, guts scattering and splattering the passage floor.
"Whew... close call."
These ugly bastards jumping out at unexpected timings to attack were stressing me the hell out.
"Fuck. These things look like they'd give you madness instead of parasites if you ate them raw as sashimi, but damn, they're aggressive."
With fins curled weirdly, eyes bulging out, and jagged teeth everywhere, the fish were disgustingly grotesque.
The visuals screamed "no sashimi ever."
⚔ MONSTER INFO ⚔ 『Twisted Flesh』 Level: 03 Health: 0/18 □□□□□□□□□□ 【A fish that's become grotesquely deformed for some reason. The meat is a delicacy, but not recommended to eat.】 One hit and they died like globefish, but the ambushes meant I took a hit now and then if I let my guard down.
You might ask, "Just don't let your guard down?" I had full confidence I could ensure anyone who asked that never asked again.
"At least I found them. Ugh, fishy smell."
By now, I'd sliced up thirty of these twisted flesh on the way. My arm and shoulder ached from swinging the hefty axe.
"Washing's pointless. Hope it doesn't stain permanently?"
I lifted my arm and pretended to sniff, but my nose was numb from the stench—nothing registered.
Screeech—
The pathetic creak of worn-out wood twisting under weight echoed through the room, like it was at the end of its lifespan.
That's right—wood.
In this sewer, the only wood was the firewood set for campfires. These dilapidated wooden planks forming the room felt utterly out of place.
The musty rot of decaying wood and dust piled thick. A cluttered table with strange devices, a bookshelf with a few tomes, a jar filled with who-knows-how-old rotten water.
Obviously an old research lab, but not something you'd expect in a sewer.
"So what the hell is this place?"
"You've never seen it before either, huh."
A secret research lab unknown even to Severa, who was once hailed as a hero passing through these sewers.
I found a parchment on the table, nearly identical to the others, and handed it to Severa, who was staring blankly at the lab.
"The lab made by that idiot who worshipped the End, the one you're so fond of."
Human anatomy diagrams, beetles, suns, tentacles—all mixed in grotesque symbols.
Drawn on the parchment.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇ Slide—thud! Slide—
I was pulling books from the shelf one by one, rearranging them, searching for the mechanism.
The item in this lab only appeared after triggering the gimmick.
All the while, Severa silently glared at the parchment with the symbol on the table.
Probably curious about the truth.
"Wanna know?"
"...You know something about this place?"
Seeing her body tense with eagerness, I stopped jamming books in and out of the shelf and leaned back against it.
It wouldn't collapse, right?
Worn out, but still heavy-duty enough to hold.
'Wait, what if termites ate it!'
Not actual ants, but those unfriendly bugs—if they'd infested the wood, it was obvious what happened next.
The shelf would buckle under my weight, I'd fall ass-over-teakettle looking like an idiot, hurt my back, and never show Severa my legendary腰 power again.
Simulating all that future took a mere 0.7 seconds!
Trembling in fear, I demurely stepped away from the shelf.
Severa gave me a weird look, but she'd have to understand. She didn't know my deep thoughts and love.
"Phew... is this solitude?"
"What the hell..."
A heretic's research lab.
The Wanderer's story object on the 4th floor, and one deeply tied to the final boss too.
"I don't know the full details. Just the gist: long ago, a demon worshipper branded a heretic crawled into the village sewers and set up this lab to continue his demon research."
Curiously, inspecting the bookshelf here brought up a list of a few books. Selecting one gave a text summary of its contents.
Nearly fifty books total—not many bothered checking every one.
But "not many" meant at least some did.
The gallery's collective intelligence shone here again.
They compiled contents, hidden passages, erased text guesses, links to other story objects—predicting the lab's secrets.
Fuel for a month's worth of gallery speculation bonfires.
"And the reason this sewer turned into a demon realm."
"..."
Severa gaped, stunned speechless.
"Then the animals that became monsters here too..."
"This lab's the source."
"And the portals that opened elsewhere, spilling those tear-apart demons..."
"That too."
Severa's red eyes, which had lost their fire, reignited with clumped hatred as fuel.
Unlike the tick-tick malice aimed at me, this was thick, genuine rage—like she'd chase to hell and rip them apart. Sharp enough to prickle my skin.
Even fallen to a lowly specter under some great evil, her core was still the hero who loved people, huh.
"The demon worshipper who built this lab sought greater power by grasping the demon's essence."
I picked up one of the less-damaged magic devices—it looked like weathered junk—turned it over, lost interest, and tossed it to the floor.
Thud. It split in half. I kicked the pieces aside and continued.
"And he actually connected with a real demon. No idea if it was genuine, but the thing he made? Probably was."
"No way that demon was the End?"
"Likely."
Severa refuted with a face that said impossible.
"Can't be! No human could behold that existence and keep their sanity!"
"That's why he made this."
I kicked the bookshelf behind me hard.
Boom—!!!
Books flew from the recoil, wood splintered with a massive crash, and the shelf toppled.
White dust billowed, broken wood fragments everywhere.
"Cough! Cough! Ugh... Clean up once in a while. No wonder you're fan-girling tentacle eye-monsters."
Not my place to say in a long-abandoned spot, but whatever.
If it bugs you, don't die—just live longer.
Beneath the fallen shelf lay a hidden space.
And something precious stored there.
A bizarrely gleaming black gem, pyramid-like with irregular facets edged in red lines.
"The Radiant Irregular Polyhedron."
As I picked it up, even I—with rock-bottom Mind stats—could feel the massive magic dormant inside.
Not dormant, actually—too much inaccuracy there.
The leaking magic alone had turned a normal sewer into this demon hellscape. Culprit confirmed.
Severa saw the Radiant Irregular Polyhedron and slowly dimmed her blazing eyes, everything clicking into place.
"It'll take time, but if I just destroy this...! No... then why show it to me?"
Her face lit up with joy at Whitechamber escaping the evil demon's grasp, but she quickly calmed and asked me.
I pondered my answer.
Honestly, no real reason.
To get the Wanderer's reward? To survive this randomly thrown dungeon? Neither would satisfy her.
Might as well play along.
I'd teased her as a sex-toy onahole, but her power was essential for future exploration.
"You called me a hero."
"Wha..."
My only path to survival: hack through blocking enemies, smash the tentacle eye-monster called the End, then chuck ㅇㅇ(112.311) into Incheon's sea.
Hero gig fits the direction anyway.
"Let's do some hero fucking!"