No Way Back
The fantasy of the dungeon shattered in an instant.
That dreamlike vision — of rescuing the people who'd been dragged away, of seizing the dungeon's treasures, of marching home in triumph — evaporated like smoke.
What the vanishing illusion left behind was terror. Raw, animal dread. And that feeling spread through Karlson and the villagers alike with startling speed.
"R-run..."
The words had barely left a panicked villager's mouth as he turned to flee when—
A deep rumble rolled through the ceiling.
"Huh...?"
Stone came down on his head.
"Ah—"
Thud. Crunch.
The cascade of rubble hammered him without mercy. The wet, flattening sound of a body being crushed and pulped filled the chamber. He never even managed a scream. The rocks swallowed him whole, and he was gone.
A last low groan of settling stone. A trickle of pebbles. A tap.
Silence.
The dungeon entrance stood sealed by the fallen mass. Through the haze of dust and drifting fragments, a corpse lay pulverized, one arm still reaching out from the pile.
Karlson and everyone with him stared at it, emptied of thought.
The entrance had been blocked. Just like that.
By whom? When? How? In what possible gap of time?
Or was this, too, part of a trap?
Karlson's mind reeled. It spun so violently that a wave of dizziness washed over him.
A dungeon lockdown?
Give me a goddamn break.
He'd heard of trap rooms that sealed themselves off. But the dungeon entrance itself being blocked? That was beyond all common sense. Impossible things kept happening, one after another.
I have to keep my head.
Given enough time, they could probably clear the rubble. Then they should start right now—
...No. That's exactly what that monster wants.
Clearing that mountain of stone would take enormous time and effort. In the process, the villagers and the guards would inevitably exhaust themselves. They were already running on accumulated fatigue. Push them any further and they might end up nearly incapable of fighting.
And in that state — if the monsters attacked?
Annihilation.
The one who had engineered this situation was surely that monster. Which meant it would have anticipated everything that came after, too.
In that case—
"Forward."
Karlson put force into the word before the villagers could entertain any other thought. He himself had been shaken to the core — watching a subordinate he cherished die right in front of him, watching villagers die. But if he lost his grip here as well, it was over. Plain and simple.
"The way back is sealed, and the only path is forward! We have no other choice!!"
Even if this, too, was what the monster wanted, there was nothing to be done about it. Just as Karlson had said — there was only one path left.
His shout brought some measure of order back to the group. The villagers nodded heavily, and with Karlson at their head, they began to advance slowly into the dungeon.
But even as they tried to put on a calm face, there was one fact the villagers could not deny. Fear still sat in their hearts. And even Karlson, who had shouted those words, had not managed to erase it from his own.
Those two absolute truths ruled their minds as they took their precarious steps forward.
They're keeping their composure better than I expected.
I was watching Karlson and the villagers from inside the dungeon when I said it, and Seongha replied evenly.
If I concentrated my consciousness, I could see and hear anything, anywhere in this place. The dungeon was me. Them walking into it was no different from walking into my body. There was no reason a body's owner couldn't look inside themselves.
The problem was that they didn't know that.
Yeah.
I smiled inwardly and hurried to prepare the next stage of the plan.
Seongha asked, watching me. I traced the identity of the emotion that was driving me now, and I smiled.
Yeah. It is fun.
There was no reply, but I could faintly sense Seongha smiling, just a little.
Clearing the rubble I used to seal the entrance is going to be a pain... nah. Maybe I'll leave a few of them alive, have them clear it, then kill them. Whatever. That's later. I'll think about it then.
I dismissed the thought as nothing important and started walking with a light step.
Advancing with every trap in mind, Karlson felt as though the air itself were closing around his throat. The lingering echo of terror behind him, and the very real possibility of dying ahead — the two pressed together until he could feel his body and mind wearing down by degrees.
He wasn't the only one. The villagers and guards trailing behind him looked equally spent. On top of that, the cave-like dungeon was humid and uncomfortably warm, leaching stamina at a vicious rate. Sweat ran down every body, and the physical exhaustion piled on with it.
Tens of minutes. Or maybe hours — time had become something they could no longer measure. Through all of it, Karlson never once let go of the tension.
He pressed forward with caution piled on caution, and then — the far end of the chamber came into view, opening onto another room.
First room, cleared without incident...?
They had cleared the dungeon's first chamber. Aside from the trap at the very beginning, they hadn't encountered a single enemy or fallen into anything else.
This easy?
He was bewildered. He'd been certain some trap or ambush would be waiting.
"Hah..."
"Th-thank goodness..."
"Nothing much happened, huh?"
As the next room opened before them, the villagers who had been following in a knot of tension let relief show on their faces.
Trying to make us drop our guard? ...I don't know. But we need to rest first, either way.
"We'll rest—"
"Huh...? L-look over there, Captain!!"
A guardsman pointed and shouted, and every gaze in the party swung with his arm.
The kidnapped village women were there.
Eyes, ears, and mouths covered, bound hand and foot — they were the entire reason this group had come. Monsters near them were preparing something, but it didn't look finished. Proof enough: the moment the monsters spotted the party, they showed clear panic and began scrambling in a fluster.
Caught them in the middle of throwing a trap together in a hurry?
Or was this itself a trap?
The suspicion rose naturally.
"We have to save them!"
A guardsman shouted it, and the villagers all turned to look at Karlson as one. He stared at the flustered monsters and felt himself torn.
Acting? Even if it was acting — the reason they had come into this dungeon was standing right in front of them. If they just saved those women and got out fast, everything would be solved. They wouldn't even need to kill the monsters or clear the dungeon in the name of revenge.
A perfect opportunity.
"Everyone—"
Karlson made his decision, leveling his blade toward the monsters, and roared.
"Attack!"
At his command, every weapon came up, and for the first time something like real courage kindled in the group.
"Waaaaah—!!"
"Attack!!"
"Kill them!! Kill them all!!"
"You monster bastards!"
"This is revenge!"
The villagers charged the monsters, every humiliation they'd suffered boiling over at once. The formation was ragged, but the momentum was vicious.
These sons of bitches!
Even Karlson let the rage he'd been holding down tear loose, and he ran with them.
"Kihehhek!!"
"Kii!"
At the thunder of footsteps and the roar of voices, the monsters looked terrified. They spun on their heels and bolted in a scrambling rout.
Karlson was about to give chase when his mind snapped back into place.
It could be a trap!
"Stop! That's far enough!!"
At his shout, the villagers finally came back to themselves. The memory of what the monsters had done to them earlier was enough to halt their feet — though it did nothing to cool the fury still boiling in their chests.
Instead—
"We won!!"
"Waaaah—!!"
"It was nothing!"
Their first victory against monsters who had done nothing but beat them down — no one could hide the excitement. Nobody had been hurt. Nobody had died. It barely even qualified as a fight. But a win was a win.
Now they just had to untie the villagers, clear the rubble sealing the entrance, and go home. Everyone seemed to be thinking the same thing. The grim expressions were gone, replaced by faces flushed and bright.
Karlson alone could not let himself drink that atmosphere in.
We achieved our goal this easily? We haven't even run into the monsters that attacked the village.
He hadn't caught so much as a glimpse of that particular monster since they'd entered the dungeon. But that didn't mean he could leave the people they'd come to find still bound.
Even without an order from him, the villagers moved to free the women. They pulled the cloth from eyes and mouths and ears, and cut the ropes.
Karlson watched it happen and felt a faint wrongness.
The ropes I understand. But why cover their eyes and ears? And they're still dressed...
Freed of the ropes, the women squinted against the light striking their retinas for the first time in days. Whatever they had endured had left them gaunt, hollowed-out — as if even their souls had been scooped away. Even unbound, they only stared with vacant faces, as though something still had them by the mind.
"Honey!! It's me! It's me—!!"
One of the villagers found his wife among them, seized her by the shoulders, and shook her. Everyone watched the two of them, expecting a reunion worth the tears.
...Huh?
That was when Karlson saw it — a dagger, hidden in the folds of the woman's clothes.
A dagger? Why?
"M-monsters...!"
The woman registered the man in front of her — her husband — a beat too late, and that was what she called him. Her eyes went round, and in them rose a killing intent so raw it burned, and a rage to match it.
"Huh? Honey, what are you—"
A man seeing his wife for the first time in days could only look bewildered at a reaction he couldn't begin to understand.
Shunk.
"...Huh?"
The man stared down at the dagger buried in his stomach as if he couldn't make sense of it. And at the wife who was holding it.
"Heh... heheh. I-I finally... I killed a m-monster...! Heh, heheheheh!!"
A vacant, broken little laugh, spilling out of her — and then it tore wide into something unhinged, a madwoman's cackle. Watching her, Karlson grasped the situation and wrenched his mouth open.
"Everyone—"
The women were putting on expressions of pure madness, as if something had reached into them and taken hold. In the same instant Karlson's mouth opened, every last one of the captives drew a dagger.
"Get back—!!"
A desperate cry.
But—
Shunk. Thunk. Shunk—
The sound of blades punching into flesh rang out all at once, from every direction, and announced that Karlson's shout had come too late.